This can only be described as a well-intentioned disc, but its painting-by-numbers approach rather causes the music to get in its own way. The cross-breeding of contemporary improvisation with early music is not a new idea; The Hilliard Ensemble collaborated with Jan Garbarek on the ECM disc, “Officium” (10/94) and performers such as Stevie Wishart work in both fields. I also recall hearing George Wiegand and Rosemary Thorndycraft at a festival which had non-idiomatic free improvisation as its central theme, when, despite the hardcore nature of the dyed-in-the-combat-trousers audience, their performance was very well received. They wisely stuck to demonstrating the extemporization techniques of early music rather than attempting to dress it in modern trappings.
Therein, perhaps, lies the rub. The insert-notes here refer, with an offhandedness typical of the subject’s treatment, to “the common ground of improvisation shared by jazz and medieval music …”, which are in fact entirely different approaches. On “Officium” Garbarek largely confined his saxophone work to floating an additional melodic line above the ensemble’s voices, the result being genuinely within both sets of aesthetic parameters. While the two groups here do arrive at odd moments of genuine synergy, all too often this disc sounds like two recordings, one of medieval choral music and one of rather sparse jazz-derived pieces, being played simultaneously. It’s a great shame, because both groups are excellent in their own fields. Interviewed recently in Making Music magazine, Huw Warren bewailed the tendency of jazz critics to favour music which is now 50 years old. Hmm …'