Osvaldo Golijov: Ayre

CML call number: CD CLASSICAL Golijov
Alex Ross wrote in the New Yorker: "'Ayre,' a new song cycle by the Argentinean-born composer Osvaldo Golijov … is not only an ecstatically beautiful piece but also a radical and disorienting one. Many people, on first encountering its rasping sonorities, hurtling rhythms, and welters of lament, will be unsure whether they are listening to pop music or to classical music or to some folk ritual of indeterminate origin. However they answer, they will be right. Golijov … has woven his cycle from a skein of Arabic, Hebrew, Sardinian, and Sephardic material. He has enlisted the Argentinean rock producer, film composer, and guitarist Gustavo Santaolalla to give heft and color to the sound; this music jumps out of the speakers in a way that classical records seldom do. Dawn Upshaw, the soprano, delivers an electrifying performance in which she assumes a half-dozen vocal guises. Early in the record she makes a hairpin turn from a fragile, softly glowing Sephardic song entitled 'Una Madre Comió Asado' to a bloodcurdling Sardinian number entitled 'Tancas Serradas a Muru' — I had to double-check the credits to make sure that Upshaw was still the singer" (9/26/05).