Oracle Hysterical & New Vintage Baroque - Passionate Pilgrim (2017)

Oracle Hysterical a collective of composers and performers: twin brothers Doug Balliett ( double bass, viola da gamba ) and Brad Balliett ( bassoons ), Majel Connery ( vocals ), Elliot Cole ( vocals, harmonium ), and Dylan Greene ( percussion ). Half band, half book club, Oracle combines eclectic musical influences with literary breadth, adapting great works of literature through the medium of song. The group has created hip-hoperas, art-rock song cycles, rap cantatas, and other genre-bending works all over America and Europe, collaborating with a variety of ensembles to cultivate a unique sound palette for each project.

This past year, Oracle dropped Baroque pop album, Passionate Pilgrim on Naxos/Vision into Art ( VIA ). Called “music that is unstuck in time” by the Wall Street Journal, Passionate Pilgrim weaves “Beatlesesque” ( Steve Smith ) tunes with discredited Shakespearean poetry, in a collaboration with period ensemble, New Vintage Baroque. The group’s sophomore album, Hecuba, releases on Naxos/Vision into Art ( VIA ) in May 2018. Hecuba is a live concert, and an art-rock concept album based on Euripides’ tragedy of the same name. Other current projects include The Sea, a symphonic song cycle commissioned by Grammy-nominated ensemble, A Far Cry, called “a globe-trotting sonic adventure” by the Boston Globe. Adapted from “The Sea” issue of literary journal, Lapham's Quarterly, the project debuted at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, 2016. Other ongoing Oracle projects include Cleopatra with the Metropolis Ensemble, and Grimms’ Fairy Tales with New Vintage Baroque. Oracle has appeared at the MATA Festival, the Berkshire Fringe Festival, The Stone, Le poisson rouge, National Sawdust, and at the Lucerne Festival Academy, where they were Spotlight Artists in 2011.

TRACKLIST

01. Beauty Is - Majel Connery
02. Fair Is My Love - Elliot Cole
03. Did Not the Heavenly Rhetorike - Majel Connery
04. Live with Me and Be My Love - Majel Connery
05. Crabbed Age and Youth - Majel Connery
06. It Was a Lordling's Daughter - Majel Connery
07. When My Love Sweares - Majel Connery
08. When as Thine Eye: When As Thine Eye - Elliot Cole
09. My Flocks Feede Not - Majel Connery
10. If Musicke - Majel Connery
11. Sweet Cytherea - Majel Connery
12. Scarce Had the Sunne (Why Was Not I a Flood?) - Majel Connery
13. As It Fell - Majel Connery
14. Good Night, Good Rest - Oracle Hysterical