A Worcester Ladymass, Trio Mediaeval
"This is a stunningly beautiful performance from this brilliant trio."
Trio Mediaeval's 'Worcester Ladymass'
"This performance is an act of recontextualization, as Anna Maria Friman, the group's Swedish soprano, points out in the CD's brief liner notes. Offering a spirituality stripped of most of its specific religious associations (the Latin texts are even printed in the booklet without translation), the album lightly raises the question of how to honor women in an entirely different society."
Trio Mediaeval: Toronto, Canada, March 23, 2011
"All three singers possessed tremendous control, the kind that didn't rely on vibrato or melisma to impress; instead, their biggest strength, even with this altered incarnation, was in their ability to interpret with finesse and create power with the gentlest delivery, all the while employing shifting dynamics with unfailing and uncanny synchronicity."
Beguiling Sounds From Trio Mediaeval
"The first thing to be said is that the singing here is just stunning. This is music that pauses every couple of seconds on perfect intervals - usually an octave and a fifth. Those arrivals positively ring, so pure are they. (I had the eerie experience of listening to this disc in a car, and feeling every move from dissonance to consonance in the passenger-side door handle.) Where there are unisons, they are so perfectly blended that it's only with great difficulty that you can tell that more than one person is singing.
"But for all the precision, the effect isn't cold or remote. There is great tenderness here (and, incidentally, a terrific object lesson for those who think tenderness impossible without vibrato). So beguiling is the sound that even an item like Munda Maria, a litany that (musically speaking) is one short phrase repeated literally a couple dozen times, seems too short."
Trio Mediaeval - A Worcester Ladymass
"Listening to the soaring tri-part harmonies of Trio Mediaeval is much more than giving praise to the Almighty. There is an assertion of the joy of just being alive that makes this one of the most intoxicating recordings I have heard in some time."
"The Trio is renowned for the purity of its singing, and that was apparent and impressive from the first moment. But what really made the mass come alive was the group's astute characterization of each part as a dramatic statement."
"The trio is also intrinsically and relentlessly in service of the song, rather than the other way around, so while the acumen of these three tremendous singers is never in question, it reveals itself, not through overt acts of vocal pyrotechnics but, instead, through a collective sound given even greater life through the pristine translucence of Austria's Propstei St. Gerold-a location used by ECM nearly 30 times, ranging from other classical releases to dates including John Surman's The Spaces in Between (2007) and Ralph Towner's Time Line (2006). A Worcester Ladymass is another superlative recording from a trio for whom the title of its 2001 debut, Words of the Angel, could simply not be more appropriate."
Trio Mediaeval's Worcester Ladymass
"Their new disc returns to their best territory, late medieval polyphony juxtaposed with modern music, and their sound is as pristine as it ever was."
An absolute delight that has been worth the wait
"A Worcester Ladymass is a glorious experience.... Taken as a whole, this album is an absolute delight. Whether you simply want to wallow in a wave of seductive tones, or sit up and revel in the superbly-rendered polyphonic complexities, Trio Mediaeval ensure that the experience will be a wonderfully enriching one."
First Listen: Trio Mediaeval, 'A Worcester Ladymass'
"The ringing acoustics of the recording venue, a medieval Austrian monastery, illuminate the Trio Mediaeval voices. These women have been singing together for 14 years, and their blend is impeccable. They sing with a straight, clear tone, accompanied by mellow chimes in pieces like the Agnus Dei. Each composition is a jewel, evoking the spirit of a long-gone era."
"Trio Mediaeval ... offer something really different and quite arresting which is deliciously infused with their distinctive personalities."
"The vocal trio, founded fourteen years ago, still sound as fresh and energised as they did on their first album. Their immaculate blend and tuning brings a deep purity to the sound, particularly during their unison singing, and their perfect ensemble gives their performances with great polish.... Their live performances still contain an enchanting vibrancy and mystery not often seen on the concert stage."
Serene ancient music, crossing centuries
"Trio Mediaeval, the Oslo-based vocal ensemble, made a rare local visit on Sunday afternoon for a hypnotically beautiful sold-out performance at the Gardner Museum. These stars of the early music movement combine exquisite, pure-voiced ensemble singing with a vital and freshly contemporary approach to music of the distant past. The repertoire may be ancient but nothing about Sunday's program had the slightest whiff of the curatorial; the trio's coolly radiant singing has a way of short-circuiting the centuries."
The musical art of noise, from Bang on a Can and Trio Mediaeval
"Trio Mediaeval is a group of three Scandinavian women whose singing is hauntingly straight and unerringly in tune. Their assignment was to tell the story in a sort of detached John Adams-like minimalist idiom in which text is deconstructed and patterns that are almost repetitive, but not quite, go on for long periods of time. That they managed this with such poise and aplomb is testimony to stunning powers of concentration."
The John Henry Who Might Have Been
"The Trio Mediaeval sang the English text with remarkable clarity and a bright, appealing tone."
"If you could bottle the joie de vivre that comes from the members of Trio Mediaeval you could probably sell it not just as a pick-me-up, but as some form of basic life-force."
Ethereal Notes of Long Ago and Far Away
"Ms. Ossum's warm, dark voice provided a firm center of tonal gravity, while Ms. Friman and Ms. Fuglseth soared around her in interweaving lines; elsewhere the singers performed alone or in alternation. Each had her own distinct character. Yet these three voices blended with a supernatural clarity and beauty that might cause even a confirmed agnostic to contemplate a spark of divinity in these centuries-old manuscripts."