Peter Navarro-Alonso: IN FLAGRANTE DELICTO Theatre of Voices, Ensemble Stralo & Paul Hillier

• Peter Navarro-Alonso (b. 1973): Moro, lasso:
• 1 Navarro-Alonso: Moro, lasso 11:44
• Beltà, poi che t'assenti:
• 2 Navarro-Alonso: Beltà, poi che t'assenti 06:42
• Che sì picciol pianto:
• 3 Navarro-Alonso: Che sì picciol pianto 05:37
• Io pur respiro:
• 4 Navarro-Alonso: Io pur respiro 10:17
• PART TWO:
• 5 Navarro-Alonso: PART TWO: Energico 07:14
• 6 Navarro-Alonso: PART TWO: Con disperazione 03:18
• 7 Navarro-Alonso: PART TWO: Tranquillo (La folia) 03:54
• 8 Navarro-Alonso: PART TWO: Gorgogliante 08:11
• 9 Navarro-Alonso: PART TWO: Tranquillo 08:02
• Total Runtime 01:04:59

Info for Peter Navarro-Alonso: IN FLAGRANTE DELICTO

It is a great pleasure that OUR Recordings is releasing this exceptional work by Peter Navarro-Alonso, featuring the Grammy-winning ensemble Theatre of Voices and Ensemble Stralo under the direction of Paul Hillier.

Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa (c. 1561–1613) was a Renaissance composer known for both his groundbreaking music and the infamous murder of his wife and her lover. While historical records about his personality are limited and contradictory, his music, especially his 104 madrigals, is notable for its bold harmonic experimentation, centuries ahead of its time. Composer Peter Navarro-Alonso, long fascinated by Gesualdo, created the hour-long piece In flagrante delicto in collaboration with violinist Christina Åstrand and conductor Paul Hillier. The composition explores the darkness of Gesualdo’s psyche through musical quotations and has been performed and recorded by Ensemble Stralo and Theatre of Voices.

Peter Navarro-Alonso is a composer focused on drama, sound, and the human mind, known for exploring timbre and the concept of hope. He has written vocal, chamber, orchestral, and electroacoustic works, and received Denmark’s top music honor in 2023.

Paul Hillier is a renowned singer, conductor, composer, and writer, known for founding the Hilliard Ensemble and Theatre of Voices. With nearly 200 acclaimed recordings, multiple awards, and honors from both the British and Danish monarchs, he has led major chamber choirs across Europe and is especially noted for his collaborations with composers Arvo Pärt and Steve Reich.

Ensemble Stralo, founded in 2016 by four Danish soloists and chamber musicians, combines strings, winds, and keyboard to create a unique and flexible sound. They perform music from the Renaissance to contemporary works, offering distinctive and engaging concert experiences.

Theatre of Voices
Ensemble Stralo
Paul Hillier, conductor

Theatre of Voices
is an internationally recognized Danish vocal group which has close to 40 releases and several awards, including a Grammy and P2 awards. Theatre of Voices’ repertoire covers a wide range of genres and stretches from the earliest notated music to modern sound art installations and contemporary opera. The ensemble’s distinct, clear sound and undivided devotion to the musical material has led to many collaborations with composers such as Arvo Pärt, Steve Reich, Stockhausen, John Adams, Kaija Saariaho, Liu Sola, Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, Helena Tulve, Sunleif Rasmussen, Galina Grigorjeva, Michael Gordon, David Lang, John Luther Adams, Line Tjørnhøj, Nigel Osborne, Arnannguaq Gerstrøm, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Hildur Guðnadóttir and many more. Theatre of Vocies has added voices to film music such as as Oscar-winning La Grande Bellezza (Paolo Sorrentino), Arrival (Denis Villeneuve) and most recently with ‘horror sound’ in the Danish film The Suicide Tourist (Jonas Alexander Arnby) with Nikolaj Coster Waldau in the lead role.

The group was founded in London in 1990 by the british conductor, singer and writer Paul Hillier and is considered one of the world's leading vocal ensembles. After some years in the USA, Hillier moved back to Europe in 2004 to settle in Denmark, where the ensemble is now based. In 2013, the group was nominated for the Nordic Council Music Prize. This inspired commissioning of even more Nordic repertoire and resulted in a North Atlantic Tour in 2019 that included works from Greenland, Iceland, Faroe Islands, Denmark and Estonia featured on both concerts and local workshops.

Theatre of Voices performs at prominent international festivals, concert halls and opera houses such as the Teatro Real (Madrid), Palais Garnier (Paris), Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall (NY), Barbican Center (London), Elbphilharmonie (Hamburg), and Sydney Opera House. Season 2020 - where the Theatre of Voices celebrated its 30th anniversary - started with a huge celebration at Kings Place in London and in spite of Covid-19 restrictions continued with virtual and live activities in Germany, England, Italy, Greenland, recordings as holograms for 16 performances in Hong Kong, and ended with an online Christmas concert in collaboration with the National Bank of Colombia. The year had a special focus on environmental issues and sustainability.

