Le Triomphe de L'Amour: Music and Dance from the Court of Louis XIV with Ken Pierce Baroque Dancers. A glittering evening that combines exquisite baroque dance sets in period dress with music by the great composers of the French court, including Marin Marais, François Couperin, and Jean-Baptiste Lully, composer and dance master to the King. The performers sample popular ballroom dances and theatrical choreographies of the period, portraying diverse characters, from the comic harlequin to the pastoral shepherds and shepherdesses to the noble figure of Apollo. Read about Ken Pierce.
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Measure for Measure: The Music of Shakespeare's Plays A rare and compelling view of the music Shakespeare's audiences would have heard, including music by the leading composers of his day (Thomas Morley, Robert Johnson, John Dowland, others) and anonymous tunes of the period. Music from
As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Henry V, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and other plays. Performed on renaissance flutes, viola da gamba and renaissance lute, with vocalist Burcu Gulec. |
Music from Thomas Gainsborough's Circle Dazzling rococo selections celebrating the great English painter's passion for music. Works by leading European composers who were colleagues of Gainsborough in 18th century London: Carl Friedrich Abel (the last great viola da gamba virtuoso), Italian violinist Felice de Giardini, lutenist and harpsichordist Rudolf Straube (a favorite student of J. S. Bach), oboist Johann Christian Fischer, who eloped with Gainsborough's oldest daughter, and African composer Ignatius Sancho. (All of the composers sat for portraits by Gainsborough.) The concert features the seldom-heard the English guitar with baroque flute, viola da gamba, and baroque lute.
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Courtly Pastorales - Music from the Court and Countryside of the French Baroque with internationally renowned soprano Anne Azéma. Joyful and passionate excerpts from operas by Jean-Baptiste Lully and Marin Marais, as well as the dramatic cantata "Ariane et Bacchus" by Michel Pignolet de Montéclair and lively instrumental music by François Couperin, Anthoine Carré and Robert de Visée. Grammophone called Azéma “A most accomplished singer...She manages to express, both in song and in words, intense passion, delight, and longing in delicate detail. A breath of fresh air," while De Volkskrant, Amsterdam praised her as “...the equal in her field of Callas or Fischer-Dieskau." |