Summer 2010
Review of Ensemble Lipzodes recent CD, Oy hasemos fiesta (Excerpt)
Johan van Veen ( musica dei donum.org)

This disc contains music which almost certainly has been recorded never before. That makes it an important addition to the growing catalogue of recordings with Latin American repertoire. It could also serve to correct, as it were, the picture of music from that continent. Not everything is extraverted, and not all music from that region needs to be performed with a lot of noise. Lovers of Latin-American music shouldn't miss this disc, but others - for instance those who are interested in early liturgical music - will also enjoy this recording.
...The general level of singing and playing by the choir and the ensemble is excellent.

The full CD review is available here.

February 14, 2010
Ensemble Lipzodes makes Guatemalan music timeless
By David Lewellen, Special to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Ensemble Lipzodes proved Saturday night that the sources of thought-provoking, breathtaking music must be inexhaustible. The Indiana-based group, appearing under the auspices of Early Music Now, presented a program of music written in Guatemala in the 1500s. The Spanish took their music to their colonies, where the indigenous people adopted it, too. According to program notes, a portion of the anonymous music, from manuscripts now housed at Indiana University, was probably written by Native Americans. The performance at All Saints Cathedral showed that music written in the New World during the early days of colonization sounds similar to what the Old World was producing at the same time, which may be the most remarkable thing of all. Music written for isolated churches in remote mountains in Guatemala has every bit as much passion, energy, and magic as anything the great musical centers of Europe were hearing. How much more is lying undiscovered in some attic anywhere in the world? It's a humbling thought. The six musicians - Juan Carlos Arango and Christa Patton (mostly shawms), Anna Marsh and Kelsey Schilling (mostly dulcians), Yonit Kosovske (organ) and Wolodymyr Smishkewych (singer and percussion) - performed with remarkable ensemble and technique. The performers stood in a semicircle and signaled to one another to let tempos sway and bounce. A few moments of ragged intonation (probably inevitable on the relatively primitive instruments) made the group's typically rock-solid sound all the more notable. The music spanned many styles, from unadorned chant to complex counterpoint among four independent lines. Ensemble Lipzodes invested nearly all of it with an intensity of feeling that was at once grave and exuberant, typical of the best music produced during the Renaissance. Dances whirled; religious texts soared; instrumental lines wound around each other. Only a few repetitive chants written in a narrow range seemed less than completely inspired. The only distinctively New World feature of the program might have been the song performed in the indigenous language of Nahuatl. Smishkewych coached the near-capacity audience to sing the response to his calls, to general enjoyment.
-- Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)

February 13, 2010
Review: Early Music Now Presents Ensemble Lipzodes
by Tom Strini, Third Coast Digest

The Spanish came to Guatemala, converted the locals, and were pleased to find a particular talent for music among them. That was news to me, and I was pleased to learn it Sunday afternoon, as Early Music Now presented Ensemble Lipzodes at All Saints’ Cathedral. Everyone in the sextet studied at Indiana University. IU is the repository of the rare Guatemalan manuscripts from which they draw their repertoire. The group draws its name from an enigmatic scrawl on the front of one of those manuscripts. The music is almost all sacred and very much in the style of the European Renaissance. I kept waiting for some inflections of Indian music to sneak in, in a scale or the introduction of native instruments. Didn’t happen. If it did back in the day, it wasn’t written down for posterity. Most texts were in Latin and a few were in Spanish, but the manuscripts also show that the choirs occasionally translated the texts into one of the three indigenous languages. Tenor and multi-instrumentalist Wolodymyr Smishkewych handled the solo chants and served as the band’s front man. An ensemble variously comprising recorders, shawms, dulcian, sackbuts, chamber organ and harp handled the part-songs, a very common practice back in the day. Many of the 27 brief numbers had that Spanish 6/8-3/4 metric flair. Smishkewych has a fine, clear tenor and did well to sustain interest in the longer liturgical chants. He is also a charming presence and has a winning way with informative banter. He got the big crowd to sing along lustily with a phrase in native Nahuatl. Some of the polyphonic music was a little tricky to play, but nothing on the program was virtuosic. This was music that native choirmasters and their native choirs and players would have sung and played every day as part of the Catholic liturgy. It is lovely. Except for one out-of-tune recorder solo, Ensemble Lipzodes performed it accurately and simply — even bluntly. Their approach sounded just right.
--Third Coast Digest – Arts& Culture – Music (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)

January, 2006
The Ninth Competition in Performance of Music from Spain and Latin America (2006)

The semifinal and final rounds took place Saturday and Sunday, January 28 and 29, in Auer Hall at Indiana University, Bloomington. The jury was composed of professors Juan Orrego-Salas, Arnaldo Cohen, Otis Murphy, Luiz Fernando Lopes and Carmen Helena Téllez; with guest judge professor Paul Borg from Illinois State University.
In the Early Music Category the Grand Prize and Performance Practice Prize were won ex aequo by Ensemble Lipzodes and Ensemble L'Aura. Both ensembles were sponsored by professor Michael McCraw.
The winners will receive cash awards, and will record a collective CD with their competition repertoire in the upcoming year.

