Gregg Gillis can sure play the fuck out of a laptop.”

One would be hard pressed to find something that has influenced Western civilization more than Christianity. Even in the age of Britney and Facebook, the figure of Christ — cornerstone to the faith — is considered divine by a significant fraction of mankind. Debates stirred by discussion about the historical Jesus make headlines periodically, be they triggered by the serious study of artifacts like the shroud of Turin and the James Ossuary, or by storytelling from the likes of Martin Scorsese and Dan Brown.

Boston choral ensemble Cantata Singers is preparing for its 2009–2010 season featuring works by Heinrich Schuetz, J.S. Bach, Hugo Distler and Arnold Schoenberg opening on Friday, November 6 at Jordan Hall. The Tech interviewed conductor David Hoose about the upcoming program and season. More information about this performance and the Cantata Singers Ensemble can be found at http://cantatasingers.org/

Forcing me to squirm and yelp and half-cover my eyes in incredulity, the STREB company dancers returned to Boston with a bang last weekend. Considered neither modern nor contemporary dance, but more along the lines of circus, extreme sports, and Hollywood stunt-work, STREB dancers wowed me with their petrifying feats of body contortion and athleticism.

I’m biased, of course: Despite being part of the Western canon, the music of the Renaissance somehow remains consistently foreign. It’s all there, the underpinnings that still guide sophisticated music even today — ideas on meter, or rhythm, rules guiding the structure of melodic lines, conceptions of how voices should interact with one another all exist in this fifteenth-century world, but somehow, to hear it is mysterious. Whereas concepts of thematic development, tonal resolution or structure seem to be at the center of the majority of works of the Western canon, the engine at the center of music from the Renaissance is somehow more elusive.