Hyunah Yu, Mimi Stillman, PRISM Quartet & Piffaro, The Renaissance Band - The Anchoress (2020) [Hi-Res]

Soprano Hyunah Yu, the PRISM Quartet, and Piffaro, The Renaissance Band present a one-woman monodrama by composer David Serkin Ludwig and poet Katie Ford that explores struggles with faith, alienation, gender, and social power through the imagined person of an anchoress, a medieval mystic who spent her life confined to a cell attached to a church. In her liner notes, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim describes the anchoress as “a paradoxical figure: Buried alive, she is sought out for her wisdom. Encased in perpetual darkness, she is considered clairvoyant. Dead to the world, she becomes a pillar of her community.” The album includes Three Anchoress Songs, a companion piece performed by flutist Mimi Stillman and saxophonist Matthew Levy in which Ludwig imagines music the anchoress heard wafting into her cell from the outside world.