Thursday, May 24, 2012

Berkeley (Early Music) Festival

I'm reminded that the Berkeley Festival & Exhibition is coming in a couple of weeks. I got the press release with the schedule in early April, which is sadly late for concerts during an already-crowded month. This year seems to be pretty heavy on the 18th c. but also features a couple of programs by the great Jordi Savall. I had originally planned to be at Ojai that week, but Nixon in China, a paid review, called to me; I also have a ticket to see the Philly, and on June 3 I expect to hearing the Frank Martin Mass for Double Choir. Busy week!

Full schedule is after the jump.

WHAT:  Nicholas McGegan & Dominque Labelle in Recital: Beethoven Songs and Haydn Trios
WHEN:  Sunday, June 3, at 8:00 p.m.                  
WHERE:  First Congregational Church @ 2345 Channing Way, Berkeley
                                               
Program: Nicholas McGegan and soprano Dominique Labelle in an evening of spirited folksongs and melancholy airs, saved from obscurity by Ludwig van Beethoven’s superb arrangements.  The program will also include delightful piano trios by Joseph Haydn.

Nicholas McGegan, fortepiano
Dominique Labelle, soprano
Phoebe Carrai, violoncello
Elizabeth Blumenstock, violin

Tickets: $25 - $60.  For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit bfx.berkeley.edu/ or call the Ticket Office at 510-642-9988.

Presented by Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.
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WHAT:  University of California at Berkeley Baroque Ensemble perform An Exploration of Baroque Music Across Europe
WHEN:  Wednesday, June 6, at 11:00 a.m.
WHERE:  St. Mark’s Episcopal Church @ 2300 Bancroft Way, Berkeley

Program: One in a series of six one-hour daytime concerts by university and conservatory early music ensembles. The UC Berkeley program will include music for cello by Domenico Gabrielli, music for recorder by Georg Philipp Telemann and George Frideric Handel, soprano arias from 17th-century Italian and French operas and cantatas, and music for harpsichord by Girolamo Frescobaldi, Johann Jacob Froberger, and Louis Couperin.

Tickets: Donation based, available at the door (no advanced sales).
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WHAT:  San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Baroque Ensemble perform From Renaissance to Baroque
WHEN:  Wednesday, June 6, 2:30 p.m.
WHERE:  St. Mark’s Episcopal Church @ 2300 Bancroft Way, Berkeley

Program: One in a series of six one-hour daytime concerts by university and conservatory early music ensembles. The SF Conservatory program will include music for viols and voice by Byrd, Morley, Holborne, and Gibbons, as well as virtuoso chamber music by Castello, Marini and Vivaldi.

Tickets: Donation based, available at the door (no advanced sales).

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WHAT:  Chanticleer Louis A. Botto (LAB) Choir performs Music of New Spain: Exploring California’s Missions and Mexico’s Cathedrals
WHEN:  Wednesday, June 6, at 5:00 p.m.
WHERE:  St. Mark’s Episcopal Church @ 2300 Bancroft Way, Berkeley

Program: A concert drawn from the rich musical legacy of colonial Mexico and Alta California. The archives of our cathedrals and missions contain troves of great and sometimes unique music from the 16th through the early 19th centuries, from refined Spanish polyphony to rollicking villancicos, with many excellent works written in the New World.

Tickets: $15.00.  For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit bfx.berkeley.edu/ or call the Ticket Office at 510-642-9988.

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WHAT:  Musica Pacifica performs 300 Years On: A Dance Collection from the Reign of Louis XIV
WHEN:  Wednesday, June 6, at 8:00 p.m.
WHERE:  First Congregational Church @ 2345 Channing Way, Berkeley

Program:  Instrumentalists of Musica Pacifica and dancers led by Baroque dance specialist Linda Tomko join forces to bring to the stage choreographies and their music from the 1712/13 Nouveau Recüeil de Dance de Bal et celle de Ballet. This dazzling collection is remarkable for the sheer number of dances it makes available and the range of music it offers, performed in musical theatre works, such as Campra's Les Fêtes Vénitiennes, Marais' Sémélée, and Destouches' Issé, and at court during the final decades of Louis XIV’s reign. Celebrating the 300th anniversary of the Nouveau Recüeil, the program showcases instrumental music of other contemporary French Baroque composers and one of Telemann's delightful "Paris" Quartets.

