Countertenor Yaniv d’Or has put together this collection with his own genre-blurring Ensemble Naya and the early music group Barrocade. The result is a kind of folk-baroque album centred on the idea of exile. Most of the music emerged from the Jewish communities around the Mediterranean soon after their expulsion from Spain in the 15th century, but there is also room for a mournful melody by D’Or himself, plus a song by the 20th-century Chilean composer Violeta Parra, and Albéniz’s Asturias, deftly dispatched on mandolin and guitar. Overall, the playing combines folk energy with baroque precision, and D’Or is a characterful singer, even if his tone, swinging between fruitiness and crooning, won’t be to all tastes. Even the most yearning laments are often couched in stamping flamenco-like rhythms, and it’s not all gloom, anyway: one particularly danceable number discusses the best way to cook aubergine.
