calimac

So B. and I meandered over to Stanford's Memorial Church, the local Victorian excesserie, for a concert of ... what was it again? ... unaccompanied medieval Greek Byzantine religious music. That's a little outside my normal range, to say the least, so why would I go to hear that? Because I was asked to review it, nobody more specialized in the field being available.

And actually, I liked it. It was continually interesting where some other early vocal music concerts I've been to have been dull. Most of the works were brief, and the longest came last. The settings partook of a variety of styles and were continuously interesting. And not unimportantly, the singers were really good.

This group comes from Portland, Oregon, and performed this concert there and in Seattle before bringing it down here and to Sacramento, and bringing along with them in the program book ads for what looks like every Greek restaurant in Portland, just in case anyone is going up there and has a craving for Greek food. I guess anything Byzantine (the texts are in medieval Greek, after all) is a matter for Greek national pride.