New York City-based period instrument ensemble Sonnambula’s debut album on Avie Records traverses music by several Renaissance composers who were forced to conceal their identities for social, religious, or ethnic reasons. Yet their music transcended the disorder surrounding them, flourishing in the intersection of beliefs and styles. The program features works by William Byrd and Richard Dering, two Catholics composing …

For the ensemble’s tenth commercial album, New York Polyphony has assembled a program of Renaissance compositions by William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons, ingeniously complemented by 20th and 21st century works composed in the same timeless spirit – often by composers with personal and collaborative ties to New York Polyphony. The album’s evocative title comes from the text of a poem …