Classical guitarist Brendan Evans has released Tiento (Green Flash Music, January 30, 2026), a solo recording that brings Renaissance lute repertory into dialogue with twentieth-century expression.
The album includes works by Francesco Canova da Milano, whose 16th-century Italian lute music represents a pinnacle of early plucked-string polyphony. Performing this repertory on the modern classical guitar, Evans draws on principles associated with historically informed performance: clarity of contrapuntal voicing, restraint in vibrato, articulate phrasing shaped by rhetorical gesture, and a transparent tonal palette that allows individual lines to emerge distinctly.
The recording’s conceptual center is Maurice Ohana’s Tiento, a work rooted in a different historical and cultural world yet animated by a similarly searching expressive impulse. Rather than suggesting stylistic continuity, the program invites listeners to consider how musical inquiry — probing texture, harmony, and gesture — can resonate across centuries.
Produced by John Finbury, Tiento was recorded with attention to natural acoustic space and balance, presenting the instrument with warmth while preserving detail and immediacy.
More information:
https://greenflashmusic.com
Listen:
https://open.spotify.com/album/6SYmdQreFuTVBoKtvATJgg?si=8ucNPpsRS-i2cHXJ_z7Fhw
