Remember me, my dear

Jan Garbarek (soprano saxophone), The Hilliard Ensemble

From their formation in 1974 to their eventual disbanding in 2014, The Hilliard Ensemble have been one of the most distinctive vocal groups not just in the world of early music but in the contemporary field too, with a chronologically vast repertoire ranging from Pérotin and Dunstable to Cage, Pärt and Rihm. From 1994 onwards, one of their most distinctive, widely-praised and commercially successful collaborations was with saxophonist Jan Garabarek: starting with the Officium album released on ECM Records that year, and continuing through Mnemosyme (1999) to Officium Novum (2010), their Officium trilogy reached millions of listeners who would otherwise have had little engagement with the world of ‘early’ music. Garbarek’s saxophone added a fifth ‘voice’ to the ensemble, weaving in and out of the textures, sometimes dominating with its keening, bending tones, at others supporting the vocal quartet, now close up, now at a distance in atmospherically resonant acoustics which added a further dimension beyond the actual notes he played. The Hilliards have always had an unmistakably clean-cut, clear-toned sound, which has proved ideal for this collaboration where distinct edges and identities become blurred and volatile, often mesmeric.

During their final season, the Hilliards once again teamed up with Garbarek for a ‘farewell tour’ of the Officium project, and it is from one of those concerts, recorded in the Chiesa della Collegiata of Saints Peter and Stephen, Bellinzona in Switzerland in October 2014, that the present recording comes. Gathering together numbers from across the Officium project, including Komitas’s ‘Ov zarmanali’, Garbarek’s own ‘Allting finns’ and Arvo Pãrt’s ‘Most Holy Mother of God’, all either subtly or strikingly different from their earlier recordings (Garbarek’s solo in the Pärt, for instance, is quite new). Other favourites making a reappearance include the 15th-century ‘Se je fayz deuil’ by Guillaume le Rouge, and the anonymous ‘Sanctus’ that featured so memorably on the original Officium album. All are infused with a new expressive flexibility and depth, so that even those listeners who already have the existing trilogy will want to hear this disc, while a wholly and rather catchy new addition is the anonymous medieval ‘Procurans odium’.

The disc culminates with a dazzling sequence that kicks off with the group’s animated take on Pérotin’s organum ‘Alleluia nativitas’, Garbarek’s syncopated sax solos cutting across the lively compound time of the other voices to give the whole a dynamic, dance-like quality. The full space of the church is used in the cover of Hildegard of Bingen’s spiritual masterpiece, singers as well as saxophone wandering away and back to impart a remarkable multi-textured atmosphere, David James’s unmistakable countertenor itself taking on some of the edginess of a saxophone, so that the blurring of voice/instrument distinctions becomes yet more fluid. Then follows Garaberk’s own magically haunting ‘We are the stars’. From this emerge the opening notes of an ‘Agnus Dei’ by Antoine Brumel in which Garbarek’s decorative solos add further tender perspectives. Another new take on an old favourite (from Mnemosyme), the 16th-century Scottish ‘Remember me, my dear’ acts as an entirely apt and moving finale, serving in this context not so much as a Memento mori as a Memento vivere.

Presented very much as a ‘live’ event, the recording captures audience noise as well as the artists, some rustling and a few coughs, but for once this actually adds to the atmosphere and sense of space, as does the the closing applause. As ever with ECM, the sound, mixing and presentation are exemplary, although there are no sung texts. But this is a disc that transcends boundaries, not just vocal, instrumental and acoustic but also generic: terms like classical, jazz, folk and even ‘crossover’ as it is conventionally understood are immaterial here. This is a profoundly immersive experience, one that every admirer of Garbarek, the Hilliards, and the Officium project as a whole should hear as a matter of urgency.