This is a remarkable CD. At first glance, its pairing of Ambrose Field’s live and studio electronics with the voice of former Hilliard Ensemble tenor John Potter singing the music of Guillaume Dufay (1397-1474) may seem like an update of Officium, the best-selling ECM early music recording from 1994 that partnered Jan Garbarek’s distinctive saxophone with the voices of the Hilliard Ensemble. But despite the constant of Potter’s tenor, and the fact that the music of Dufay appears on both recordings, Being Dufay is something else entirely.
Thanks to Field’s vision and Potter’s uncanny ability to sing from the spiritual center of each note, Being Dufay reveals the essential mystery of Dufay’s melodic creations. By the time you reach the fifth track, “Presque Quelque Chose,” which consists entirely of electronic sounds and synthesized voices based on Potter’s, temporal reality ceases to bind the imagination. On Being Dufay, we journey to a place of boundless illumination.
What it is, is ultimately beyond words. Field and Potter’s hour-long soundscape, which merges seven tracks into a transcendent whole, journeys way beyond the typical space music ambience oft broadcast on Music from the Hearts of Space. These men create what few musicians can: a virtual time warp that transports you and your listening environment to a parallel, all-enveloping universe.