REVIEW: Saltwinds & Spice

ALKEMIE AND FREINDS ILLUMINATE MEDIEVAL MUSIC FROM THE CYPRIOT MANUSCRIPT

By: David Wolfson | November, 2025

“One of the chief intellectual pleasures of the program was hearing the connections drawn among pieces composed hundreds of years apart: the ornamentation styles, the use of drones, the sense of wistfulness and longing that pervades so much of the music.”

The early music ensemble Alkemie paired with Rose of the Compass members Nina Stern and Ara Dinkjian Friday night at All Saints Episcopal Church in Brooklyn to present a concert of Cyprian music.  

The program, titled “Saltwinds and Spice” and curated by Alkemie member Tracy Cowart, drew from the Cyprus Codex, one of the largest surviving collections of French music of the 15th century. Besides selections from the Codex, the music ranged throughout history to the present day. 

As detailed in the meticulously researched notes, medieval Cyprus was a confluence of cultures. Europeans had conquered the island in the midst of the Crusades; for much of the Medieval period, its rulers were considered the kings of Cyprus, Jerusalem and Armenia. It was an active trading hub, attracting merchants from Greece and the various city-states of Italy. Accordingly, the concert included music from Italy, Greece and Armenia as well as from the Cyprus Codex.

Medieval polyphony primarily consists of vocal lines, so arranging the music for a largely instrumental ensemble involves a great many choices. Those made by Alkemie were smart and engaging across the board. The varieties of instrumental and vocal colors were distributed to illuminate the structures of the pieces…