Spring 2021 Season – Our 32nd Anniversary!
We’re excited to announce our Spring 2021 Virtual Concert Series. Music from the 16th century to the 21st, including 19th century Romantic music, fiddling, singing, and courtly entertainments; and a presentation about the baroque musical diaspora. Join us free and online!
All events will be online and free! No subscription necessary! Please note that we’ll be paying our artists their professional performance fees, and donations will be gratefully accepted. Check back here closer to each date or subscribe to our newsletter to find out how to access.
NYS Baroque Rising Artists: Berwick Fiddle Consort
March 5 at 7:30pm and March 7 at 4:00pm EST
“Ayont Yon Glen” : Berwick Fiddle Consort, strings & lute
The Berwick Fiddle Consort (BFC) is a folk-baroque ensemble made up of musicians who share a passion for both historical performance and fiddle traditions. Violinists Lydia Becker, Julia Connor, Sarah Douglass, and guest lutenist Sebastian Quintero will present traditional Scottish, Irish and Cape Breton music alongside Scots-inspired works in the classical style. Francesco Geminiani was an Italian musician who built successful careers in London and Edinburgh and who was interested enough in the Scottish folk tradition to write collections of pieces based on Scots songs. His “Airs made into Sonatas for Two Violins and a Bass” add baroque Italian chords and accompaniment lines to Scottish melodies, creating a new hybrid style. Some of our sets will feature this hybrid compositional style, while others will present folk tunes in a more traditional performance idiom.
Brahms From Oz
March 19 at 7:30pm and March 21 at 4:00pm EDT
Daniel Yeadon, cello & Neal Peres Da Costa, keyboards
Luscious Romantic works for cello and piano; Daniel Yeadon, cello and Neal Peres Da Costa, piano. The Sydney-based duo will draw on their extensive research to explore the intriguing performance practices of the nineteenth century – expressive portamenti, heavenly rubati and rippling arpeggiandi. Immerse yourself in the uniquely combined sounds of a beautiful antique cello by William Forster 11 and a replica of a 19thcentury Streicher piano.
Program: Brahms Cello Sonata in E minor, piano solos; Schumann Fantasiestucke op. 73; Bruch Canzone op. 55.
From a Hall of Mirrors
April 16 at 7:30pm and April 18 at 4:00pm EDT
Geoffrey Burgess, oboe & Leon Schelhase, harpsichord
Composers at the French court provided music not only for grand ceremony and opera but also private entertainment. Our program features music of a diversity of styles, with duets for oboe and harpsichord as well as harpsichord solos: from the character sketches of François Couperin’s pièces de clavecin, Boismortier’s playful gallantries, the compelling allure of Forqueray’s musical gestures, to the bravura of Jean-Féry Rebel’s virtuosic writing.
Exile and Connection
April 29 at 7:30pm and May 2 at 4:00pm EDT
Incantare, violins, sackbut & organ
Stories of Jewish Musicians and their Contemporaries in Early Modern Europe
Musicians and musicologists Liza Malamut and Rebecca Cypess, and Incantare
Following the expulsion of the Jewish population from the Iberian peninsula in the fifteenth century, Jewish musicians resettled in various regions throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia. Our story takes as its starting point the rich musical cultures fostered by Jews in early modern Italy and their points of contact with non-Jewish traditions. From there, we touch on the influences of Italian, German, and English music and Jewish culture, highlighting Jewish musicians, the non-Jewish composers they influenced, and composers who inspired innovations in Jewish composition.
NYS Baroque Rising Artists: The New Consort: O Stars, Conspiring Against Me
May 27 at 7:30pm and May 30 at 4:00pm EDT
The New Consort, singers
Why is it that women in art are so often the ones punished for love? O Stars, Conspiring Against Me is a meditation on women in myth, and how those stories continue to shape the portrayal of women in art to this day. The program is built around the North American digital premiere of The Turn, a piece by UK-based composer Ben Rowarth designed to be interspersed with, and thus recontextualize, Claudio Monteverdi’s Lamento d’Arianna, and is framed by works by some of Monteverdi’s female contemporaries asking, well, the same kinds of questions we are.
Fall 2020 Online Season
Dowland’s Grand Tour
September 25 at 7:30pm and September 27 at 4:00pm EDT
Paul O’Dette, lute
Our regional world-renowned lutenist performs music of English lutenist John Dowland, as well as the music he encountered on his travels around Europe in the early 17th century.
Thorn of the Honey Locust: A Conversation and Reading
October 16 at 7:30pm and October 18 at 4:00pm EDT
Geoffrey Burgess, oboist, musicologist, and now novelist, discusses his new novel, based on the life of Bach’s favorite oboe player, and reads us selections from this work in progress.
Beiliang Zhu Plays Bach
November 20 at 7:30pm and November 22 at 4:00pm EST
Beiliang Zhu, baroque cello
Another musical icon in our community, award-winning cellist Beiliang Zhu, plays an unusual all-Bach program which includes a Bach violin partita on 5-string cello and other virtuosic solos.
At the Court of the Sun King
December 11 at 7:30pm and December 13 at 4:00pm EST
Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, composer and musician
NYS Baroque Director Deborah Fox presents a multi-media presentation on the life and music of this trend-setting independent woman at the French royal court of Versailles.