October 5, 2004
Early Music Enchantment
by Peter Jacobi, Herald Times music critic

The musicians seemed to be ready for their test, managing like conjurers to take a listener back to that other time in another place and making him feel both the reverence and the joy that this music most likely expressed for worshippers who first heard it, native worshippers who were being wooed to Christianity. The lively instrumental introductions and bridges balanced the more serious chanting quality of sung praises and must have made vespers and the mass more comfortable and acceptable experiences for the newcomers in attendance. ..... There was enchantment to their music making, and one sensed also that what one heard was as honest a representation of this music as could be hoped for, considering the sparseness of notation and guidance that such old manuscripts offer. What resulted turned into a most moving experience."
--Herald-Times (Bloomington, Indiana)

Early musicians play church, Indiana Daily Student (article by Benjames Derrick, October 5, 2004)

Next Concert:

April 3 & 4
Oy Hasemos Fiesta
Quito Early Music Festival
Quito, Ecuador

April 6
Oy Hasemos Fiesta CD Release Concert and Reception
Lilly Library of Indiana University Bloomington
Bloomington, Indiana

Bassano & The Music of Shakespeare
Chicago Early Music Festival

April 22 (Thursday), 12 noon
Millenium Park Pavilion
plus: Chant & Medieval Monody Workshop with Wolodymyr Smishkewych (2:30pm, Millenium Park Pavilion)
Chicago, IL

February 13, 2010
Oy Hasemos Fiesta
Early Music Now
Milwaukee, WI

April 24 2009
Call, Court and Casbah: Music of Muslim and Jewish Spain
Grigg Gallery, St. Louis Art Museum
Free
St. Louis Art Museum (click for directions)
One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park, St. Louis, MO
Telephone 314.721.0072

March 13, 2009 7:30pm
Arts Alive @ Loyola University Chicago presents
the third performance of their Fuchs Professional Music Series:
Call, Court and Casbah: Music of Muslim and Jewish Spain
Mundelein Auditorium, 1020 W. Sheridan Rd., Chicago IL
Info: boxoffice@luc.edu Tel.: 773.508.3847 / 7510

Museum Concerts of Rhode Island presents:
"¡Fiesta Guatemalteca! Music of 16th & 17th c. Guatemala"
St. Martin's Church, 50 Orchard Ave., Providence, RI
January 18, 2009 3:30pm
Tickets: Advance: $20/$18/$8 (Reg/Senior/Student); at door: $23/$20/$8

Ensemble Lipzodes South America Tour: July 15-August 4, 2008
Programs: Call, Court and Casbah: Music of Muslim and Jewish Spain; Music from 16th century Guatemala
Sao Paulo, Brasilia, Londrina and Juiz de Fora.

2008 BLEMF (Bloomington Early Music Festival)
Call, Court and Casbah: Music of Muslim and Jewish Spain
May 26, 1pm, Temple Beth Shalom, Bloomington, IN

Music from 16th century Guatemala
2007 Latino Music Festival
- November 26th, 6:30 pm, 2007
G.A.R Rotunda, Chicago Cultural Center
78 East Washington Street – Chicago

Music from Muslim & Jewish Spain
- November 14, 2007
Fowler Hall, Purdue University
Lafayette, Indiana

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
- July 8th, at 6:30 pm, 2007
National Gallery Chamber Players
Renaissance and baroque chamber music Presented in honor of Fabulous Journeys and Faraway Places: Travels on Paper 1450-1700, and in connection with the Washington Early Music Festival

Music from 16th century Guatemala
- Sunday, Sept. 10, 2006, 4:30 p.m. At St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, 601 Montano Road N.W., Albuquerque, NM

Music from 16th century Guatemala
- Sunday, 18 September 2005 at 4 pm St. Francis Episcopal Church
(1525 Mulberry Street, Zionsville, IN)

Music from 16th century Guatemala
- 2005 Boston Early Music Festival BEMF fringe events:
Saturday, June 18 , 2005 11am Church of the Covenant, 67 Newbury St.
Juan Carlos Arango, Keith Collins, Anna Marsh & Wolodymyr J. Smishkewych with guest artists from Indiana University’s Early Music Institute.
"Guatemalan Church Music circa 1582. Music for voices and Renaissance winds & percussion including formal and informal church music with texts in Latin, Spanish, and native languages."