Ecce Ensemble Releases Debut Album Today

Hailed as "virtuosic (WBUR Radio) for its "creative, sympathetic players...and cornucopia of unusual, extended-technique sounds (The Boston Globe)," the Ecce ensemble today announced the release of its latest album Angelus (New Focus Recordings, TBR April 24, 2020). A 45-minute monodrama by composer John Aylward, Angelus takes its name from Paul Klee's painting Angelus Novus.

A work in 10 through composed movements, the album explores the human condition from physical, spiritual and psychological aspects. Recorded at The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019, Asylum features some of today's top artists including vocalist Nine Guo and conductor Jean Philippe-Wurtz.

In 2014, Aylward brought his mother back to Europe for the first time since she had fled Germany as a refugee. Together, they viewed Paul Klee's painting Angelus Novus at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Inspired by this painting and specifically its central image of the Angel of History, Aylward discovered Walter Benjamin's text that powerfully describes this work of art. Over the course of four years, Aylward set this text, and nine others from authors such as DH Lawrence, and Schopenhauer, to music resulting in a monodrama in which the voice is speaker, vocalist, witness, agent, and storyteller. "The piece is an exploration of life felt through the lenses of various cultural histories, represented in the pastiche of authors that inhabit the work's landscape," explains Aylward. "By invoking this range of influence and ordering it into physical, psychological and spiritual concerns, Angelus became a kind of treatise on the human experience for me. This work is dedicated to my mother and to all those who have been displaced by violence and war, to their resilience and search for meaning in darkness."

Described by The Boston Globe as "a composer of wide intellectual curiosity" who summons "textures of efficient richness, delicate and deep all at once," Aylward's music is influenced by a range of modern and ancient literature. Musically, Angelus is influenced by Aylward's former teacher, the late composer Lee Hyla (1952-2014). Hyla was the first person to introduce Aylward to Benjamin's writing.

Founded in 2010, the Ecce ensemble is a group of today's most accomplished performers who are committed to presenting captivating and visionary performances of contemporary music. Through concerts, symposia, and other community-centered events, Ecce shares new forms of engagement in modern music with a diverse international audience. Ecce has realized personal and refined interpretations of works by composers such as Georg Friedrich Haas, Philippe Hurel, Lee Hyla, Helmut Lachenmann, Fabien Levy, Hanspeter Kyburz, Louis Karchin, Philippe Leroux, and many others.

Every year, the ensemble deepens its relationships with prominent composers and brings their work to new audiences. Ecce's annual residency is the international Etchings Festival in Auvillar, France. There, the ensemble shares diverse contemporary repertoire, as well as new works by emerging international composers, with European audiences.

In addition to the Etchings Festival, Ecce continues to expand its residency and workshop programming, holding events across New York, New England, nationally and internationally. Recent residencies have taken place at The Boston Athenaeum, AREA Gallery in Boston, MA, The La Pietra Forum in Florence, Italy and The University of Campinas at Sao Paulo, Brazil. Ecce served as the 2015-17 Ensemble-in-Residence at Le Laboratoire in Cambridge, MA, and is currently in residence at AREA Gallery (Boston, MA) and Clark University (Worcester, MA).

These opportunities continue to connect Ecce with the most diverse cross-sections of society, sharing with them the profound aesthetic experience of contemporary music, and the joy of its creation. EcceArts.com

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