Judith Linsenberg, recorder
Elizabeth Blumenstock, violin
Debra Nagy, oboe
Josh Lee, viola da gamba
Charles Sherman, harpsichord
John Loose, percussion
Linda Tomko, dance
Ken Pierce, dance
Olsi Gjeci, dance
Jennifer Thorp, dance

Tickets: $25 - $45.  For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit bfx.berkeley.edu/ or call the Ticket Office at 510-642-9988.

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WHAT:  University of North Texas Collegium Singers perform Victoria Requiem
WHEN:  Thursday, June 7, at 11:00 a.m.
WHERE:  St. Mark’s Episcopal Church @ 2300 Bancroft Way, Berkeley

Program: One in a series of six one-hour daytime concerts by university and conservatory early music ensembles. The UNT program will feature the Requiem Mass of Tomas Luis de Victoria, published in 1605.  In common with other settings of the time, Victoria did not confine his setting to the Mass alone, but also included items from the Office of the Dead and the Great Absolution.  The four-part Taedet animam meam comes from the Offices of Lauds and Matins.  The setting of the Mass is scored for six-part choir.

Tickets: Donation based, available at the door (no advanced sales).

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WHAT:  Stanford University Baroque Ensemble performs Alessandro Scarlatti and his circle: cantatas and serenatas
WHEN:  Thursday, June 7, at 2:30 p.m.
WHERE:  St. Mark’s Episcopal Church @ 2300 Bancroft Way, Berkeley

Program: One in a series of six one-hour daytime concerts by university and conservatory early music ensembles.  The Stanford program includes works newly edited by the students from primary sources (manuscripts in Munich, Montecassino, and Berkeley). Cantatas by Alessandro Scarlatti; Serenata by Severo de Luca; duet by Innocenzo Fede.

Tickets: Donation based, available at the door (no advanced sales).

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WHAT:  Agave Baroque performs The Otherwordly Fiddler: the sacred and the profane meet at Heinrich Biber’s musical table
WHEN:  Thursday, June 7, at 5:00 p.m.
WHERE:  St. Mark’s Episcopal Church @ 2300 Bancroft Way, Berkeley
                                               
Program:  Perhaps the greatest violin virtuoso of the 17th century, Bohemian fiddler Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber crafted his compositions in a style that might be described as a dinner party of disparate sound worlds.  His scrumptious Mensa Sonora, seu Musica instrumentalis is “civilized” Biber, for mealtime and after dinner entertainment. His virtuosic Harmonia artificioso-ariosa employs a rustic folk-fiddle style and demands alternate tunings and techniques.  Agave Baroque performs selections from these fascinating collections, as well as works that fearlessly explore the nexus of sacred and profane: Biber’s 1682 masterpiece Fidicinium sacro-profanum, and Johann Heinrich Schmelzer’s stunning Sacro-profanus concentus musicus.

Aaron Westman, violin and viola
Shirley Hunt, viola da gamba, violoncello
Kevin Cooper, baroque guitar
JungHae Kim, harpsichord, organ
David Wilson, violin
Josh Lee, viola da gamba, violone
Daniel Zuluaga, theorbo

Tickets: $28.  For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit bfx.berkeley.edu/ or call the Ticket Office at 510-642-9988.

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WHAT:  Blue Heron performs Song of Songs/Songs of Love
WHEN:  Thursday, June 7, at 8:00 p.m.
WHERE:  First Congregational Church @ 2345 Channing Way, Berkeley

Program: The poem known as the “Song of Songs” was written down in the 3rd century BCE and was admitted to the canon of Hebrew Scripture long after the Torah and the Prophets, probably towards the end of the first century CE.  The poem is plainly about earthly love, but its sensuous language and imagery have been traditionally interpreted by Jewish and Christian religious exegetes as allegory.  This program sets the sensuous verses of “Song of Songs” (translated from the original Hebrew into Latin by St. Jerome) beside love songs in Spanish, inviting the listener to consider the many meanings and varieties of love and the complex relationship of the divine and the human, now and in the past. Music from 16th-century Spain by Francisco Guerrero, Tomás Luis de Victoria, Sebastián de Vivanco, Juan Vásquez, Nicolas Gombert, and others.

