“Here’s a fact that might intrigue you: The year 2313 is as far in the future from us as the year 1713 is in the past! In many ways it is equally as difficult
to imagine the state of music in both those far off worlds. Despite this, the oboe class will work on the challenging task of appreciating the unique qualities of music and technique that must have existed so long ago. We will try to discover in the old notational practices clues to the rhetorical/poetical nature of Baroque music. Also, the age-old goal of making good reeds will be revisited with a focus on the mechanical principles involved.”
Sand Dalton
Archives for category: Workshops
“The SFEMS Baroque workshop provides a supportive, non-competitive learning environment for professional and amateur musicians who are seriously interested in learning about Baroque style, and honing their technical skills. The caliber of the faculty has been and continues to be first-rate.
Highlights of the week are Concerto Night and the faculty concert. We offer a positive alternative to more competitive programs aimed at emerging young professionals, while offering our participants the highest possible quality of instruction.”
–Mary Springfels
Adam Gilbert –Performer, Educator, Visionary
We are thrilled that Adam Gilbert has joined our Baroque workshop faculty. He is a performer and educator of extraordinary talent. His vision of what will be offered at this year’s workshop is inspiring.
“This is my first time at SFEMS baroque workshop, and I imagine we will have a great time exploring solo and ensemble 
repertory through performance, master class sessions, and yes, a bit of improvisation. My specialty is exploring relationships between the craft of improvisation and composition, and I believe that what we tend to think of as “elusive” creativity is really little more than a series of easy-to-learn craft and magic tricks.
Everybody is naturally musical, and there is a bag of technical magic tricks that foster creativity more than just telling someone how something should be played. The recorder can range sweet and simple to subtle and complex. As a teacher, I like to help players explore their place within that continuum and provide technical tools for expressing their own creativity.
Improvising and playing over ground bass chord progressions offers some of the most fertile ground for exploring the range of the instrument, from the simplest four-note melodies to the most extreme virtuosity, accommodating everyone from the timid to the brave. These progressions (chaconnes, passamezzos, morescas, canarios, and passacaglias) lie at the heart of the baroque compositions of the Hapsburg Court. By learning the grounds, melodic and rhythmic building blocks of diminution, and baroque rhetorical conventions, one will better appreciate the craft of improvising composers. Don’t worry, we will play composed music, but with one eye and ear open to how we can not only play the music of the Baroque masters, but even (within our comfort zone!) re-create their own compositional process.”
SFEMS is proud to present the John Prescott summer lecture series in support of the children’s Music Discovery Workshop.
Alcina and Ruggiero: Sorceress and Knight
Well…as we know great knights are always striving. Striving for something great like the love of a princess.
In this story our hero the knight Ruggiero, loves the princess Bradamante and plans to marry her but there is trouble. She is trapped in a tower. No problem, Ruggiero saves her, but out of nowhere comes a magical hippogriff –shaped like a horse but with the head, wings and claws of an eagle– and carries him away to an enchanted isle in the middle of the ocean, a magical isle where nothing is what it seems to be. The plants, the rocks, even the wild animals on this island are all former knights who have been trapped in spells cast by the sorceress Alcina. 
Bradamante, however, is no ordinary princess. She is a strong willed fighter, who never gives up, and she is not happy to learn that her Ruggiero has disappeared. So Bradamante puts on a suit of armor –nothing too girlish for this princess– and sets out, with the help of the old teacher Melisso, to find her guy and she does, but this is only the beginning. Ruggiero, when Bradamante finds him, is already in love with the sorceress Alcina and remembers nothing about Bradamante who now looks like any other knight in armor.
Fortunately the princess Bradamante and Melisso have a magic ring that protects them from Alcina’s magic and allows them to see the isle for what it really is –a desert island. All of this is confusing, nothing is what it seems and we –just like Ruggiero and all of the other spell bound knights– can only hope that someone will figure out what is really going on and rescue everyone.
Our SFEMS Music Discovery Workshop performance of this fantastical tale is a spoken play accompanied by songs, dances, and even a duel in Baroque style. The music is a pastiche from not one but two Alcina operas – by George Frederick Handel in early-18th century England and by the 17th century Italian composer Francesca Caccini – mixed with singable English choruses from other Handel works.
