All of our most successful collaborations eventually move beyond a professional arrangement and into a genuine friendship (if they didn’t start that way to begin with!). We were lucky, then, to have flown Anna from London to Chicago to workshop Enigma at the Adler Planetarium in the…before-times. There is no technology available that can replicate the bond that develops between a composer and an ensemble when they have to brave downtown parking together, transition from awkward handshakes to meaningful hugs, or simply breathe the same air in a rehearsal.

Similarly, with the exception of a single, distanced/masked meet-up in an empty park, the four of us had not occupied the same space in over seven months by the time we began planning to rent a van to venture south and record Enigma inside a brawny stone church in Winchester, Virginia. Our road trips tend to spin into a menagerie of “What if…” discussions, love/hate playlists, and impromptu meetings, but primarily this trip became an opportunity to reconnect after months of appearing as head/shoulder combos over Zoom.

As you know, we prioritize inviting curious listeners into our process, so before alighting in the Hertz Spektral Wagon, we hosted an interactive open rehearsal online for our friends and fans.

Because of the impossibility of performing in-person before the recording session – a necessity for zeroing in on our interpretation of a piece before getting in front of the mics – this lively hour provided a much-needed dose of motivation and inspiration in the lead up to our journey south.

644 miles and several packages of Haribo Gummy Bears later, we steered our van into an impossibly long gravel drive under a sky uninterrupted by human illumination. Here we should pause to say that we had been apprised that our lodgings were unusual, but what we encountered was a prodigious estate…the kind that inspires you to instinctively shout, “Release the hounds!”

This narrative is meant to focus on the music, though, so let’s just leave it at 1) In the salon of this magnificent villa we discovered first-edition printings of, say, Rameau’s Treatise on Harmony (1722), 2) We became friendly with a literal war horse, and 3) We slept the sleep of the just in this quiet, idyllic landscape.

You may recall that Sono Luminus is the label on which we recorded our GRAMMY-nominated album, Serious Business. Returning to this retro-fitted church, with its dubious tuck pointing and sumptuous acoustic was a homecoming, but the real premium was working with the exceptional Duo of Dans: producer Dan Mercurio and engineer Dan Shores. These two have released some of the most stupefyingly gorgeous recordings we’ve ever heard, with 9 GRAMMY nominations and 1 win between them.

The mic tree is really something to behold.

The Dans record in 9.1 surround sound, and even if one doesn’t have such a system at home, the sheer breadth of the soundstage is more immense than anything you’ve likely ever heard. And this is a little inside-baseball, but producer Dan Mercurio has a magical ability to let you know when you’ve “got it” and it’s time to move on to the next take. It cannot be overstated how empowering this is when you’re on the clock and adamant that your best material is in the can.

Speaking frankly, we trend towards the…optimistic…when it comes to estimating how much time we need to record. In this particular case, giving ourselves a day on the ground to rehearse and then two days to capture, we finally latched up our cases and pushed open the studio door for the final time with a certainty that we had laid down our very best version of Enigma.

For those of you reading that were hoping for a tight synopsis, our apologies. You’ll forgive us if we are a bit enthusiastic and loquacious about our experience in Virginia, but this interlude was restorative for the four of us.

– Doyle Armbrust