Red Priest

Red Priest: Handel in the Wind: Messiah and Other Masterworks

by C. Michael Bailey
November 10, 2019

This particular performance of Messiah deserves its own seperate review, in addition to Handel's Messiah 2019. Red Priest, a Baroque specialty quartet named for that most famous Italian ginger of the period, Antonio Vivaldi, has been called: “visionary and heretical," “outrageous yet compulsive," “wholly irreverent and highly enlightened," and “completely wild and deeply imaginative." These expert performers in the field of historically-informed Baroque performance possessed of a collective, wicked sense of humor serves up the creative dichotomy that has already ...

Red Priest: Red Priest's Vivaldi: The 4 Seasons

by C. Michael Bailey
August 1, 2004

Red Priest is a group of very intelligent period instrument specialists with a red-hot wicked sense of humor.? After the release of the group's two previous recordings, Priest on the Run and Nightmare in Venice , the group went on tour with what was touted as their highly controversial interpretation of Vivaldi's first four concertos from his Il Cimento dell' Armenia e dell'invenzione (The trial of harmony and invention), opus 8. As a sub-collection, these concertos are known ...

Red Priest: Priest on the Run

by C. Michael Bailey
October 10, 2003

Classical Music With Sense Of Humor Part I

The peculiar name adopted by this quartet of very talented baroque performance specialists derives from the moniker assigned the famous Italian Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi (of The Four Seasons fame) because of his flaming red hair. The repertoire was chosen with a wink and is loosely based on Vivaldi being run out of town, his music (and lifestyle) having fallen into disfavor with Venetian politicos ( ergo clerics).

From this ...

Red Priest: Nightmare in Venice

by C. Michael Bailey
May 16, 2003

Classical Music With A Sense Of Humor, Part II Priest on the Run was the Baroque quartet Red Priest's first recording for Dorian, released in the late 1990s. It was a thematic affair based on Antonio Vivaldi's flight from Venice at the time the composer was going abroad, assembled from the pens of the finest composers of the Baroque era. For the present compilation, Red Priest turns its attention to the spooky, the frightening, the ...

Red Priest: Priest on the Run

by C. Michael Bailey
May 13, 2003

Classical Music With Sense Of Humor, Part I

Red Priest, a quartet of very talented Baroque performance specialists, derives its name from the moniker assigned the famous Italian Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi (of Four Seasons fame) because of his flaming red hair. The repertoire was chosen with a wink and loosely based on Vivaldi being run out of town, his music (and lifestyle) having fallen into disfavor with Venetian politicos ( ergo clerics).

From this scaffolding Red Priest ...