Golijov: Ayre

1	Ayre, for voice & chamber
2	Ayre, for voice & chamber
3	Ayre, for voice & chamber
4	Ayre, for voice & chamber
5	Ayre, for voice & chamber
6	Ayre, for voice & chamber
7	Ayre, for voice & chamber
8	Ayre, for voice & chamber
9	Ayre, for voice & chamber
10	Ayre, for voice & chamber
11	Ayre, for voice & chamber
12	Folk Songs, arranged for
13	Folk Songs, arranged for
14	Folk Songs, arranged for
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Golijov: Ayre
1.	Ayre, for voice & chamber ensemble 39:59
	Composed by Osvaldo Golijov
	Performed by Dawn Upshaw and Andalucian Dogs
2.	Folk Songs, arranged for soprano & 7 instruments (or orchestra) 21:50
	Composed by Luciano Berio
	Performed by Erik Friedlander, Gordon Gottlieb, Tara Helen O'Connor, Todd Palmer, Dawn Upshaw, Bridget Kibbey and Eric Poland

Barnes & Noble

You might say that composer Osvaldo Golijov was extraordinarily lucky to attract the attention of performers like the Kronos Quartet and soprano Dawn Upshaw, to name just two of his champions. But the attention only arrived because of Golijov's own vibrant musical voice, eclectic in its range but always deeply personal. Written for Upshaw, his song cycle Ayre (2004) is certainly among his most effective, moving, and memorable works to date; it may be too soon to start talking about 21st-century classics, but here's an early contender. The 11 songs share a background in the historical intermingling of Christian, Arab, and Sephardic Jewish cultures in Spain, with texts drawn from all these traditions and music that blurs the sacred and the profane, alluding to klezmer and flamenco and mixing electronic sounds with traditional instruments. Upshaw has always been a versatile singer, but she achieves an expressive range here that goes far beyond anything she's done -- at times, in a keening lament or an ecstatic cry, it's hard to recognize her voice at all. A singular triumph for Upshaw and Golijov alike, Ayre also showcases a superb chamber ensemble (whimsically dubbed the Andalucian Dogs, though without any overt apology to Luis Buñuel) and marks the beginning of a well-deserved partnership between the composer and the venerable Deutsche Grammophon label. Ayre's disc-mate is an equally wonderful (and even more multilingual) work, Luciano Berio's Folksongs (1964), written for the infinitely resourceful vocalist Cathy Berberian (who also happened to be the composer's wife). This cycle inspires another great performance from Upshaw, perhaps the most compelling on record since Berberian's own, and Ayre and Folksongs together make for a combination too richly satisfying to be missed. Scott Paulin

All Music Guide

The Argentine-Israeli-Russian composer Osvaldo Golijov outdoes himself with Ayre, a collection of...well, of what, exactly? Arrangements of Mediterranean folk songs? They're more than that; the Sephardic, Spanish, Italian, and Arabic songs included here are thoroughly reworked and even made to overlap. Some are traditional, some are contemporary. And the instrumentation is varied; it includes -- and this is going to be the tough part for traditional concert audiences -- a laptop computer churning out dance electronics on the fast festive pieces and ambient sounds on the slower ones. The piece is loosely centered on Spain and its multicultural history. Oddly enough, among Golijov's works, this one has the most in common with the Kronos Quartet's Nuevo album of Mexican music, for which Golijov was credited merely as an arranger. Golijov himself would revel in the contradiction; one thing he's trying to do is question the role of the composer and his or her relationship to the wider musical world. "Ayre" is paired here with Luciano Berio's "Folk Songs" of 1974 and was written as a companion piece to it. One way to get your mind around what Golijov is trying to do is to compare the two; Berio turned to an international group of folk songs in search of musical essentials that might replace sterile serialist models. Golijov, in his growing body of work, seems to rejoin that there are no musical essentials except for the worlds of popular music that surround the concert tradition. Astor Piazzolla's tango and its fusion of the classical and popular worlds likely made a strong impression on Golijov. He finds an ideal collaborator in soprano Dawn Upshaw, a consistently adventurous vocal artist who can sound like a Spanish gypsy singer, a young Arab girl, or an American Appalachian singer in Berio's fascinating reading of "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair" as required. The Andalucian Dogs accompanimental group includes flute, clarinet, horn, viola, cello, bass, harp, guitar, "hyper-accordion," and percussion in addition to the electronics. Fascinating, and at all times highly listenable. James Manheim

Gramophone

[Ayre is] a journey dizzyingly chaotic, emotionally potent, and unforgettably beautiful. Andrew Farach-Colton

Time Out New York

Golijov's Ayre skips lightly across every conceivable boundary.... The result suggests a genuinely utopian vision, and provides Upshaw with a stunning tour de force. Steve Smith

The New Yorker

[Golijov's] music jumps out of the speakers in a way that classical records seldom do. Dawn Upshaw, the soprano, delivers an electrifying performance in which she assumes a half-dozen vocal guises. Alex Ross