Cut Circle & Jesse Rodin
Biography Cut Circle & Jesse Rodin
Cut Circle
animates Renaissance music. Hailed as “masterful,” “driving,” “passionate,” and “pathbreaking,” the ensemble marries cutting-edge research with deep knowledge of and commitment to the music’s twists and turns. Cut Circle’s forward-looking approach is rooted in a flexible vocal technique and a belief that polyphony engages all the emotions, from the serious to the silly to the crushingly sad.
As a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, Cut Circle publishes recordings, gives concerts and lecture-recitals, and organizes workshops, masterclasses, and musical feasts. The ensemble performs internationally, with recent or upcoming appearances in the United States at the San Francisco Early Music Society and Stanford Live, and in Europe for the Fondazione Guido d’Arezzo (Arezzo, Italy), the FloReMus Festival (Florence, Italy), the Early Music Season (The Netherlands), the Tage Alter Musik (Regensburg, Germany), Laus Polyphoniae (Antwerp, Belgium), and Musica Sacra (Maastricht, The Netherlands).
Founded in 2003 by Jesse Rodin (Director), Cut Circle specializes in music of the long fifteenth century—Guillaume Du Fay, Johannes Ockeghem, Josquin des Prez, and their contemporaries. The ensemble is the recipient of the Noah Greenberg Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to historical performing practices (American Musicological Society); the Prix Olivier Messiaen (France); Editor’s Choice (Gramophone, UK); and a Diapason d’Or (France).
Several albums are in the works, including a disc of positively riveting anonymous masses, to be published later this summer, and an album devoted to motets and songs by Josquin that is scheduled for release in 2022. Cut Circle records for the Belgian label Musique en Wallonie.
“Cut Circle” is a symbol that in the fifteenth century functioned as both a time signature (the “O” indicates triple meter) and a tempo marking (the “|” calls for an accelerated tempo). Taking the time to understand composers’ tempo instructions helps the music comes alive.
Jesse Rodin
strives to make contact with lived musical experiences of the distant past. Focusing on the fifteenth century, he immerses himself in the original sources, singing from choirbooks, memorizing melodies and their texts, even recreating performances held at weddings, liturgical ceremonies, and feasts. In 2010 he and Professor Craig Sapp launched the Josquin Research Project, which uses digital tools to subject fifteenth-century repertories to both close and “distant” reading. As Director of the ensemble Cut Circle, he collaborates with world-class singers to recapture early music’s intensity and grit.
Rodin is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Université Libre de Bruxelles, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, and the American Musicological Society. For his work with Cut Circle he has received the Prix Olivier Messiaen, the Noah Greenberg Award, Editor’s Choice (Gramophone), and a Diapason d’Or.
He is the author of Josquin’s Rome: Hearing and Composing in the Sistine Chapel (Oxford University Press, 2012), editor of a volume of L’homme armé masses for the New Josquin Edition (2014), and co-editor of The Cambridge History of Fifteenth-Century Music (2015). His articles have appeared in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, Music & Letters, Acta Musicologica, and other major journals. Current projects include a series of recordings devoted to the songs of Johannes Ockeghem and his contemporaries (Musique en Wallonie) and a monograph on form in fifteenth-century music (Cambridge University Press).
At Stanford Rodin directs the Facsimile Singers, which helps students develop native fluency in old musical notation. He also co-teaches “Food, Text, Music: A Multidisciplinary Lab on the Art of Feasting,” in which students explore historical sources, attend to issues of aesthetic experience and sustainability, and cook medieval recipes in Stanford’s Teaching Kitchen.
