THIRD PRACTICE

L’Isola and Tenor Madness aim to build bridges across musical styles and find creative ways of solving musical problems, akin to the kind of critical thinking referred to by composer Cesare Marotta in a letter of 1614 where he mentions that “the notation itself is insufficient to communicate the style”.

Third Practice is an exciting new way of bringing the extravagant Italian music of the early seventeenth century to life. Building on what the great Claudio Monteverdi identified as the first (ancient) practice of singing in elegant polyphony and a new second practice of allowing musical harmony to fully represent the emotional scope of the poetry, our concept of a Third Practice goes one step further, by asking: what happens when this historically daring music comes face to face with freewheeling 21st Century improvisation? It’s a project that has one foot firmly in the foundations of the early Baroque, and the other in the realms of modern jazz. Within Third Practice an equal continuo is represented in modern day format, allowing all of the musicians to situate themselves in a historical context whilst drawing on the varying experiences of our new and diverse musical environs.

Musicians: 4 singers, 1 piano, 1 double bass.

Programme featuring Nenna, D’India and Cifra