The SFEMS Weekly Calendar of Early Music —the Bay Area’s most comprehensive listing of historically informed early music events— has moved to the redesigned, searchable SFEMS website.Find news, reviews, previews, artists bios, detailed program information and more at www.sfems.org
SFEMS John Prescott Lectures
“Our Musical Shakespeare: Reveling in the Music of Henry Purcell,” a lecture series for adults, exploring the music of Henry Purcell. No previous musical experience necessary. Register for either the full course ($85/$80 SFEMS members) or for individual days ($20 each).
Day 1: “The restoration of the cathedrals: Purcell’s sacred music”
9:30AM–Noon
School of the Madeleine
1225 Milvia Street, Berkeley.
Registration form: www.sfems.org/prescott13.shtml.
Information: 510-843-2425, Suzannesiebert@gmail.com
The Prescott lectures support the SFEMS Music Discovery Workshop, a children’s day camp
SFEMS John Prescott lectures continue (see January 13).
Our Musical Shakespeare: Reveling in the Music of Henry Purcell,” a lecture series for adults, exploring the music of Henry Purcell. No previous musical experience necessary.
Day 2: “From church to stage: Purcell’s theatrical and operatic vocal music”
9:30AM–Noon
St. Mary Magdalene Church
2005 Berryman St., Berkeley.
$20
510-843-2425
Suzannesiebert@gmail.com
Barefoot Chamber Concerts Presents Agave Baroque
“Friends of Ferdinand.” Agave Baroque (Aaron Westman, violin; Heather Vorwerck, viol; Kevin Cooper, guitar & theorbo; and Henry Lebedinsky, harpsichord) perform music from the circle of the Holy Roman Emperor.
6.30PM
Petaluma Woman’s Club
518 B St., Petaluma.
$15/$13 18 and under free and welcome.
Tickets http://www.BrownPaperTickets.com/event/525938; information BarefootChamberConcerts.com.
SFEMS John Prescott lectures continue (see January 13).
Our Musical Shakespeare: Reveling in the Music of Henry Purcell,” a lecture series for adults, exploring the music of Henry Purcell. No previous musical experience necessary.
Day 3: “The splendor and intimacy of Purcell’s instrumental music”
9:30AM–Noon
St. Mary Magdalene Church
2005 Berryman St., Berkeley.
$20
510-843-2425
Suzannesiebert@gmail.com
SFEMS John Prescott lectures continue (see January 13).
Our Musical Shakespeare: Reveling in the Music of Henry Purcell,” a lecture series for adults, exploring the music of Henry Purcell. No previous musical experience necessary.
Day 4: “From stage to chamber to tavern: the many moods of Purcell’s songs”
9:30AM–Noon
St. Mary Magdalene Church
2005 Berryman St., Berkeley.
$20
510-843-2425
Suzannesiebert@gmail.com
Barefoot Chamber Concerts Presents Agave Baroque
“Friends of Ferdinand.” Agave Baroque (Aaron Westman, violin; Heather Vorwerck, viol; Kevin Cooper, guitar & theorbo; and Henry Lebedinsky, harpsichord) perform music from the circle of the Holy Roman Emperor.
6PM
Parish Hall of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church
2300 Bancroft Way, Berkeley.
www.brownpapertickets.com/event/443975
SFEMS John Prescott lectures continue
Our Musical Shakespeare: Reveling in the Music of Henry Purcell,” a lecture series for adults, exploring the music of Henry Purcell. No previous musical experience necessary.
Day 5: “Whatever happened to English baroque music? Purcell’s legacy”
9:30AM–Noon
St. Mary Magdalene Church
2005 Berryman St., Berkeley.
$20
510-843-2425
Suzannesiebert@gmail.com
Elizabeth Wallfisch, violin, and David Breitman, fortepiano
The Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies and The American Beethoven Society present the complete violin and fortepiano sonatas on original instruments. This program features Sonata in D Major, Opus 12, no 1; Sonata in c minor, Opus 30, no. 2, Sonata in G Major, Opus 30, no. 3; and Sonata in F Major, Opus 24 (“Spring”)
2PM (Three-concert series continues January 19 and 24.)
