Lawrence Zazzo is an American counter-tenor, who studied at
King’s College, Cambridge and at the Royal College Music and
is now apparently making quite a name for himself performing
all over the world with leading musicians and at all the main
venues. In the notes accompanying this disc, Zazzo writes of
his fascination with the sound mixture of the counter-tenor
voice and saxophone. He enthuses about the similarity between
ancient music and jazz, and expresses his hope that these are
“honest and beautiful interruptions of the composers and their
music”.
The disc features
a range of works, including Dowland lute songs, English madrigals
by Morley and Gibbons, and some Purcell, including the Evening
Hymn, several songs from his stage works and consort songs
by Byrd - originally for voice and a consort of instruments,
usually viols.
Zazzo has a pleasant
countertenor voice. He is rather histrionic in the more manic
songs, such as Can She Excuse My Wrongs? to the point
that he almost starts to sound like a caricature. On such
occasions, I - rather unfairly - find it difficult to banish
the theme tune of Blackadder from my mind. Yet he is
quite beautiful in slower, gentler ones. His enunciation is
good, although one sometimes feels that he is slightly over-enunciating
the words. The voice can also come across as slightly constricted,
such as in If Love's A Sweet Passion.
The saxophones
generally work brilliantly. Hiding the CD cover, I challenged
several musical, but non-musician, friends to guess what the
instruments were, and none guessed correctly, trying instead
to work out what early instruments they might be. It is actually
amazing how closely the saxophones can emulate the sound of
authentic period instruments. The only problem with the saxophone
is that the basso continuo part is not always well suited
to the baritone saxophone, and we end up with a rather ubiquitous
and unrelenting lugubrious air.
Individually each
song is well done, but as a general rule, Zazzo doesn’t do
quite enough to distinguish each one, and it ends up sounding
a bit same-y. On the whole, however, it is an interesting
and engaging disc, and good for testing - and probably aggravating!
- non-musician friends.
Em Marshall
Lawrence Zazzo
(counter-tenor); Paragon Saxophone Quartet
