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About Dionysos Now!
With Dionysos Now!, I would like to show you that vocal polyphony of the Renaissance is very captivating music, and deserves to be heard by a wider audience.
Dionysos Now! wants to create cathedrals from sounds, in which you perceive the music as if you were flattering the cathedrals with a drone from far above. The brick stones are overall but they seem to merge into the whole, into the 'gestalt', where the radiant music generates much more effervescent energy than the sum of the tones, the contagious flow in the music is sought and captured, like a surfer who seems to have found the perfect wave and seizes his chance to float on it before it goes away again.
With the wise words of Winston Churchill in mind "Never waste a good crisis", I started studying the scores of my fellow townsman Adriaen Willaert during the lockdown and so I rediscovered the wonderful music of this Venetian chapel master over the past few months. A new initiative was born: Dionysos Now! Vienna is a brand new project that aims to spread the magnificent heritage of Adriaen Willaert. With Dionysos Now!, I would like to demonstrate that Renaissance vocal polyphony is very captivating music that deserves to be appreciated by a wider audience.
Tore Tom Denys, founder Dionysos Now! Vienna
Audio & video
Below, you can dine
About Adriaen Willaert
The “vehicle” that we are using to try to demonstrate this wonderful phenomenon, at least to start with, is the music of the composer Adriaen Willaert from Roeselare, Belgium.
Much of his music has remained untouched in libraries for over 450 years. But this is undeserved. In his
time, Adriaen Willaert was one of the most renowned musicians in Europe. He was a singer, teacher, kapellmeister, composer, and above all a humanist. He was seen as a “master” by the many composers who studied with him who in turn became stars of their own generation. Musicians from all over Europe came to Venice to discover the innovative elements of “musiklehre” with him and further hone their craft.
Willaert would continue working as the kapell- meister of the San Marco Basilica for 35(!) years until his death.
Using Adriaen Willaert’s music, we delve into the spirit of that time, a turbulent period that was not so different from how the times are now, constantly changing and sometimes more confrontational than we at first can or would like to believe.
Audio & video
Here you can find a live performance of Adriaen Willaert's Missa "Mittit ad Virginem", by Dionysos Now!
Why we don't release a physical CD
We believe the future is CD-less. Not only because most of you savour your music via a plethora of online streaming/download platforms, but because the production of physical CDs isn't exactly what you call an ecological process.
We do release our music on vinyl. And we try to do that as green as possible. That is why we've decided to select the greenest pressing plant on the planet, Deepgrooves in the Netherlands. Take a look on their website, to find out how the efforts they undertake, to press your vinyl in an ecological way.
To invest in vinyl, implicates investing in the overall experience: the quality of the music is one thing, the cover image is another. For that, we cooperate with contemporary Belgian artists. We worked with Honoré D'O, a visual artist from Ghent. His image "Je vous salue Marie / Weesgegroetje" is the cover art of Adriano 1, our first LP.
In Fall 2021, a second recording "Missa Benedicta Es" will be released. Together with that LP, we will release a media book, with extensive information on the composer, the artists, historical context and the contemporary interpretation.
Website (c) Evil Penguin 2022
All images of Dionysos Now! (c) Kurt Van der Elst