Schiro Program Room,MLK Library
150 E. San Fernando St., San Jose.
Series tickets: $60, Individual tickets: $25.
Stroh@sjsu.edu or 408-808-2058
Seating limited to 60.
Marin Baroque
ITALIAN LOVE DUETS. Elsa Nicol, soprano, and Nik Nackley, counter-tenor, perform Italian love duets by Alessandro Scarlatti and George Frideric Handel, accompanied by Farley Pearce, cello, and Yuko Tanaka, harpsichord.
8PM
First Presbyterian Church of San Anselmo
72 Kensington Road, San Anselmo
$25/$20/$5
415-497-6634, www.brownpapertickets.com/event/536561
San Francisco Chapter, ARS
2014 Chapter Workshop.
10AM–4:30PM
Christ Church Lutheran
1090 Quintara St. (at 20th Ave.), San Francisco.
gr8asf@yahoo.com, http://arssanfrancisco.org/
Saturday Night at the Movies.
Voices of Music will host an evening of wonderful music performed by The New Esterhazy Quartet, the Alchemy Trio and Voices of Music. This performance will be recorded in high definition video. This will be an annual event where Voices of music invites other early music groups to join. In 2015 this event will include a concert as well as a film component showing highlights from this 2014 concert on the big screen.
8PM (followed by a wine and cheese reception)
St. Mark’s Lutheran Church
1111 O’Farrell St, San Francisco
$10
415-260-4687; https://app.arts-people.com/index.php?ticketing=vom
Viola da Gamba Society/Pacifica Chapter
Monthly viol consort playing with guest coach Farley Pearce. Players of all levels welcome.
9AM–3PM
Hillside Church
1422 Navellier Street, El Cerrito.
Newcomers please email or phone ahead. dcantey@att.net, 831-420-1618
Elizabeth Wallfisch, violin, and David Breitman, fortepiano
Complete Beethoven violin and fortepiano sonatas series continues, featuring the Sonata in A Major, Opus 30, no. 1; Sonata in E-flat Major, Opus 12, no. 3; Sonata in A Major, Opus 47 (“Kreutzer”).
2PM
Schiro Program Room,MLK Library
150 E. San Fernando St., San Jose.
Series tickets: $60, Individual tickets: $25.
Stroh@sjsu.edu or 408-808-2058
Seating limited to 60.
Music by Bach and Son
Laudami Ensemble (David Ross on flute, violinist Laura Rubinstein-Salzedo, and harpsichordist Michael Peterson) perform works of Johann Sebastian Bach and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.
3PM
University Lutheran Chapel
2425 College Ave., Berkeley.
$10–$20
www.brownpapertickets.com/event/529014, rubinsalz@gmail.com
JOHN PRESCOTT received his M.A. and Ph.D. in musicology from U. C. Berkeley. Prior to this, he received his B.A. magna cum laude in Music and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa from Carleton College (MN). He has been the recipient of a number of academic honors, including the British Marshall Scholarship for two years of study at St. John’s College in Cambridge, England. He also studied at Oxford University’s Worcester College. Dr. Prescott has written extensively on the music of Handel. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on John Stanley, the 18th‐century blind organist, conductor, violinist and impresario. Dr. Prescott has taught music courses at U.C. Berkeley and music theory at The Crowden School (Berkeley CA), and was the musicologist for the San Francisco Elderhostel Arts and Humanities Program. He teaches music history courses for the Osher Life Long Learning institutes at U.C. Berkeley and at San Francisco State University. He gives pre‐opera lectures for Berkeley West Edge Opera and the Livermore Valley Opera Company. He also gives pre‐concert lectures for Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.
Noontime Concerts
French Music Festival. Music of the late French Baroque by Marin Marais, Sainte Colombe, and Charles Dollé.
John Dornenburg, Farley Pearce, viola da gamba; Yuko Tanaka, harpsichord
Noon
Old St. Mary’s Cathedral
660 California Street
San Francisco CA 94108
$5 suggested donation
(415) 777-3211 http://noontimeconcerts.org/
Sacramento Recorder Society
Regular meeting for recorder players, with guest conductor Jerry Schwartz. Newcomers welcome. Bring recorders, stand, and other early instruments. Music provided.
Refreshments.
