Otto Hashmi reclaims Bassano's ricercate on CD and cassette-only collaborative project

The latest recording from recorder player and solo artist Otto Hashmi is released today, Friday 21 August.

eight ricercate after giovanni bassano, a collaborative reinterpretation of the 16th-century Venetian composer Giovanni Bassano's landmark compositions for a solo treble instrument, is available on CD and cassette only. The project took shape, Hashmi says, after a curious encounter with modern streaming culture reframed his relationship to the historical repertoire he had spent years getting to know: 'I was initially inspired to make this project after noticing a fascinating phenomenon – I received an email alerting me to a new album on a streaming service by Josquin des Prez. The absurdity that a composer from over 500 years ago – who most likely could never have fathomed the idea of modern records and streaming – would be dropping a new release online really struck me.'

He explains, 'The recording asks the question, "What does it mean to perform historical music in our current times?" when playing historical repertoire can become overshadowed with fitting into a culture and meeting an expectation, rather than developing a personal relationship to the music, particularly for younger musicians.

'The way the release format itself colours our perception of the historical work sent me down a rabbit hole, and opened this journey of 21st-century reclamation, recontextualisation, and dialogue between historical and contemporary of a work which I had got to know so well.'

To push that dialogue further, Hashmi enlisted composers with strong ties to Early Music: Jocelyn Campbell (Riot Ensemble, Manchester Collective, Royal Northern Sinfonia), Leo Chadburn (The Flautadors, EXAUDI), and Ozgur Kaya (serpentine.iii, nonclassical). Their collaboration takes Bassano's concept of reclamation to an extreme, forging new narratives through the composer's historical studies while foregrounding the communicative beauty of his melodic line, which the project argues still speaks to listeners almost 500 years on.

Hashmi has enjoyed exploring the liminal zone between ancient and modern music: 'Art, like currency, will inflate and deflate with the winds of culture. It will be pegged to social contexts that someone even a hundred years ago couldn’t dream of. Imagine explaining “trending tiktok audio” to Schoenberg.'

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^{Otto Hashmi and Leo Chadburn perform SESTA after Giovanni Bassano}

In a deliberate break from streaming-led album releases, eight ricercate after giovanni bassano will only be available to purchase on CD or cassette, a choice intended to return ownership of the music to listeners and reject 'the pull of virality in the modern music release process'. A double A-side single pairing Sesta (with Leo Chadburn) and Settima (with Ozgur Kaya), however, is now available on all major streaming platforms.

Otto Hashmi's new album eight ricercate after giovanni bassano is available to purchase today via his website. Read the full track-by-track feature, including 30-second excerpts of each track, at prxludes.net.