Trio Mediaeval

Aquilonis, Latin for the north wind, is the sixth album for ECM New Series by Trio Mediaeval, the Scandinavian vocal trio. The title points to the singers' Nordic roots, and the programme moves from north to south, from Iceland to Italy. Medieval Icelandic chant, 12th-century Italian laude and 15th-century English carols sit beside Norwegian hymn melodies and new works by Anders Jormin, William Brooks and Andrew Smith. In places the singers accompany themselves on discreet instruments.

The singers are Anna Maria Friman, also on Hardanger fiddle, Linn Andrea Fuglseth, also on portable organ, and Berit Opheim. All three play melody chimes, and this is Opheim's first record with the trio. The album was recorded in June 2014 at the Propstei St. Gerold in Austria, with Peter Laenger as engineer. John Potter, former tenor of the Hilliard Ensemble and a longtime mentor of the group, supervised the recording and wrote the liner notes. The arrangements of the older material are by the singers themselves.

The thread running through the disc is the office of St Thorlak, the Icelandic saint: a vespers responsory, antiphons and psalms. The source is a monophonic edition by Nicky Losseff and Róbert Ottósson, and the trio surrounds these single lines with discreet instrumental textures. Smith's three settings of Latin texts, among them Ioseph fili David, bring a modern polyphony close to the medieval pieces. Between the longer items come the trio's own short interludes, such as the wordless Klokkeljom, and the album closes with Brooks's Vale, dulcis amice.

Several critics noted how freely the sources range. James R. Oestreich wrote in The New York Times that "the enchanting vocal style and sonority that the female trio has evolved unifies the whole beautifully." In The Times, Richard Morrison praised "light, flexible, pristinely tuned voices" able to draw a sound world from plainchant and old Nordic folk tunes without sentimentality. BBC Music Magazine gave the album five stars, and Shirley Ratcliffe in Choir & Organ described its mix of musicianship and scholarship.

This is the CD edition, catalogue number ECM New Series 2416, first released in November 2014, with sung texts, translations and Potter's notes in the booklet.