The Monteverdi Trilogy? 2017 marked the 450th anniversary of the birth of Claudio Monteverdi one of the founders of opera and hailed in his day as 'the creator of modern music'. Monteverdi transformed vocal music beyond Renaissance polyphony into an entirely new genre that expressed powerful feelings and emotions within a gripping narrative. This set brings together Monteverdi's three surviving operas: the splendorous L'Orfeo and, from later in his life, Il ritorno

It is truly a peek into how some of his elaborate compositions may have begun

and Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon of Big Red Machine)

It is an album intended to be listened to in two sittings with a short break in the middle

which is where (and how) most of this album came to life

but the album was constructed alone in her Providence

In the 11 years since their Alligator debut

dramatic force in the other

when the group changed it's name to the Shadow Ring-the rest is history

This 77-track 4-CD set features most of the titles they recorded together during this period before they went their separate ways again

music legend and guitar master Carlos Santana delivers one of the most ambitious

the quartet paid proper homage to the buzzsaw sound of the Stockholm masters of yore

-Carefully remastered recordings for this edition from digital copies of original analog sources