6:45–9:30PM
Friends Meeting House
890 57th St., between H and J, Sacramento.
marschif@gmail.com or at 916-685-7684.
Mid-Peninsula Recorder Orchestra
Regular meeting, for players of recorder, early winds or early strings. Bring your instrument(s) and music stand.
7:30–9:30PM
Music Room number 060,
J.L. Stanford Middle School,
480 E. Meadow, Palo Alto.
650-591-3648 or www.sfems.org/mpro
Musica Pacifica
“Sweet Accents: In Praise of Harmony.” Judith Linsenberg, recorder; Elizabeth Blumenstock, violin; Josh Lee, viola da gamba; and Charles Sherman, harpsichord; with guest tenor Aaron Sheehan, perform a varied program of virtuoso cantatas and instrumental chamber music by Handel, Rameau, Telemann, Bach, Couperin, and their contemporaries. Featured works include a Telemann Paris Quartet; a Rameau Pièce de Clavecin en Concert; Rameau’s cantata Orphée, and arias by Handel and Bach.
7:30PM
Trinity Chapel
Dana and Durant Sts., Berkeley.
$30/$25/$10
http://musicapacifica.brownpapertickets.com
Magnificat, Warren Stewart, Director
“Curiose et Moderne Invenzioni—Music of Monteverdi & Schütz”
Claudio Monteverdi’s madrigals Armato il cor and Zefiro torna, motet Exulta filia Sion, and Salve Regina; Heinrich Schütz’s setting of the Song of Song text Anima mea liquefacta es and his motets Exultavit cor meum and Es steh Gott auf; toccatas by Alessandro Piccinini and Johann Jacob Froberger; and sonatas by Biagio Marini, Dario Castello, and Dresden court violinist Carlo Farina will be interwoven into this kaleidoscopic journey from Dresden to Venice and back. With Laura Heimes & Jennifer Ellis Kampani, sopranos; Rob Diggins & Jolianne von Einem, violins; Warren Stewart, violoncello; Michael Leopold, theorbo; and Jillon Stoppels Dupree, harpsichord & organ. More Detail >
8PM
St. Mark’s Lutheran Church
1111 O’Farrell, San Francisco.
$35/$30/$12
http://magnificatbaroque.tix.com, http://magnificat.eventbrite.com, or 800-595-4849.
South Bay Recorder Society
Monthly meeting, guest conductor Greta Haug-Hryciw.
New members and guests welcomed.
7:30–10PM
First Congregational Church of San Jose
1980 Hamilton Ave. (at Leigh)
San Jose.
408-358-0878 or zilbrown@aol.com
Live at Mission Blue
“Shakespeare and His Time.” Clerestory pays homage to this greatest of English wordsmiths in songs from the Renaissance through the modern day.
8PM
Pre-concert talk by Bruce Lamott at 7:30
Mission Blue Center
475 Mission Blue Drive, Brisbane.
20/$15 www.LiveAtMissionBlue.com
Magnificat repeats program of January 10.
“Curiose et Moderne Invenzioni—Music of Monteverdi & Schütz”
Claudio Monteverdi’s madrigals Armato il cor and Zefiro torna, motet Exulta filia Sion, and Salve Regina; Heinrich Schütz’s setting of the Song of Song text Anima mea liquefacta es and his motets Exultavit cor meum and Es steh Gott auf; toccatas by Alessandro Piccinini and Johann Jacob Froberger; and sonatas by Biagio Marini, Dario Castello, and Dresden court violinist Carlo Farina will be interwoven into this kaleidoscopic journey from Dresden to Venice and back. With Laura Heimes & Jennifer Ellis Kampani, sopranos; Rob Diggins & Jolianne von Einem, violins; Warren Stewart, violoncello; Michael Leopold, theorbo; and Jillon Stoppels Dupree, harpsichord & organ. More Detail >
8PM
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church
2300 Bancroft Way, Berkeley.
$35/$30/$12
http://magnificatbaroque.tix.com, http://magnificat.eventbrite.com, or 800-595-4849.
Tish Berlin, Shira Kammen, and Peter Maund
“A Musical Smorgasbord,” a workshop for instrumentalists and singers on medieval, Renaissance, and traditional music. Music of Palestrina, Dowland, Holborne, medieval England, percussion and improvisation classes: for singers and instrumentalists.
