The Pop of Yestercentury

I’m far from the first person to analogize Baroque music as the jazz of its day, but ideas sometimes become cliches simply because they’re factual. Both musical traditions prize instrumental virtuosity, improvisation, and rhetorical expression over an underlying—and perpetual—rhythmic/harmonic foundation. Call it a “continuo” or say it’s a rhythm section, describe either “licks” or passagi, but for years these creative affinities have been addictively intuitive to my ears.

Suffice it to say it was a pleasure to cover Les Délices’s melding of these experiences for Early Music America. For more, please see my review here.