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Go to Old Music News Archive Home Old Music News Volume 26, Number 2 February 2003 A STRING OF PEARLS All of the musicians set to perform on the Center’s Baroque concert March 8 have been heard as part of Musick’s Company before, but not all together at the same time. This quintet represents both a reunion and the birth of a new ensemble. Joining Musick’s Company regulars Hunter Hensley and Donna Boyd will be recorderist Deborah Isenstadt, violinist Zachary Brock and viola da gambist Craig Trompeter. Ms. Isenstadt, who performed with Musick’s Company from 1997-2002, now resides in New Haven, Connecticut. She will be featured on a most engaging J.S.Bach sonata for recorder and harpsichord (BWV 1030), which she played in 2000 with Ms. Boyd at the keyboard. Both are very much looking forward to the addition of Mr. Trompeter on continuo for this “encore” performance. Mr. Brock has appeared in several Center Christmas concerts including the 15th, 20th & 25th Anniversary occasions (you’d think he was old). He will join with Ms. Isenstadt and the Boyd-Trompeter continuo in a triosonata by Johann Joachim Quantz. His featured performance will be a flamboyant violin sonata by the Bohemian violinist Heinrich Ignaz Biber, who was hailed in his day as “the formidable virtuoso.” Mr. Brock, a bohemian fiddler in his own right (who specializes in the improvisatory genres of jazz and baroque), is looking forward to the challenge of Biber’s Sonata VI, which thrives in the hands of a skilled, inventive extemporizer. Center concert-goers will have to go back to the 1994-95 season to recall the powerful presence of gambist extraordinare Craig Trompeter on our programs. As a graduate student in the UK School of Music, he was a welcome addition to Musick’s Company that year and even helped out with the MUSICA kids. Following his post-UK move to Chicago, Mr. Trompeter has blossomed as an early music & baroque performer. He has appeared with the highly respected Newberry Consort, as well as the Chicago Baroque Ensemble. He is the founding director of a vocal/instrumental ensemble known as Urban Baroque, and a founding member of Second City Musick, a viola da gamba trio. Additional guest appearances have been made in Milwaukee & Madison, Wisconsin and Cincinnati & Oberlin, Ohio. We want to warmly welcome Craig back to Kentucky! An added bonus to the March program will be his performance of Telemann’s Sonata for unaccompanied viola da gamba. Tenor Hunter Hensley needs no introduction to recent Center audiences; he will team with Ms. Isenstadt to perform four arias from the Telemann cantata literature (a favorite repertoire when these two get together), accompanied by the Trompeter-Boyd continuo duo. Rounding out the program, he will sing a group of arias by Francesco Cavalli, one of the premier composers of early Italian opera. “A String of Pearls” is being presented Saturday, March 8 at 8pm. Again, we are most pleased that the performance will be at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church (2025 Bellefonte Rd). Tickets remain priced at $10 ($8/ seniors & $5/students). The program is printed below. Quantz: Triosonata in C major for recorder, violin & continuo MUSICOLOGIST RON PEN REMARKS ON THE 25th ANNIVERSARY SEASON OF THE CENTER FOR OLD MUSIC At first blush it might appear somewhat odd that the Director of the John Jacob Niles Center for American Music at the University of Kentucky would seek to laud the activities of a music organization whose avowed purpose seems antithetical to an American Music Center. Rather than nurturing “new music in the new world,” Donna Boyd and company seek to celebrate the “imported” old music of Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque times in our new country, America. However, I view the wondrous activities of this exciting musical company as absolutely complementary to the mission of the American Music Center. The vigor expressed in the Center for Old Music’s most recent “Handefull of Christmas Delights” proved to be exactly the right tonic for our land in these times. Musick’s Company’s democratic mix of secular and sacred, high art and vernacular, is richly redolent of the American experience. Just as our national history embraces a diverse mix of folk, popular, and high art cultures from many ethnic origins, so did the Center’s annual Christmas concert present an eclectic medley that drew upon a whole world of sound. A serene sixteenth-century motet was juxtaposed next to a rowdy English wassail, and the heavenly strains of Bach for harpsichord and violin floated in counterpoint to an Appalachian dance tune for fiddle and banjo. In a culture that is all-too-dominated by the blandness of generic popular culture, the vibrancy of this music sparkled with vitality. There is a freshness that makes this old music seem very new. As we celebrate the 25th anniversary season of the Center for Old Music in the New World, it is fitting that we reflect on the critical role this collection of harpsichordists, recorder players, lutenists, singers, and viol players has played in the service of our community. Their music has informed us who we are by reminding us of who we once were. By reinterpreting the past and making the sounds of our history come alive, we are all reinvented anew. What a valuable perspective to realize that our ancient ancestors and their dustymusty past actually experienced the same joys and sorrows, fears and anxieties, griefs, and solaces. They gave voice to their times in an echo that resonates reassuringly in our twenty-first century through the artistry of Musick’s Company. Lexington is indeed fortunate to possess the services of such a remarkable ensemble. There are precious few cities across the country that can boast such an accomplished early music scene. As a musicologist, I am fully cognizant of the incredible investment of time and energy spent in rigorous manuscript research, problems of performance practice, imaginative programming, and pragmatic logistics of publicity, fundraising, etc. that is necessary to finally bring a concert to the stage. I am grateful to the Center for offering this gift to our community, and I wish them many, many more years of creative life in our town. Dr. Ron Pen is the founding Director of the John Jacob Niles Center for American Music and a professor of Music at UK. RECORDER NOTES Loren and Dorothy Tice have generously donated a considerable collection of their recorder music to the Center for Old Music library. Such a gift is always greatly appreciated and well used by recorder players, from beginning students to accomplished ensembles. Thank you, Professor Tice! ....Our friend Freddy Moore of Fred Moore Music Co. has recently organized an in-store recorder center. Stop in and talk affordable instruments and let him know what sort of recorder music you’d like to see him stock; the store is located at 443 So. Ashland in Chevy Chase. More info on this in our next issue.... ....Did you know?...March 8 (the day of our next concert) is “National Play-the-Recorder Day?”
OLD MUSIC NEWS is published by 25th Anniversary Season Poster art and calligraphy by Karin Karnezos, 2003
Zachary Brock Deborah Isenstadt March 8, 2003 |
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