1:30–8PM
Arlington Community Church
52 Arlington Ave., Kensington.
tishberlin@sbcglobal.net for registration form.
SFEMS and The Jazzschool
“Dead or Alive? Improvisation in High Baroque Chamber Music.”
David Morris, viola da gamba and baroque cello; and Katherine Heater, harpsichord, perform music of Abel, Bach, Cirri, Marais, Telemann and others, in a program that challenges listeners to figure out where the composer’s notes leave off and the performer’s new ideas begin.
4:30PM
The Jazzschool
2087 Addison St., Berkeley.
$15/$12
http://jazzschool.org/event/david-morris-katherine-heater-presented-sf-early-music-society/
Magnificat repeats program of January 10.
“Curiose et Moderne Invenzioni—Music of Monteverdi & Schütz”
Claudio Monteverdi’s madrigals Armato il cor and Zefiro torna, motet Exulta filia Sion, and Salve Regina; Heinrich Schütz’s setting of the Song of Song text Anima mea liquefacta es and his motets Exultavit cor meum and Es steh Gott auf; toccatas by Alessandro Piccinini and Johann Jacob Froberger; and sonatas by Biagio Marini, Dario Castello, and Dresden court violinist Carlo Farina will be interwoven into this kaleidoscopic journey from Dresden to Venice and back. With Laura Heimes & Jennifer Ellis Kampani, sopranos; Rob Diggins & Jolianne von Einem, violins; Warren Stewart, violoncello; Michael Leopold, theorbo; and Jillon Stoppels Dupree, harpsichord & organ. More Detail >
7PM
Le Petit Trianon
72 N. 5th St., San Jose
$42/$36/30; Seniors & FT Students $39/$33/$27
https://www.sjchambermusic.org/tickets.php
MAGNIFICAT, Warren Stewart, Director
Laura Heimes & Jennifer Ellis Kampani, soprano; Rob Diggins & Jolianne von Einem, violin; Waren Stewart, violoncello; Michael Leopold, theorbo; Jillon Stoppels Dupree, harpsichord & organ
“Staying in Venice as the guest of old friends, I learned that the long unchanged art of composition had changed somewhat: the ancient rhythms were partly set aside to tickle the ears of today with fresh devices.”
Thus Heinrich Schütz described his experiences during his second trip to the Most Serene Republic in a letter to a friend upon his return to Dresden. Our program this evening explores his visit, one of the most consequential musical encounters of the seventeenth century. It focuses on a meeting that must have taken place between two of the towering figures of music in the first half of the century: Schütz and Claudio Monteverdi – a meeting that embodies the migration of style from Italy over the Alps so characteristic of the early Baroque.
Earlier in his life, Schütz had spent four years in Venice as a student of Giovanni Gabrieli, his studies ending with the old master’s death in the summer of 1612. Schütz returned to Saxony a few months later, thus missing Monteverdi’s arrival in Venice by less than a year. Shortly after his return, Schütz was engaged as Kapellmeister to the Elector of Saxony in Dresden – among the most prestigious positions for a musician in Germany, a position he retained for the rest of his very long life.
In 1617 Schütz composed and directed the music for the extensive festivities celebrating the centenary of the Reformation, leading a large ensemble of singers and instrumentalists. Much of this music was published in Schütz’s Psalmen Davids in 1619 and was written in the robust polychoral style of his teacher. He continued to enjoy a happy and productive life in Dresden until a series of personal tragedies in the mid 1620s were followed by Saxony’s disastrous decision to enter what we now call the Thirty Years War in 1627. Funds were quickly diverted from music and the arts to the military effort and already in 1628 the Electoral Music had been drastically reduced and Schütz began a period of more than a decade in which he was often away from Dresden. He had petitioned his employer several times for permission to travel to Venice and when it was finally granted in the summer of 1628, he quickly made preparations for the journey, arriving in Italy in early fall and staying for almost a year.
