Tenor John Potter, founding member of the Hilliard Ensemble, has released an unusual and exiting album on ECM—together with singer Anna Maria Frimanand, member of Trio Mediaeval mentored by Potter, and the two lute players Ariel Abramovich and Jacob Heringman. “Amores Pasados” is about longing and transience, love and melancholy—feelings which are brought to life in every verse and every tone in the album. Potter succeeds in bridging the rift between art song and pop music, between English baroque and the art of contemporary song writing. The songs seem to be brought from a past era into the present and yet they were written for this album. Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones and Genesis keyboarder Tony Banks have composed new music for old Thomas Campion verses, and from Spanish poetry. Sting, who deeply penetrated the 16th and 17th century sound worlds in his Dowland Project, contributed “Bury Me Deep in the Greenwood” which was composed for the Robin Hood film. There are further, initially surprising, encounters between different centuries in “Amores Pasados”, which, however, immediately give way to feelings of happiness in the listener: the interpreters make the magic of this music audible and the interpretations weightless.
