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Anna Maria Friman / Ariel Abramovich / Jacob Heringman / John Potter AMORES PASADOS

“A hundred years ago, a song was just a song – it belonged to whoever sang it while they were singing it. Any music could be ‘popular’ music, with barrow boys whistling Verdi arias in the street,” writes vocalist John Potter in the liner notes to his newest ECM recording, Amores Pasados. Yet, as he points out, there eventually became a category of “art song,” as distinct from popular and folk song; the advent of radio and recordings brought professional interpreters of those art songs, superseding amateur singers gathered around a piano with Schubert sheet music in hand. As the 20^th century wore on, the opposite of art song became known as the “pop song,” with purveyors of the latter often singing the songs themselves, blending original lyrics with their music. With Amores Pasados, Potter aims to refract the concepts of art song and popular song through a double prism. Along with interpreting folk-inflected songs by composers from the Renaissance to the 20^th century, he performs art songs written by English artists known for their feats in popular music: John Paul Jones (of Led Zeppelin fame), Genesis keyboardist Tony Banks and Sting.

Potter – an ECM veteran from his decades as a tenor with the Hilliard Ensemble and, more recently, with his Dowland Project recordings – arranged the songs of Amores Pasados with lutenists Ariel Abramovich and Jacob Heringman. Adding her pure voice and hardanger fiddle to the session at Oslo’s Rainbow Studio was Anna Maria Friman of ‘Trio Mediaeval’ (the vocal group that Potter has mentored, supervising its ECM recordings). Reflecting on the material of Amores Pasados, Potter writes: “We asked John Paul Jones, Tony Banks and Sting to write us lute songs. Asking a rock-music composer to set existing poetry within a genre we knew well meant that we singers wouldn’t need to pretend to be pop singers – we were still ‘interpreting’ a text in a way that we’re familiar with…

None of these songs found their final form until we reached the studio, where Manfred Eicher, as ever, sculpted their final shape.” (ECM Records)