While there is no direct documentation of a meeting between Schütz and Monteverdi during his second visit, it is inconceivable that they were not in contact. As the music directors of two of the greatest musical establishments in Europe, they would surely have met and perhaps even performed together and the spirit of Monteverdi’s “new music” that Schütz heard in Venice remained an inspiration for the remainder of his life.
Two works on our program display the influence of Monteverdi on Schütz quite literally: the madrigal Chiome d’oro, set to German text by Schütz in the 1640s and especially the sacred motet Es steh Gott auf, included in his second set of Symphoniæ Sacræ. This delightful motet is a parody of madrigals by Monteverdi found in his Scherzi musicali of 1632: Armato il cor and Zefiro torna. Schütz wrote in the preface that he “in some small way followed” these two works, but added that no one should believe him to have been only “so lazy as to decorate his work with others’ feathers.”
While our program is built around several works by the two masters, the music of other composers that Schütz may have heard during his visit is represented as well. Most significantly for Schütz was most likely Alessandro Grandi, whose superbly crafted motets and concertato madrigals are most clearly reflected in the style Schütz developed after his visit to Venice. Grandi had been Monteverdi’s assistant at San Marco for over a decade before moving to Bergamo to become maestro di capella at Santa Maria Maggiore, a position that not only paid him very well but also gave him the opportunity to write music for larger forces. Tragically, his life was cut short at the peek of his career by the plague that ravaged Northern Italy in 1630.
What little is known of the instrumentalist and composer Dario Castello is drawn primarily from the title pages of his publications, which identify him as a musician at San Marco and the leader of an ensemble of winds. His two surviving collections of sonatas feature extraordinarily virtuosic writing, suggest that he was most likely a highly skilled performer. The large number of reprints of both books is an indication of the popularity and wide diffusion of Castello’s works throughout Europe.
By contrast, we know considerably more about Castello’s sometimes colleague at San Marco, Biagio Marini. During Schütz’s visit to Venice, Marini, already well established as one of the first virtuoso violinists in Europe, published his eighth book of compositions, subtitled “Curiose e Moderne Invenzioni.” Born in Brescia in 1594, Marini had been appointed as a violinist at San Marco in 1615 where he worked directly with Monteverdi and Grandi. By 1620 he had begun what would be a peripatetic career that would see him serve as instrumentalist and music director in several Italian cities and in courts as far north as Düsseldorf and Neuberg. A prolific composer, by the time of his death in 1663 he had published over 20 collections of music, including sacred and secular vocal music as well as music for violin and instrumental ensembles.
Carlo Farina was a violin virtuoso born in Mantua during Monteverdi’s tenure there and may have studied with Salamone Rossi. In 1625 he was appointed concertmaster of Electoral Court of Saxony where he worked closely with Schütz and published his two collections of violin music. With the deterioration of the situation in Saxony, Farina returned to Italy in 1628, working for a time in Parma and later at Lucca. In fact, one of Schütz’s assignments on his trip to Venice was to secure the services of a violinist to replace Farina and indeed he returned to Dresden with the highly respected violinist Francesco Castelli, also from Mantua. Farina crossed the Alps again in the 1630s to work in Danzig and then Vienna, where he died in 1638.
Our program includes two toccatas – one for theorbo and one for harpsichord – that further reflect the integration of Italianate and Transalpine styles. The Bolognese lutenist Alessandro Piccinini was a contemporary of Monteverdi, who worked in Ferrara and Bologna. In the first of his publications of music for the lute, he makes the plausible claim to have invented the archlute in the 1590s. Whatever the veracity of his claim, there is little doubt that Piccinini was the finest lutenist of his generation.
Like Schütz, Johan Jacob Froberger travelled to Italy to study. Born in Stuttgart, Froberger had already been employed as an organist in Vienna when he first travelled to Rome to study with Frescobaldi from 1637 to 1641. After spending six years back in Vienna, he returned to Rome, this time working with the polymath Athanasius Kircher and possibly Iacomo Carissimi. After leaving Rome he travelled extensively, performing in many courts across Europe. In 1650 he was in Dresden where he likely collaborated with Schütz and Christoph Bernhard. Froberger’s compositions, almost entirely for keyboard, exerted a considerable influence on harpsichord and organ music in the second half of the century, not only in his native Germany but also in France. His blend of Italian exuberance and expressivity with northern counterpoint and chromaticism echoes in the works of Buxtehude, Böhm, Couperin and Bach.
