In Collaboration with New Vintage Baroque and VIA Records
Album Released March 17, 2017 / Deluxe Edition released June 3, 2017
Passionate Pilgrim is a song cycle that brings an all-but-forgotten poem cycle back to life. Once believed to have been penned by a “W. Shakespeare,” the collection was stripped of its stature when all but four poems in the group was revealed as a fake (hence Fakespeare!) The album’s instrumentation includes a mix of Baroque and modern instruments pitched at 415 and 440 hz, respectively.
Passionate Pilgrim premiered at National Sawdust, and included a talkback with Princeton Professor of English, Jeff Dolven, who also wrote liner notes for the CD jacket.
PRESS
"With its rhythmic guitar parts, poetic lyrics, and wistful aching, the album “Passionate Pilgrim,” from Oracle Hysterical and New Vintage Baroque, answers the question of what it would sound like if Ani DiFranco or Belle and Sebastian were to cut a record of Baroque-inspired folk songs."
- The New Yorker
"With influences ranging from the Beatles (who owed much to classical music) to My Brightest Diamond to English Baroque composer John Blow, their album Passionate Pilgrim, which came out last spring on New York’s adventurous VisionIntoArt label, stands as a signature expression of the 21st-century Baroque revival."
- San Francisco Classical Voice
"...the interpretive sophistication of jazz or musical theater and the deliberate naivete of folk-rock...Time was when an ensemble’s fans might wonder where the group’s explorations would take them next. Now, listeners should wonder not only where, but also when...”
- Allan Kozinn, The Wall Street Journal
"The voices of Oracle Hysterical are sweet, fresh, and appealing, ideally suiting the poetry’s chaste ardor. New Vintage Baroque’s accompaniment is lively and lithe, without a trace of mustiness. Admirers of Joanna Newsom and Shara Nova will find plenty to savor, as will anyone enchanted by the chamber-pop tapestries of Van Dyke Parks... One song, “When As Thine Eye,” whispers especially Beatlesque in its breathy retro-pop intimacy."
- Steve Smith, The Log Journal
"...a song cycle that echoes with the elegant charm of a Baroque dance suite and resonates with historical depth and drama..."
- Maggie Molloy, Second Inversion
PURCHASE
