Laula! is a new project by Mike Fentross and Maarten Ornstein; following their debut duo album Oblivion Soave and having worked with Rima Khcheich on the second album Ombre de Mon Amant, they are once again collaborating with an extraordinary singer - the Estonian mezzo-soprano Kadri Tegelmann. She is not only a superb interpreter of Baroque music; she also introduced Maarten and Mike to the deep and rich tradition of Baltic vocal music with its many folksongs, hymns and chants. Choosing the repertoire for this project, they learned that many - if not most - Estonian folksongs are about events from the cycle of life, such as birth, marriage, lullabies, leaving and returning home, and death. These universal themes have been used in art for centuries all over the world, and they are the starting point for the choice of music in this project. A CD of Laula is available on Zefir Records.
For each of the Estonian folksongs featured, they have found an equivalent from the Baroque era, and where possible paired the songs. Thus Girolamo Kapsperger’s beautiful lullaby Filglio Dormi is paired with Lauliku lapsepõli, an old Estonian song about childhood memories. The traditional Une Sulased (Servants of Slumber) is carefully woven into Tarquinio Merula’s monumental Canzonetta Spirituale Sopra Alla Nanna. The lyrics of both songs are about the darker side of sleep, dreams, and nightmares. Mike and Maarten are particularly fond of the arrangement for Kurb Laulik (The Sad Songster), essentially a song about tears and crying, delicately sung by Kadri while in the background Mike and Maarten play Flow my tears by John Dowland, both as an accompaniment to Kadri and as a distant memory to Oblivion Soave, their first album on Zefir Records. Project Laula! illustrates the broadening artistic strides they have made from playing Baroque duos to venturing into the great tradition of Arabic music and now releasing a conceptual album about the cycle of life. For that is what this project is about: life. Life in all its joy, misery, anxiety, glory and mystery - just like music itself.
Contact: info [AT] maartenornstein.com