radio sententia -- Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo"

Still trying to keep my head above the ocean of work. In the meantime, I leave you a great video of an aria from Claudio Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo" -- one of the first operas. It is conducted by one of my favorite early music directors and a mean viol da gamba player, Jordi Savall, and sung beautifully by his wife, Montserrat Figueras.

Oh, and the guy in the balcony with the drum and the beard is the coolest guy on earth.

UPDATE: As you can see, they won't let me show this on the blog. It's worth going to YouTube for. Here's the link.

Feast of the Triumph of the Holy Cross

According to sitemeter, people have been visiting s&c from all over the world (Malta, India, Ireland, Australia) looking for information on today's feast, and reading my post from last year. Cool.

radio sententia -- Estrella Morente

I discovered Estrella Morente after I moved back from Spain, although I was already familiar with her father's music. She is a great, soulful flamenco singer who is both very traditional and very individual in style. Here she is, accompanied, apparently, by some Portuguese musicians:



She's from Granada and is married to a bullfighter! That's hardcore!

This next song is one of my favorites. The video is just still photos:



The first flamenco singer I ever got into (I bought a cassette of his songs outside the Madrid bullring) was the great Pepe Marchena. I always found the delicacy of his voice and style to be extremely moving:

radio sententia -- Rasputina

I've started teaching and am working hard on my dissertation, so it's Homer and Fernando I all the time. I'm just going to let you know what I've been listening to lately. Rasputina is a cello-based rock group with an Edward Gorey feel. I think this video captures their style pretty well.

They also do some fun covers:

odd bedfellows

Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, Toots Thielmans, David Sanborn, and Charlie Haden playing "Hey Joe," circa 1988.