Magnificat is grateful to the San Jose Chamber Music Society for the invitation to return to perform on a series on which we first appeared in 1991. That program also featured music of Monteverdi and Schütz and served as a catalyst for our own annual concert series, which began the next year.
February 15-16, 2014
Braun Music Center
Room 110
Stanford University, Palo Alto
To register, download this PDF form
Palestrina has been held up as the model for high Renaissance sacred music, yet the Singers’ Retreat has never sung a Mass by him. So we will sing this one, drawn from h
is Fifth Book of Masses (1590), published just before his death. It is based upon a paraphrase of the Gregorian chant hymn for Matins on Pentecost, and for the hymns of the Little Office during the day of Pentecost. Its characteristic mode takes one beginning and wide ranging melody, then paraphrases in a nicely developed style, with intricate counterpoint. It is sure to promise both challenge and great enjoyment.
In addition to the rehearsal, Prof. Mahrt will offer brief lectures during breaks to inform us more about the composer and the musicology. He will discuss this Mass along with others by Palestrina, and its place within the history of related music.
Late on Saturday afternoon we enjoy the Sherry Hour, an opportunity to taste a variety of the wine, from most dry to sweetest. (Unlike past events, there will be no Saturday evening sing.)
Remember to invite friends to the concert at 4 pm on Sunday, February 16, at St. Ann Chapel, 541 Melville Ave, Palo Alto. Donations are accepted at the performance which are contributed to a fund for musicians in need.
Participation in the concert is a requirement of attendance.
East Bay Chapter, ARS
Monthly playing session, Joyce Johnson-Hamilton guest conductor.
New members and guests welcome.
2:30–5PM
Hillside Club
2286 Cedar St., Berkeley.
www.eastbayrecorders.org, jjhtromba@sbcglobal.net,
510-483-8675 or 415-472-6367
The New Esterházy Quartet
“Paris Symphonies.” Lisa Weiss & Kati Kyme, violins; Anthony Martin, viola; and William Skeen, violoncello, perform quartet arrangements of Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 85 “La Reine,” W.A. Mozart’s Symphony No. 21 “Paris,” and Luigi Cherubini’s Quartet No. 2 in C.
8PM
Hillside Club
2286 Cedar Street (at Spruce), Berkeley.
Tickets for this Friday concert are $15, and sold only at the door.
San Francisco Renaissance Voices, Katherine McKee, Assistant Music Director
Fourth Annual Boar’s Head Festival and Mid-Winter Gala. A 650 year old celebration, with the music of Medieval and Renaissance England. This season’s festival features plenty of audience sing-a-long and after the concert you will enjoy a feast featuring wassail, king’s cake and traditional meat and vegetable pies. Any attire is appropriate, however period costumes are especially welcome!
7PM
Seventh Avenue Presbyterian Church
1329 Seventh Ave., San Francisco.
$35/$30
www.sfrvoices.org; Buy Tickets >
New Esterházy Quartet repeats program of January 4.
Paris Symphonies.” Lisa Weiss & Kati Kyme, violins; Anthony Martin, viola; and William Skeen, violoncello, perform quartet arrangements of Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 85 “La Reine,” W.A. Mozart’s Symphony No. 21 “Paris,” and Luigi Cherubini’s Quartet No. 2 in C.
4PM
St. Mark’s Lutheran Church
1111 O’Farrell Street at Franklin, San Francisco.
$25/$20/$10
415-520-0611; www.newesterhazy.org.
San Francisco Renaissance Voices repeats Boar’s Head and Mid-Winter Gala of January 4.
Fourth Annual Boar’s Head Festival and Mid-Winter Gala. A 650 year old celebration, with the music of Medieval and Renaissance England. This season’s festival features plenty of audience sing-a-long and after the concert you will enjoy a feast featuring wassail, king’s cake and traditional meat and vegetable pies. Any attire is appropriate, however period costumes are especially welcome!
3:30PM
First Lutheran Church
600 Homer, Palo Alto.
$35/$30
www.sfrvoices.org
New Esterházy Quartet repeats program of January 4.
