Gesualdo: Madrigals for Five Guitars

The polyphonic music of late Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613) still fascinates for its forward-looking chromaticism and its stark, unpredictable shifts in character.

His Fifth and Sixth Books of Madrigals from 1611 construct a world of their own-a distinctive body of work that has found adherents as diverse as Igor Stravinsky (who orchestrated Gesualdo madrigals in his 1960 Momentum pro Gesualdo), Werner Herzog (who directed the macabre, fanciful 1995 Gesualdo documentary Death for Five Voices), and now the French guitarist Noël Akchoté Akchoté is best known as an improvising guitarist heard solo or in memorable collaborations with Derek Bailey, Sam Rivers, Lol Coxhill, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, Han Bennink, and many others.

He has also contributed his distinctive talent to recordings by, among others, Luc Ferrari, David Grubbs, J. G. Thirlwell, and Jean-François Pauvros. In recent years, Akchoté has immersed himself in the study of medieval and Renaissance music, resulting in a mind-bogglingly prolific series of digital releases of the complete works of Carlo Gesualdo and Guillaume de Machaut, as well as arrangements for guitar of works by Monteverdi, Palestrina, and Orlando di Lasso. By all means, lend an ear to Noël's strange and marvelously obsessive project-these hours and hours of home recordings of overdubbed guitars playing polyphonic music.