Director Shulamit Kleinerman draws on her long experience with Seattle Historical Arts for Kids presenting masterworks of early music, dance, and drama that put young people at center stage. Discover just how engaging these colorful early arts can be.
The SFEMS Medieval & Renaissance Collegium!
Tom Zajac, director of the SFEMS Medieval & Renaissance Workshop at Sonoma State University returns to the Bay Area to direct our annual day-long music workshop. The event is a fund-raiser for scholarships to the summer workshop which will take place from June 23-29 this year. The Med/Ren Collegium is a favorite event for early music enthusiasts to enjoy the pleasures of a large mixed ensemble and unusual repertoire. This year Tom has created a program filled with musical curiosities from the Renaissance. Viols and other strings, recorders, flutes, lutes, harps, dulcians, sackbuts, cornetts and all manner “soft” early instruments are welcome. Although much of the music is untexted, we invite singers to join us who would be willing to vocalize on a tenor part or a sometimes a top line. Tom has given his assurance that he will find ways to put you to good use on all the pieces. We present:
A Cabinet of Musical Curiosities
Saturday March 30, 2013
9:30 to 4:00 PM
Hillside Swedenborgian Community Church
1422 Navellier Street, El Cerrito, CA 94530
Collegium registration information:
Greta Haug-Hryciw gr8asf@yahoo.com;
Download Registration Form >
The Renaissance phenomenon of the Cabinet of Curiosities was an encyclopedic collection of natural and man-made objects displayed to evoke awe and wonder in the viewer. Aristocrats as well as some scientists had these cabinets which may be considered the precursor to the modern museum. In our musical version of the cabinet, we will explore some of the many unusual ways that composers put their own special and quirky stamp on their compositions including pieces found in strange sources; music in imitation of clocks, nature and the cosmos; works exploring unique keys and time signatures; music using chromaticism in new and exotic ways; puzzle pieces of various and sundry types; pieces that explore uncommon relationships between text and music; and more!
As always, we feature a pot-luck lunch and appreciate all contributions to the table. Coffee, tea, juice and water will be provided.
Thank you for your continued support of the SFEMS education programs.
For information about the SFEMS Med/Ren and other summer music workshops including a downloadable brochure, please visit www.sfems.org.
Other information:
Tom Zajac, 617-823-9024; medrenworkshop@sfems.org
A corner of a cabinet, painted by Frans Francken II (1636)
Tom Zajac is a multi-instrumentalist praised for his versatility and stylish playing of music from the medieval and Renaissance periods. He is a member of the wind band Piffaro, and the New York-based theatrical/musical group Ex Umbris, and has toured extensively, appearing in concert series and festivals in Hong Kong, Guam, Australia, Israel, Colombia, Mexico, and throughout Europe and the United States. Tom appears frequently as a guest artist with the Folger Consort, King’s Noyse, Newberry Consort, Hesperus, and other leading US ensembles. He has performed 14th-century music in the East Wing of the White House during the Clinton years, played serpent in a piece by PDQ Bach on an episode of A Prairie Home Companion, and the sound of his bagpipe awoke the astronauts every morning on a 2001 space shuttle mission (on a recording, of course). He’s performed on the sound track of several PBS documentaries for Emmy award-winning producer and composer Brian Keane and has participated in over 40 recording projects ranging from medieval dances to 21st-century chamber music.
As a director, Tom has an abiding interest in the confluence of historical and socio-cultural approaches to music making, working happily in the realm where time and place meet. He has done research and performance projects on Colonial Latin-American music as well as on the music of the three religious cultures of pre-expulsion Spain, and music in Eastern Europe, from Poland to the Ottoman court of 16th- to 19th-century Turkey.
Recent performance projects include a 13th-century music-theater piece, the Tournoi de Chauvency, with the French-American company Ensemble Aziman, with performances in France, Luxembourg and the US and work as percussionist for recent Boston Early Music Festival opera productions. Last season, Tom performed in Bolivia with Piffaro, in Istanbul with the Boston-based Turkish music ensemble Dünya, and in St. Croix and Puerto Rico with long time collaborator, Grant Herreid. Tom directs the Medieval & Renaissance summer workshop for the San Francisco Early Music Society, teaches at several other workshops throughout the US, and directs the early music ensembles at Wellesley College near his home in Boston.