Tickets: $25 - $45.  For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit bfx.berkeley.edu/ or call the Ticket Office at 510-642-9988.

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WHAT:  Case Western Reserve University Baroque Ensemble and Collegium Musicum perform Milk and Honey: Sumptuous Music of the Seventeenth Century
WHEN:  Friday, June 8, at 11:00 a.m.
WHERE:  St. Mark’s Episcopal Church @ 2300 Bancroft Way, Berkeley

Program: One in a series of six one-hour daytime concerts by university and conservatory early music ensembles. The Case Collegium and Baroque Ensemble present sensuous love songs, erotic sacred texts and twisted lullabies full of quixotic blends of sweetness, anxiety, optimism, and even violence—what could be more enticing? Both well-known and newly rediscovered works for instruments and voices from the seventeenth century by Tarquinio Merula, Heinrich Biber, Giovanni Sances, Claudio Monteverdi, and more.

Tickets:  Donation based, available at the door (no advanced sales).

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WHAT:  University of Southern California Thornton Baroque Sinfonia performs Ars longa, vita brevis or Only the Good Die Young: Music from the Thirty Years War
WHEN:  Friday, June 8, at 2:30 p.m.
WHERE:  St. Mark’s Episcopal Church @ 2300 Bancroft Way, Berkeley

Program: One in a series of six one-hour daytime concerts by university and conservatory early music ensembles.  The USC program features works by composers affected by the disastrous circumstances surrounding the Thirty Years War.  It includes compositions by Johannes Vierdanck, Giovanni Antonio Rigatti, and Dario Castello, whose lives were cut short by fever during the mid-seventeenth century.  Performers include eight singers, continuo, three violins and winds.  As interludes, instruments will perform improvisations on grounds in seventeenth-century style.

Tickets: Donation based, available at the door (no advanced sales).
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WHAT:  The New Esterházy Quartet performs Haydn in America – The Moravian Heritage
WHEN:  Friday, June 8, at 5:00 p.m.
WHERE:  St. Mark’s Episcopal Church @ 2300 Bancroft Way, Berkeley

Program: The Moravian Brotherhood, persecuted descendants of 15th-century Czech religious dissidents, brought a rich musical culture to pre-Revolutionary America. The Moravian Music Foundation archive in Bethlehem and Winston-Salem catalogue thousands of musical works, for use in religious services and also for playing at home and in the Collegia Musica that were part of the settlements’ social life into the 19th century. Some of this music was composed by Moravian musicians themselves and some collected or copied from European sources. This program highlights Haydn Quartets performed from copies of handwritten parts or early editions brought by Moravian musicians to America in the 18th century. A talk and an exhibition on the history and influence of the Moravian communities in America accompany the concert.

Kati Kyme, violin
Lisa Weiss, violin
Anthony Martin, viola
William Skeen, cello

Tickets: $28.00.  For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit bfx.berkeley.edu/ or call the Ticket Office at 510-642-9988.
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WHAT:  American Bach Soloists performs A Tribute to Laurette Goldberg
WHEN:  Friday, June 8, at 8:00 p.m.
WHERE:  First Congregational Church @ 2345 Channing Way, Berkeley

Program: An evening of works featuring J.S. Bach’s Trauerode: Laβ, Fürstin, laβ noch einen Strahl; a musical ode written at the request of the Leipzig University and dedicated to Christiane Eberhardine, Electress of Saxony and a personal friend of Bach himself. The concert also includes Bach’s most engaging double-chorus motets, Singet dem Herrn and Fürchte dich nicht; large-scale motets of this type were regularly composed to honor and memorialize the lives of significant and important individuals.