Paris Symphonies.” Lisa Weiss & Kati Kyme, violins; Anthony Martin, viola; and William Skeen, violoncello, perform quartet arrangements of Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 85 “La Reine,” W.A. Mozart’s Symphony No. 21 “Paris,” and Luigi Cherubini’s Quartet No. 2 in C.
4PM
All Saints’ Episcopal Church
555 Waverley Street at Hamilton, Palo Alto.
$25/$20/$10
415-520-0611; www.newesterhazy.org.
There are just a few days left to renew your membership and make your 2013 tax deductible gift in support of SFEMS and the Berkeley Festival
Since its founding nearly forty years ago, the mission of the San Francisco Early Music Society has been to support and nurture early music in the Bay Area, promoting the next generation of artists and working to build the audiences to receive them.
We have just celebrated the close of 2013 with the voices of angels and a blast of trumpets when SFEMS–after a one year sabbatical by music director Warren Stewart–presented MAGNIFICAT and brought the splendor of A Venetian Christmas Mass to the Bay. It was glorious and chosen as one of the truly “memorable concerts of 2013” by Steven Smolar of the SF Examinar.
Preparations for a busy 2014 are well underway. We are planning new concert season including additional performance opportunities for SFEMS members and affiliates, an expanded summer workshop schedule, and the 2014 Berkeley Festival & Exhibition including our unique and popular BFX Fringe Festival under the visionary leadership of SFEMS board member Robert Cole.
Your generous support and membership in our Society makes all this happen. Please consider making a gift today or giving friends and family the gift of SFEMS membership. SFEMS members enjoy exclusive benefits including private concerts and receptions, special ticket and workshop discounts, our monthly newsletter the San Francisco Bay Area Early Music News, and more!
Click here to make a donation.
You can also donate by mail:
The San Francisco Early Music Society
P.O. Box 10151
Berkeley, CA 94709
Wishing you a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year. With warmest thanks for your generous support.
Sincerely,
John Phillips, President
David Morris, viola da gamba and baroque cello;
Katherine Heater, harpsichord
Sunday, January 12, 2014 at 4:30PM
The Jazzschool
2087 Addison St., Berkeley
$15/$12
Reservations recommended as space is limited.
Improvisation is at the heart of baroque music, even when composers give the performers fully fleshed-out melodies and information about the harmonic underpinnings of the music. Even with all of this black-and-white material facing modern performers, there’s still an expectation that the performer is supposed to give something of herself/ himself to every performance- something new, varied and unexpected. David Morris and Katherine Heater perform the music of Abel, Bach, Cirri, Marais, Telemann and others in a program that challenges listeners to figure out where the composer’s notes leave off and the performer’s new ideas begin.
David Morris is a member of The King’s Noyse, the Galax Quartet, Quicksilver and the New York State Baroque Ensemble. He has performed with Musica Pacifica, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, Tragicomedia, Pacific Baroque Orchestra, Tafelmusik, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, Musica Angelica, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, the Mark Morris Dance Company and Seattle’s Pacific Musicworks. Mr. Morris received his B.A. and M.A. in Music from U.C. Berkeley, and has been a guest instructor in early music performance-practice at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Mills College, Oberlin College, the Madison Early Music Festival and Cornell University. He has recorded for Harmonia Mundi, New Albion, Dorian, New World Records, Drag City Records, CBC/ Radio-Canada and New Line Cinema.
Katherine Heater, harpsichord, frequently plays with early music groups such as Musica Pacifica and Voices of Music. She has performed throughout the United States, including with Catacoustic Consort in Ohio, the Sun Valley Summer Symphony in Idaho and at the Berkeley Early Music Festival, the Bloomington Early Music Festival, and the Tropical Baroque Festival of Miami. She received an Arts Bachelor from the University of California, Berkeley in music and a Masters of Music in historical performance from Oberlin Conservatory. At the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam Ms. Heater studied harpsichord with Bob van Asperen and fortepiano with Stanley Hoogland. Also an active teacher, Ms. Heater teaches harpsichord at UC Berkeley and privately. She has been director of the San Francisco Early Music Society’s Music Discovery Workshop and co-director of the SFEMS recorder and baroque workshops.
SFEMS Blog 