In 2021, Theatre of Voices is booked for both CD recordings and festivals in Denmark, Finland and Italy (two concerts in the opening weekend of La Biennale di Venezia), and concerts in Germany (premiere by Bernd Franke) and the UK (Cambridge Music Festival and Kings Place) - with continued focus on female composers (premiere by Arnannguaq Gerstrøm), environment/sustainability (premiere by John Luther Adams and also refugee flows (premiere by Nigel Osborne). Collaboration with Rihab Azar (oud) and Naomi Sato (sho). Theatre of Voices is supported by the Danish Arts Council, Holbæk Municipality and the Augustinus Foundation.

Ensemble Stralo
Four musicians – soloists and chamber musicians with backgrounds in some of Denmark’s finest orchestras and a bond that goes beyond professional collaboration – formed Ensemble Stralo in 2016. With a mixed instrumentation of strings, winds, and keyboard, the ensemble offers a unique and distinctive sound as well as a natural flexibility.

The ensemble performs music ranging from the Renaissance to brandnew compositions, always providing a different kind of concert experience.

Paul Hillier
is from Dorset in England and studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. His career has embraced singing, conducting, composition and writing about music. Earlier in his career he was founding director of the Hilliard Ensemble, and subsequently founded Theatre of Voices. He has taught in the USA at the University of California campuses at Santa Cruz and Davis, and from 1996-2003 was Director of the Early Music Institute at Indiana University. He was Principal Conductor of the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir (2001-2007) and has been Chief Conductor of Ars Nova Copenhagen (2003-2023).

His close to 200 recordings, including seven solo song recitals, have earned worldwide acclaim and won numerous prizes – Diapson d’or, Grammys and Danish Radio P2 Prizes. Several have been Editor’s Choice in leading international music magazines, and they have been chosen as reference recordings in music anthologies. His books about Arvo Pärt and Steve Reich, together with numerous anthologies of choral music, are published by Oxford University Press.

In 2006 he was awarded an OBE for services to choral music. In 2007 he received the Order of the White Star of Estonia and was awarded a Grammy for Best Choral Recording with EPCC. He received another Grammy Award for the David Lang CD ’The Little Match Girl Passion’ with Theatre of Voices and Ars Nova Copenhagen. In 2008 he became Chief Conductor of the National Chamber Choir of Ireland and was appointed artistic director of the Coro Casa da Música in Porto. He has been artist in residence at Yale University’s Institute for Sacred Music, done the Springfield Music Lecture at Rhodes College, Memphis, and performed in New York at Bang-on-a-Can Marathon, at Lincoln Centre and Carnegie Hall – and Takkelloftet at Royal Opera in Copenhagen, Barbican Centre, at Perth International Arts Festival in Australia and much more.

In the 2012 Grammy Awards show Paul Hillier was competing for the 7th time in 9 years – nominated with Ars Nova Copenhagen and music by Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen . In 2020, he headed the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award Jury for Music and Opera– one of Europe’s most important music prizes.

Paul Hillier has conducted and recorded with a large number of the leading chamber choirs in Europe, has collaborated closely with the Kronos Quartet, Smith Quartet. London Sinfonietta and artists like Peter Sellars, Bobbie McFarren, Tim Rushton and Richard Alston. He has also conducted the St Paul Chamber Orchestra, Netherlands Wind Ensemble, I Solisti del Vento, Swedish Wind Ensemble, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Remix, Concerto Palatino, Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen, Concerto Copenhagen, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Fretwork, Estonian State Symphony Orchestra, Copenhagen Phil, Sønderjyllands Symfoniorkester, Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto and Utah Symphony Orchestra.

During his research Paul Hillier has found many unpublished gems – early and new music. This has led to an extensive collaboration with Edition-S called TOV-Edition, publishing neglected or new works, little books, pamphlets and other musical miscellany. Apart from his own compositions and arrangements, Paul Hillier is currently finishing his book ‘Follow the Sound’ on 20th -century vocal groups in the English tradition from both a music history point of view and the personal aspect of being a member of such a group.

In recent years, Paul Hillier and Theatre of Voices has branched out to focusing on recording of both computer game and film scores, and next generation minimalism by for example Jóhann Jóhannsson, Peter Due, Jonas Struck, Rutger Hoedemaekers, Owen Roberts, Martin Stig Andersen and Jonas Colstrup.

Hillier’s repertoire spans from the earliest masterworks, over Mozart, early romantics and Wagner, to 20th-century works by Brecht, Pärt, Walton, Stravinsky, Stockhausen and a huge number of commissions by both established and young international composers. Most noteworthy perhaps his decade long collaborations with Arvo Pärt and Steve Reich, but recent collaborations also include Galina Grigorjeva (Ukraine), BOAC: Michael Gordon - David Lang – Julia Wolfe (US), John Luther Adams (US), Howard Skempton (UK), Nina Janjgava (Georgia), Gavin Bryars (UK), Bernd Franke (Germany), Gabriel Jackson (UK), Kaija Saariaho (Finland), Heiner Goebbels (Germany), Helena Tulve (Estonia), Caroline Shaw (US), Harrison Birtwistle (UK), Arnannguaq Porborg Gerstrøm (Greenland), and from Denmark among others: Fuzzy, Line Tjørnhøj, John Frandsen, Peter Bruun, Signe Lykke and Peter Navarro-Alonso.

Booklet for Peter Navarro-Alonso: IN FLAGRANTE DELICTO