Looking forward muchly to this for my ideal Xmas listening:

MARE NOSTRUM

Been listening back to the early recordings, even the first Hesperion XX album, back 1976, which in typical style juxtaposed music of Jewish and Christian Spain. I've still got an album of Cantigas de Santa Maria on Deutsch Harmonia Mundi on which Montserrat sings with Thomas Binkley's Studio der Frühen Musik, featuring the late Jason Paras, one of the promising violists & fiddlers of his generation, who died tragically young shortly after. Of those early recordings the Llibre Vermell stands out (still available last time I looked in HMV!) and the Troubairitz album, which features her sister Pilar, another of my life-long musical loves.