City University London presents the world-renowned vocal ensemble Cappella Romana, directed by Reader in Music Dr Alexander Lingas, in a one-night-only performance of ‘Cyprus: Between Greek East and Latin West’.  This concert takes place prior to engagements in the Festival de Wallonie in St-Hubert and Namur (Belgium) and the Utrecht Early Music Festival (Netherlands). The ensemble has been presented multiple times at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Center, and Stanford Live at Stanford University. UK engagements have included St Bartholomew-the-Great and St Paul’s Cathedral London.

This programme explores the repertoires of Byzantine and Latin sacred music that coexisted on the island of Cyprus in the late Middle Ages. The Crusades brought to Cyprus French kings, whose imported musical traditions flourished alongside those of their Greek subjects. The vibrancy of their Mediterranean soundscape is captured in this programme, which traverses the diverse range of sacred music heard during the fifteenth century in Nicosia’s Orthodox and Catholic cathedrals: Greek and Latin hymns celebrating the divine patronage of St Hilarion of Gaza, lavish prayers for French royalty set to Ars Nova polyphony from the codex Torino J.II.9, and virtuosic Byzantine chants by Constantinopolitan and Cypriot composers.