Salon/Sanctuary Concerts Presents EXODUS: DREAMS OF THE PROMISED LAND IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA Today

Salon/Sanctuary Concerts presents Exodus: Dreams of the Promised Land in Antebellum America featuring The Western Wind Vocal Ensemble with guest actors Rosalyn Coleman Williams and Jennifer Rau. The Script and Stage Direction is by Erica Gould and Jessica Gould did the program concept and dramaturgy.

There are two performances: today April 5th from 3:00PM and 6:00PM at the Franunces Tavern Museum Flag Gallery, 54 Pearl Street NY, NY 10004

Ticket are $25 Students/ Seniors/EMA/ SRNY/ Museum members, $35 General Admission, $50 Preferred Seating, $200 Front Row and Dinner with the artists in the Fraunces Tavern Restaurant.

For reservations, visit www.salonsanctuary.org, or call 1 888 718 4253

Historic Fraunces Tavern sets the stage for Salon/Sanctuary Concerts' next performance offering: EXODUS: DREAMS OF THE PROMISED LAND IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA on Saturday, April 5th, 2014 at 3:00pm and 6:00PM at The Fraunces Tavern Museum Flag Gallery in New York City.

Featuring the acclaimed Western Wind Vocal Ensemble with guest actors Rosalyn Coleman Williams and Jennifer Rau, the program is a return of last year's enthusiastically received premiere performance. Directed and with a script by Erica Gould, the project was conceived by SSC Artistic Director Jessica Gould to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.

The script of Exodus features texts drawn from the writings of Solomon Northrup, Frederick Douglass, Angelina Grimké, and anonymous slave narratives, with musical selections from American composers William Billings (1746 - 1800), Stephen Jenks (1772 - 1856), early spirituals and Shaker hymns.

Praised for "highly original" and "imaginative" programming and noted for "impeccably curated early-music performances in intimate historical venues," the ever-inventive Salon/Sanctuary Concerts offers Exodus as a special interdisciplinary project for the Passover and Easter season, featuring early American music in one of America's most historically significant structures. Exodus is part of Salon/Sanctuary's on-going series of interdisciplinary pieces that shed light on current political and social issues through the prism of theatre, music, and historical texts.

The staged performance will intersperse musical selections with text from Slave narratives, Abolitionist writings, and other historical material, performed by actors Rosalyn Coleman Williams, Jennifer Rau, and others. Music will feature Shaker Hymns, early African-American Spirituals, as well as works by noted American composers William Billings (1746 - 1800), Abraham Wood (1752 - 1804), Stephen Jenks (1772 - 1856), and M. Durham, the first known American female composer.

Proto-Spirituals and Shaker Hymns interspersed with readings from historical narratives reveal the enduring power of liberation imagery for various "Alien Nations" of early American history and offer a window onto the founding "Promised Land" imagery of American consciousness.

Built in 1719, Fraunces Tavern is the oldest structure in Manhattan. The original site of the departments of War, Treasury, and State where George Washington bid farewell to his troops in 1783 sets the stage for this starkly beautiful American repertoire.

THE WESTERN WIND

Since 1969, the internationally acclaimed vocal sextet The Western Wind has devoted itself to the special beauty and variety of a cappella music. The Ensemble's repertoire reveals its diverse background - from Renaissance motets to Fifties rock 'n'roll, from medieval carols to Duke Ellington, from complex works by avant-garde composers to the simplest folk melodies. The ensemble's demanding performance schedule has included such venues as Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, ArtPark, The Ordway Theater, The Metropolitan Museum, The Frick Museum, The Jewish Museum, Folger Shakespeare Library, Library of Congress, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Rosalyn Coleman Williams

ROSALYN COLEMAN WILLIAMS
Broadway: The Mountaintop,Radio Golf, Seven Guitars, The Piano Lesson, Mule Bone, andThe Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant. Off-Broadway: world premieres of Whose Family Values and Carson McCullers (Historically Inaccurate) by Sarah Schulman (Playwright's Horizons/The Women's Project). Other notable New York stage credits include the critically acclaimed Breath Boom directed by Marion McClinton at Playwright's Horizons, The Old Settler at Primary Stages, and most recently Zooman and the Sign at the Signature Theater. Fox Fellow, Outer Critics Circle, Owen Dodson, and Drama League Award winner, Barrymore Award nomination.

