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With days stretching out longer and longer in June, Classic 107’s Album of the Month stretches across days, years, and centuries to connect the present to the medieval.
Electric Fields is the latest offering from Canadian soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan. A recent recipient of the prestigious Polar Music Prize alongside iconic musicians Herbie Hancock and Queen, Hannigan joins forces with sister piano duo Katia and Marielle Labèque and electronic artist and arranger David Chalmin to shine new light on the works of Hildegard von Bingen, Francesca Caccini and Barbara Strozzi.
The project was born out of a collaboration that Hannigan and the Labèque sisters performed back in 2022 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. According to Chalmin, "We had such a good time that the idea of creating a project 'sur mesure' for Barbara, Katia and Marielle emerged."
Von Bingen takes a special place in this album, which shimmers with the possibility of connection to the cosmos. This was something that the medieval polymath wrote extensively about in her life, and that gossamer connection is made manifest by the radiating electronics that enhance music from over seven centuries ago. Chalmin is aided in this electronic endeavor by Bryce Dessner of the acclaimed indie rock outfit The National and frequent arranger for Taylor Swift.
The spiritual and mystical nature of Von Bingen’s music is blended with love songs in the vernacular by Caccini and Strozzi, which Hannigan uses as a jumping off point for improvisations and experiments. The combinations of the divine and the human, past and present, acoustic and electric make this a record of ethereal connection and otherworldly experience.
Classic 107 listeners can hear an excerpt from Electric Fields every Wednesday morning on Morning Light with Nolan Kehler just after 7:30 a.m. throughout the month of June.