Broken Hearts & Madmen


Broken Hearts & Madmen is an album of pop music, World music and Latin American music recorded by the Juno Award-winning Canadian chamber music ensemble the Gryphon Trio and the Canadian singer Patricia O'Callaghan that was released by the Analekta label in September 2011.
Produced by the Toronto-based jazz musician Roberto Occhipinti, the album gained a four-star rating from the AllMusic website. It contains a combination of "dark" modern-day Anglo-Canadian folk and pop songs and mainly traditional Latin American folksongs sung by O'Callaghan.
The AllMusic reviewer James Manheim commented: "It's not easy in this eclectic age to juxtapose musical items that have never been in proximity before, but Canada's Gryphon Trio and soprano Patricia O'Callaghan manage to do so on this recording, which proclaims itself unlike any previous chamber music album … What's striking is how well the combination of rock-era English-language music and Latin song works." The WholeNote reviewer Dianne Wells described the arrangements on the album as "brilliant", the Gryphon Trio's playing as "superb and complex", and O'Callaghan's singing as "gorgeous" and her "expert facility with languages … remarkable".
A music video of the recording of "River Man" appears on the Gryphon Trio's and O'Callaghan's official websites. Broken Hearts & Madmen was produced with financial assistance from the Government of Quebec and the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage's Canada Music Fund.
WWW gryphontrio.com

Track listing

  1. "River Man"
  2. "Volver"
  3. "Cucurrucucú paloma"
  4. "Los Peces"
  5. "Pieces and Parts"
  6. "Estoy Sentado aquí"
  7. "La Foule"
  8. "Yo soy Maria"
  9. "The Gypsy's Wife"
  10. "Flor de la Canela"
  11. "La Confession"
  12. "I Want You"

Personnel

Musicians

  • Patricia O'Callaghan – vocals
  • Annalee Patipatanakoon – violin
  • Roman Borys – cello
  • Jamie Parker – piano

Recording personnel