The Whole Music Experience

Fo lk/ Jazz   Mark Winkler The Laura Nyro Project Cafe Pacific Records     I used to hear the name Laura Nyro a lot during my early days of reviewing music, but I can’t say that I knew her music personally.  At least that’s what I first thought when I received Mark Winkler’s The Laura Nyro Project in the post.  On a trip to YouTube, I found two familiar tunes from my childhood, Wedding Bell Blues and Up on the Rooftop .  Born in 1947, Nyro represented the folksy-blues side of the baby boomer generation with her peak years in the 1960s and 70s.  In the realm of Carol King (another prolific songwriter), Nyro composed songs in styles ranging from girly pop to soulful blues with gospel of the Black Church tossed in, though Nyro was white.   With big shoes to fill, jazz stylist-vocalist Mark Winkler set out to honor Nyro’s melismatic vocals in his baritone voice on The Laura Nyro Project .  And I have to say, he’...

The Byrd Ensemble   Markdavin Obenza   In the Company of William Byrd   Scribe Records Seattle has for several decades acted as a hotbed for music communities, including an early music community that began in the 1970s.   These days, Seattle’s early music community features a few of the founders of the early music scene as well as, newcomers such the Tudor Choir, Renaissance Singers and The Byrd Ensemble, named after renaissance church music composer William Byrd.   On the ensemble’s latest recording, In the Company of William Byrd the singers explore the music of Byrd’s contemporaries and mentors who hail mostly from the European mainland. Here we have a lush recording of renaissance polyphonic singing exploring the sacred works of Philip van Wilder, a Flemish lutenist, Alfonso Ferrabosco, an Italian composer, Clemens non Papa (also covered by the Tudor Choir in a 2006 recording), Thomas Morley (English composer), and rounding off ...