Tom Zajac, SFEMS Med/Ren Workshop director is a multi-instrumentalist praised for his versatility and stylish playing in music from the medieval and Renaissance periods. He is a member of the wind band Piffaro and appears frequently with the Folger Consort, the King’s Noyse, the Newberry Consort, Hesperus, and other leading US ensembles. He performed 14th-century music in the East Wing of the White House during the Clinton years and played serpent in a piece by PDQ Bach on an episode of A Prairie Home Companion, and the sound of his bagpipe awoke the astronauts every morning on a 2001 space shuttle mission (on a recording, of course). He performed on the sound track of several PBS documentaries for the Emmy award-winning producer and composer Brian Keane and has participated in over 40 recording projects, ranging from medieval dances to 20th-century chamber music.
Recent projects include a 13th-century music-theater piece, the Tournoi de Chauvency, with the French-American company Ensemble Aziman; performances as percussionist for recent Boston Early Music Festival opera productions; guest directing the Yale University Collegium Musicum in a program of 18th-century Peruvian music; and conducting a program of Polish Renaissance and early Baroque music for the Texas Early Music Project in Austin. Performances in 2010 included a state department sponsored tour with Piffaro of several missions in the Bolivian low country, and a concert in Istanbul, with the Boston-based Turkish music ensemble Dünya, celebrating the city’s status as the 2010 European cultural capital. Tom is director of early music ensembles at Wellesley College, directs the Medieval/Renaissance week of the San Francisco Early Music Society workshops in Sonoma, CA, and teaches at numerous workshops and festivals throughout the US.
Peter Sykes is one of the most distinguished and versatile keyboard artists performing today. He has appeared in recital at conventions of the American Guild of Organists, the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society, the Organ Historical Society, American Institute of Organbuilders, International Society of Organbuilders, at the Library of Congress, Boston Early Music Festival, Aston Magna Festival, New England Bach Festival, Portland Chamber Music Festival, New Hampshire Music Festival, and with Ensemble Project Ars Nova, The King’s Noyse, Musica Antiqua Köln, and throughout the United States, including an appearance in Boston’s Jordan Hall as a featured soloist (Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto) in the Bank of Boston Emerging Artists Celebrity Series. He is frequently heard on the nationally syndicated radio program “Pipedreams.” Recent appearances include an all-Bach inaugural recital on a new organ built by Fritz Noack for the Langholtskirkja in Reykjavik, Iceland, Bach’s Goldberg Variations for the Cambridge Society for Early Music and at Music Sources in Berkeley, CA, Manuel de Falla’s Harpsichord Concerto with the Chameleon Arts Ensemble, the Schumann Piano Quintet on original instruments with the Van Swieten Quartet, and Samuel Barber’s organ concerto “Toccata Festiva” in at Southern Adventist University in Collegedale, Tennessee. In March 2004 he was given the honor of performing the dedication recital on the newly restored 1800 Tannenberg two-manual organ in Old Salem, North Carolina, an event featured on the nationally broadcast televsion show “CBS Sunday Morning.” He was a member of the continuo team for the Boston Early Music Festival opera productions of Cavalli’s Ercole Amante, Lully’s Thésée and Psyché and Conradi’s Ariadne, and now directs its featured “Keyboard Day” mini-festival. He also appears regularly in concert and on recordings with Boston Baroque. With Christa Rakich he created “Tuesdays With Sebastian,” an independent two-year benefit concert series in which he and Ms. Rakich performed the entire keyboard works of Johann Sebastian Bach for the organ and harpsichord in thirty-four recitals in five Boston area locations in the 2003-04 and 2004-05 concert seasons. He has premiered new works by Dan Locklair, James Woodman, and Joel Martinson, and has performed well over twenty dedication recitals for new or rebuilt organs. He also