Hilliard Ensemble: Improvising With Jan Garbarek

By NPR Staff

November 7, 2010

A choral group known for its early-music repertoire and a
saxophonist steeped in the art of improvisation may not be the most
likely musical partners. But when the Hilliard Ensemble
collaborated with Jan Garbarek for the first time in 1993, the
result was Officium, a recording of hauntingly beautiful music that
sold more than a million copies.

The Hilliard Ensemble and Garbarek have joined forces again for
their third album, Officium Novum, which features ancient, modern
and sacred music with an emphasis on the musical tradition of
Eastern Europe.

How did such an odd musical association begin? Hilliard Ensemble
tenor Rogers Covey-Crump says that Manfred Eicher wanted to do
something special to celebrate 25 years of his label, ECM Records,
so he arranged a meeting in Austria between the artists.

“Within a very short space of time that afternoon in Austria, we
were making music, and everybody was amazed,” Covey-Crump says.

John Potter, who served as Hilliard Ensemble’s librarian, had
brought a stack of music to the meeting, including Morales’ Parce
mihi Domine. The four vocalists began the seven-minute piece as
Garbarek stood in front of them.