JENNIFER RAU
Off-Broadway and Regional Theater credits include: Once In A Lifetime (Atlantic Theater Company), The Hologram Theory (Blue Light), Sex Parasite (Center Theatre Group), M Butterfly(East West Players), Miraclesand The Baby Dance (Barter Theatre). Film and Television credits: Finding Amanda, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Without A Trace, yes,dear, Inconceivable, the award-winning short film Some Boys Don't Leave, and the upcoming feature Light Years.

Erica Gould

ERICA GOULD's directing credits includes the world premieres of Neil LaBute's playsautobahn and Stand Up (with Mos Def),SpeakEasy by writers including Theresa Rebeck and Rajiv Joseph (Joe's Pub/Public Theater), Troilus and Cressida (NY Stage & Film), and Dirty Paki Lingerie, which she developed with writer/solo performer Aizzah Fatima (Cherry Lane, 59E59, The Flea, Toronto, Edinburgh, Pakistan through the US State Dept, upcoming at John Jay) and which has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, NPR, CBC, BBC). Other projects include the US premiere of Me Cago en Dios by Inigo Ramirez de Haro (La MaMa), Max and the Truffle Pig(NYMF), What Light From Darkness Grows w/ Phylicia Rashad and Harry Lennix, At War: American Playwrights Respond to Iraq with David Strathairn, Bebe Neuwirth, Daniel Sunjata, Gloria Reuben, and Bobby Cannavale (Bleecker Street Theater/The Fire Dept). Also for Salon/Sanctuary, she has directed Campbell Scott and Melissa Errico in More Between Heaven and Earth,Battalia, in collaboration with dancers from the NYC Ballet, and the site-specific pasticcio The Heirs of Tantalus. Teaching: Yale, NYU, Fordham, Pace, Bard, NY Conservatory for Dramatic Arts, O'Neill National Theatre Institute. Erica is one of the Founding Artistic Directors of The Fire Dept Theatre Co (www.thefiredept.org). She has taught at Yale, Fordham, Bard, Pace, NYU, and the O'Neill National Theatre Institute and sits on the Fight Choreographers Steering Committee of the SDC.

Jessica Gould

Founded by Soprano and Artistic Director Jessica Gould in 2009,SALON/SANCTUARY CONCERTSoffers the special chance to hear pre-Romantic music in intimate venues that complement the historical context of the repertoire. Pleased to present special projects that cast a light on historical issues through the prism of music, Salon/Sanctuary takes pride in many special interdisciplinary performances featuring luminaries from the worlds of opera, theater, film, and dance. The series has garnered critical praise for its innovative programming, and continues to attract a diverse audience for its path breaking offerings. Soloists on Salon /Sanctuary include countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, lutenist Hopkinson Smith, soprano Julianne Baird, violinists Monica Huggett, Robert Mealy, and Cynthia Roberts, oboist Gonzalo Ruiz, Harpsichordists Bradley Brookshire, Jory Vinikour, and Kenneth Weiss, NYCB principal dancers Jared Angel and Megan LeCrone, and actors Kathleen Chalfant, Melissa Errico, Ethan Peck, Campbell Scott, and Matthew Modine.

The performance is set for Saturday, April 5th, 2013 at 3:00pm and 6:00pm at The Fraunces Tavern Museum Flag Gallery, 54 Pearl Street.

$25 Students/ Seniors/EMA/ SRNY/ Museum members, $35 General Admission, $50 Preferred Seating, $200 Front Row and Dinner with the artists in the Fraunces Tavern Restaurant.

For reservations, visit www.salonsanctuary.org, or call 1 888 718 4253.