Tickets: $20.00 - $50.00. For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit bfx.berkeley.edu/ or call the Ticket Office at 510-642-9988.

Presented by American Bach Soloists.

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WHAT:  Voices of Music performs Roman Holiday
WHEN:  Saturday, June 9, at 5:00 p.m.
WHERE:  First Congregational Church @ 2345 Channing Way, Berkeley

Program: Voices of Music presents a dazzling program of Baroque concertos and Handel’s Roman masterpiece, the Gloria.  Each concerto highlights a different combination of instruments and players in a variety of affects, colors and virtuoso playing.

Hanneke van Proosdij, director, harpsichord, recorder
David Tayler, director, archlute
Laura Heimes, soprano
Carla Moore, Maxine Nemerovski and Sara Usher, baroque violins
David Daniel Bowes, Maria Caswell, and Katherine Kyme, baroque violin & viola
Elisabeth Reed, William Skeen and Tanya Tomkins, baroque cellos
Farley Pearce, violone
Katherine Heater, organ

Tickets: $23.00 - $36.00. For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit bfx.berkeley.edu/ or call the Ticket Office at 510-642-9988.

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WHAT:  Jordi Savall performs A Dialogue of Souls: Orient-Occident
WHEN:  Saturday, June 9, at 8:00 p.m.
WHERE:  First Congregational Church @ 2345 Channing Way, Berkeley

Program: A peerless musician and conductor as well as an impeccable scholar, Jordi Savall is a “performer of genius,” says The New Yorker.  He returns with a fascinating musical journey in time and space, devised on a dialogue of Arabo-Andalusian, Jewish, and Christian music from medieval Spain and around the Mediterranean. This program features music from ancient Spain and the Ottoman Empire, medieval Italy, Persian Afghanistan, and more.

Jordi Savall, rebec, bowed lyre and rebab
Dimitri Psonissantur
David Mayoral, percussion

Tickets: $60.00.  For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit bfx.berkeley.edu/ or call the Ticket Office at 510-642-9988.

Presented by CalPerformances.

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WHAT:  Jordi Savall performs A Dialogue of Souls: Istanbul
WHEN:  Sunday, June 10, at 3:00 p.m.
WHERE:  First Congregational Church @ 2345 Channing Way, Berkeley

Program: A peerless musician and conductor as well as an impeccable scholar, Jordi Savall is a “performer of genius,” says The New Yorker.  He returns with a fascinating musical journey in time and space, devised on a dialogue of Arabo-Andalusian, Jewish, and Christian music from medieval Spain and around the Mediterranean.  This program features Sephardic, Armenian, and Turkish music showcased in Moldavian prince Dimitrie Cantemir’s The Book of Science and Music, published in 1710 after he spent many years in Istanbul.

Jordi Savall, rebec, bowed lyre and rebab
Dimitri Psonissantur
David Mayoral, percussion

Tickets: $60.00.  For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit bfx.berkeley.edu/ or call the Ticket Office at 510-642-9988.

Presented by CalPerformances.

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WHAT:  Berkeley Festival Exhibition & Marketplace
WHEN:  Thursday, June  7, noon–6:00 p.m.; Friday, June 8, 10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.; and Saturday, June 9, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
WHERE:  First Congregational Church @ 2345 Channing Way, Berkeley

This much anticipated emporium will showcase a trove of handcrafted musical instruments, sheet music, accessories, recordings, books, and other publications new and rare.  In addition, festival attendees will enjoy a number of “mini-concert” demonstrations of instruments on display.

Tickets: Free

For more information: Contact Early Music America at 888.722.5288info@earlymusic.org; or earlymusic.org.

Sponsored by Early Music America.

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GENERAL TICKET INFORMATION
Tickets for the Berkeley Festival & Exhibition are on sale now at the Ticket Office at Zellerbach Hall.  Patrons who purchase tickets to three or more events in a single order may receive a 10% discount (available over the phone and at the box office only).  For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit bfx.berkeley.edu/ or call the Ticket Office at 510-642-9988.



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