The Ronda dos Quatro Caminhos, launches a new work dedicated to the traditional music of the Azores, with edition of Ocarina. It is the 14th record of Ronda's career, in the continuation of the last major publishing productions, "Terra de Abrigo" and "Tierra Alantre".
The album was composed and thought based on the Regional Orchestra Lira Açoriana, an orchestra of wind instruments and percussion, that integrates young musicians of the bands philharmonic of the several Islands and that participates in all the themes, all popular, with orchestrations of the musicians of the "Ronda dos Quatro Caminhos." In addition to the orchestra, several polyphonic choirs and popular and erudite musicians from all the Islands of the Archipelago participate in the album, with a total of more than 300 musicians and singers.
In this work, the regional music from the Azores is seen from the philharmonic bands that play a major role in the community life of the Azores, both for the musical formation they provide to the youth and for participation in religious and popular festivities. The same happens with religious and pagan choral harmony through the polyphonic choirs, usually linked to the liturgical celebration, but also with a classical and popular repertoire, having been given in this work, along with the orchestra, the relevance that in fact they have and certainly deserve. After the guitar of the land, with its variations and different ways of playing, certainly the most representative instrument of popular tradition, participates in its own right on this record.
For the musicians from Ronda, Mário Peniche, Pedro Fragoso, António Prata, Carlos Barata, João Oliveira and Pedro Pitta Groz, the major problem was "in relation to the various groups and formations of popular dances and songs, major guardians of the popular songbook, singers of various styles and popular songs, instrument players also relevant in traditional music, such as the violin, mandolin, guitar, etc., which people and groups invite, in a land of brilliant musicians and instrumentalists? Already on the repertoire, how to choose a dozen songs in a land where you can breathe popular music and with a traditional songbook so vast and varied, the choice was thus, how surely it could have been a different dozen and another and another and how many records would have to be made?".
