Flamboyance

Fire, movement, and transformation are the focus of this recording. "Flamboyance" immerses the listener in the vibrant musical world of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when European culture—much like extravagant Gothic architecture—offered color, intensity, and exuberance. This program spans more than a century, from the early Italian Trecento to the dawn of the Burgundian era, tracing how polyphony spread 'like wildfire' between North and South, church and world, court and chapel. Motets, chansons, madrigals, dances, and sacred works by Francesco Landini, Johannes Ciconia, Guillaume Du Fay, Gilles Binchois, and their contemporaries illustrate an ever-evolving repertoire in which devotion and passion, intellect and pomp coexist. The Sollazzo Ensemble, which has grown to twenty singers and instrumentalists, presents this music in a manner reminiscent of princely banquets and ceremonial contexts. The recording treats the late Middle Ages not as a distant historical epoch, but invites the listener to experience these sounds as a living, pulsating musical world.