Hyperbaroq Turns Baroque Inside Out on 'Tripudiis Sonis Variis'

By Daniel Okafor

Hyperbaroq, a trio of award-winning Australian improvisers, has released "Tripudiis Sonis Variis" on Earshift Music — an album that drags the baroque repertoire, kicking and mostly consenting, into a free-jazz present. Ilaria Crociani sings. Mirko Guerrini plays piano, soprano sax, duduk (an Armenian reed instrument), Chinese flute, chalumeau (a baroque single-reed predecessor of the clarinet), moseño and sound art. Stephen Magnusson adds electric guitar and Moog guitar.

Why baroque, and why now? Crociani has an answer: "What I've discovered is that baroque music has an astounding capacity to move human emotions, now as much as it did centuries ago. It's about how the music is built, but just as much about listening awareness. Listening, in that deep sense, is really at the centre of what we do."

The material spans the 14th century to 1692, and the trio treats it as raw terrain rather than museum glass.

What's on the record?

• "Stella Caeli Extirpavit" — an anonymous 14th-century chant, opened with Magnusson building an ison (a sustained drone note) on Moog guitar over a Gregorian ostinato.
• Alessandro Scarlatti's "O Cessate Di Piagarmi" (1683) — from the opera "Il Pompeo"; Magnusson on classical guitar, Guerrini's saxophone improvising the vocal line mid-piece.
• Claudio Monteverdi's "Lamento Della Ninfa" (1638) — Rinuccini's libretto set against electronic improvisation the review calls cinematic, an "alternate universe."
• Antonio Cesti's "Disserratevi Abissi" (1655) — Apolloni's libretto, delivered with the trio's jazz flare.
• Barbara Strozzi's "Che Si Può Fare" (1644) — Brunacci's text, with Crociani's Italian diction praised as perfect; duduk and voice prove an unlikely but effective pairing. Strozzi is the only female composer on the record.
• Henry Purcell's "Music for a While" (1692) — Dryden's text, played almost straight.
• Giacomo Carissimi's "No No Non Si Speri" (circa 1664) — the seed of the whole project.
• Raffaello Rontani's "Caldi Sospiri" (1622) — soprano sax lending it a quasi bossa nova lift.
• Martim Codax's "Ay Ondas Que Eu Vim Veer" — expressive vocals over minimal electronics.
• Robert Johnson's "Have You Seen But A White Lily Grow" (1616) — Ben Jonson's text on true love, closing the album.

Where did the project come from?

Lockdown, fog and Berganza. Crociani recounts the origin: "Late one night during Melbourne's Covid lockdown, after a walk in the fog, we sat at the piano with this cantata, having just heard a recording of it by Teresa Berganza. Something about it would not let us go. 'Leave every hope. Hope is dead:' four-hundred-year-old lyrics describing exactly what the world, and we too, were experiencing during the pandemic."

She adds that six years later, Magnusson's playing on the track is some of the most beautiful on the record, and that the chalumeau "pulls us back centuries while sitting completely at home in this context."

Which track best states the trio's case?

"Music for a While," oddly, because they leave it alone. The album notes explain: "Despite the modern textures surrounding it, we play this piece almost exactly as Purcell wrote it. The song delivers the ancient idea of music as medicine — a concept of music therapy for mental and physical wellbeing that goes as far back as Pythagoras. With its central message that 'music shall all your cares beguile,' the piece acts as a spell cast to soothe and trick the mind out of its grief. It required very little from us beyond trust, so we deliberately stepped back here, letting a three-hundred-year-old melody do exactly what it was designed to do: heal."

That is the quiet thesis of the record. The trio reimagines most of the repertoire through improvisation, then proves the point by stepping back exactly once — and that restraint lands hardest. "Tripudiis Sonis Variis" suggests the baroque still works as living material for players willing to trust both the old notes and the new noise.