performs frequently on the clavichord and was one of two featured players on this instrument at the 2009 Boston Early Music Festival.His solo recordings include J.S. Bach’s complete Leipzig Chorales recorded on the Noack organ of the Langholtskirkja in Reykjavik, From The Heartland – Two Nordlie Organs in South Dakota, Harpsichord Music of Couperin and Rameau, A Nantucket Organ Tour, MAXimum Reger: Favorite Organ Works, and Modern Organ Music, a disc of music by Hindemith, Heiller, Pinkham, Woodman, and Icelandic composers on the Noack organ in the Neskirkja in Reykjavik. His bestselling recording of his organ transcription of Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets was named Best of 1996 by Audio Review, a “Super CD” by Absolute Sound in 1999, and garnered accolades in every review. He appears on the Cambridge Bach Ensemble recording The Muses of Zion, performing organ works of Tunder and Buxtehude on the Fisk meantone organ of Wellesley College, the Music from Aston Magna recording of the oratorio The Triumph of Time and Truth, in which he performs the first known organ concerto movement of Handel, a recording of the organ concerto Cymbale of Julian Wachner, and the Grammy-nominated Boston Baroque recordings of Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s B-Minor Mass, and Monteverdi’s Vespers. His most recent solo recordings include the dedication recital on the Tannenberg organ in Old Salem, available on the Raven label, and the complete Bach harpsichord partitas, soon available on the Centaur label.He holds degrees from the New England Conservatory, where he studied with Gabriel Chodos, Blanche Winogron, Mireille Lagacé, Robert Schuneman, and Yuko Hayashi, and Concordia University in Montreal, where he studied with Bernard Lagacé. In 1978 he was winner of the Chadwick Medal from the New England Conservatory for outstanding undergraduate achievement; in the same year, he was a winner of the school’s annual concerto competition, playing the Harpsichord Concerto of Frank Martin. In 1983 he was the winner of the Boston Chapter American Guild of Organists Young Artists Competition; in 1986, winner of the Second International Harpsichord Competition sponsored by the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society. He was the 1993 laureate of the Erwin Bodky Award for excellence in early music performance. In May 2005 he received the Outstanding Alumni award from the New England Conservatory for career achievement since graduation.He is Associate Professor of Music and Chair of the Historical Performance Department at Boston University, Director of Music at First Church in Cambridge, Congregational, and a member of the faculty of the Longy School of Music. He has served as adjudicator for competitions sponsored by the American Guild of Organists, the Royal Canadian College of Organists, and the Bach International Harpsichord Festival, is a member of the board of the Cambridge Society for Early Music, and is a founding board member and current president of the Boston Clavichord Society.
Two Weeks of Workshops and 4 Wonderful Concerts
Tuesday, July 12
7:30 p.m.
Recorders by the Bay
Annette Bauer, Frances Feldon, Inga Funck, Rotem Gilbert, Tricia van Oers and Hanneke van Proosdij, recorders; Katherine Heater, harpsichord; Shirley Hunt, viola da gamba.
Friday, July 15
7.30 p.m.
Harmony of the Spheres
Recorder Orchestra and Faculty Consort. Recorder Orchestra conducted by Rotem Gilbert.
Annette Bauer, Frances Feldon, Inga Funck, Rotem Gilbert, Tricia van Oers and Hanneke van Proosdij, recorders.
Tuesday, July 19
7:30 p.m.
The Traveler’s Tunes
Frances Feldon, Inga Funck, Rotem Gilbert, Tricia van Oers and Hanneke van Proosdij,
recorders; Shira Kammen; vielle; Katherine Heater, harpsichord; Shirley Hunt, viola da gamba.
Friday, July 22
7.30 p.m.
Gods and Monsters
Join us for our Masque filled with mythical creatures! Recorder Orchestra and Faculty Consort.
Recorder Orchestra conducted by Hanneke van Proosdij. Frances Feldon, Inga Funck, Rotem Gilbert, Tricia van Oers and Hanneke van Proosdij, recorders; Shira Kammen; vielle.
St. Albert Priory
6172 Chabot Rd.
Oakland (near Rockridge BART)
Admission FREE, donations gratefully accepted.
Visit us at www.sfems.org
