The American bass and lutenist Joel Frederiksen has already played with his Ensemble Phoenix Munich The songs of a 20th-century singer-songwriter magically combined with Renaissance music: ten years ago the album alongside tenor Timothy Leigh Evans was called “Requiem For A Pink Moon – An Elizabethian Tribute To Nick Drake (1948-1974)”.
At that time the individual songs were still unconnected in relatively short tracks, but already mirrored each other in a wondrous way. With his new album “A Day With Suzanne – A Tribute To Leonard Cohen”, Frederiksen is not only interested in the mutual effect and fertilization, for example through fine editing and the accompaniment with old instruments, but also in a penetration of the supposedly so different, temporally distant musical worlds.
A track almost always begins with Leonard Cohen (“Suzanne”, “A Thousands Kisses Deep”, “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye”, “Dance Me To The End Of Love”, “Bird On The Wire”, “So Long Marianne”) and also ends with him. In between, singing and accompaniment with lute, which Frederiksen often plays himself, and viols (Hille Perl, Domen Marinčič) switch to Orlando di Lasso, Josquin des Prez, De Vincent or Henry Purcell.
The transitions are often fluid, especially in the instrumental accompaniment. And the texts also correspond to each other in terms of content over the centuries. Sometimes the interludes of Cohen songs are pure renaissance, for example with a lute duet or viol. Or musical motifs from Josquin’s “Adieu mes amours” are woven into “Famous Blue Raincoat”, the enigmatic letter to a friend who is described as a murderer. A wondrous relationship magic ensues when a 350 year old setting of a text about the happiness of dying by the side of a loved one is combined with the death of a love in “So Long, Marianne”. Here, as almost always, Emma-Lisa Roux sings the second part in a dreamlike improvisation; and she can also play the lute splendidly. The modern English of Leonard Cohen and the French of the old “Chansons” change again and again.
On the penultimate track, speaking, singing and playing penetrate each other finely before Henry Purcell’s “Hallelujah” merges ecstatically with Leonard Cohen’s at the very end.
“A Day With Suzanne” – Joel Frederiksen and Ensemble Phoenix Munich, officially released January 13th on Deutsche Harmonia Mundi/Sony classic