Passionate Pilgrim is an artful, rock-infused song cycle with Baroque instrumentation, co-written by composer-performer collective Oracle Hysterical (Elliot Cole, Majel Connery, and Doug and Brad Balliett). The recording, out on VIA Records on March 17, 2017, is a collaboration between Oracle Hysterical and Juilliard-trained period ensemble New Vintage Baroque. Texts from the album are drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim, a poem cycle once attributed to “W. Shakespeare.” The collection was stripped of its stature when the Shakespearean parentage of all but two poems was revealed to be fake. Here this orphaned cycle enjoys new pride of place, reimagined as a mashup of tuneful chamber-pop.
