Café Concerts
Café Concerts
WQXR Radio
Café Concert: New York Polyphony
8 minutes Posted Jul 26, 2012 at 4:00 am.
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VIDEO: New York Polyphony Perform Byrd and a modern lullaby

Making recordings of quiet, spiritual music from the 16th century isn't so easy in 21st-century New York. So to record its last album, "Endbeginning," the all-male vocal ensemble New York Polyphony traveled to a medieval church in rural Lanna, Sweden. There the noise floor – the technical term for background noise – was exactly zero. In New York City, it's around 40 decibels.