This delightful album is a fascinating development of the musical areas opened up by Jan Garbarek's Officium, which featured the latter's improvised responses to medieval church music sung by the Hilliard Ensemble. Extempore is a more adventurous collaboration between Houseplants, a quartet of sophisticated jazz musicians from the dynamic new generation which emerged in the Eighties, and Orlando, an award-winning early music vocal quartet. The two groups interact more freely and with greater variety than Garbarek and the Hilliards, but without losing the haunting resonances of plainchant or other medieval church music.

Plainchant meets Eastern rhythms and modern jazz harmony ... beautiful and vibrant