Cappella Romana

The professional vocal ensemble Cappella Romana and its recording label Cappella Records are dedicated to combining passion with scholarship in its exploration of the musical traditions of the Christian East and West, with emphasis on early and contemporary music. Its performances “like jeweled light flooding the space” (Los Angeles Times), Cappella Romana is known especially for its presentations and recordings of medieval Byzantine chant, Greek and Russian Orthodox choral works, and other sacred music that expresses the historic traditions of a unified Christian inheritance.

Founded in 1991, Cappella Romana has a special commitment to mastering the Slavic and Byzantine musical repertories in their original languages, thereby making accessible to the general public two great musical traditions that are little known in the West. Critics have consistently praised Cappella Romana for its unusual and innovative programming, including numerous world and American premieres. The ensemble has presented annual concert series in Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, and San Francisco, California, in addition to touring nationally and internationally, most recently to the Utrecht Early Music Festival, Netherlands, the largest early music festival in the world, where it performed its Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia program before a sold-out house. Other recent appearances abroad have included venues in Hungary, Serbia, Germany, Belgium, Greece, and the UK. This is Cappella Romana's third appearance at the Iași Byzantine Music Festival.
 

Cappella Records has released more than 25 recordings, including its chart-topping Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia (44 weeks on Billboard), Hymns of Kassianí, featuring the earliest music in the world we have by a female composer, and recently A Ukrainian Wedding, folk songs and sacred works sung by an all-female ensemble led by Nadia Tarnawsky and Ukrainian War Requiem by Benedict Sheehan, sung by the Axios Men’s Ensemble and Pro Coro Canada, Edmonton.

Alexander Lingas (music director & founder)

Alexander Lingas, Music Director and founder of Cappella Romana, is Professor of Music at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies (Cambridge, UK), and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Performing Arts at City St. George’s, University of London. Having hosted him as the Spring 2023 Artist in Residence, St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Yonkers, New York subsequently appointed him Professor of Music and Associate Director of its Institute of Sacred Arts. For the Fall Term of 2024, Alexander Lingas was based at UCLA as Visiting Professor in the Department of Music and Artist in Residence of Gefyra, a collaboration of the UCLA Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture and the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. 

Dr. Lingas completed his doctorate on Sunday matins in the rite of Hagia Sophiaat the University of British Columbia and then, with the support of a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship, moved to Oxfordshire to study theology with Metropolitan Kallistos Ware. From 1997 to 2021 he was a Fellow of the University of Oxford’s European Humanities Research Centre. His present work embraces not only historical study but also ethnography and performance. His awards include Fulbright and Onassis grants for musical studies in Greece with cantor Lycourgos Angelopoulos, the British Academy’s Thank-Offering to Britain Fellowship, research leave supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and the St. Romanos the Melodist medallion of the National Forum for Greek Orthodox Church Musicians (USA). In 2018 His All Holiness, Bartholomew I, Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch, bestowed on him the title of Archon Mousikodidáskalos.In 2023 he formed and directed the Byzantine Chant Ensemble for the Coronation of Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla.