Boston Baroque Announces NEW DIRECTIONS: CHAMBER MUSIC FROM THE BAROQUE TO CARTER AND PEARLMAN, Opening 9/23

Boston Baroque and its Music Director, Martin Pearlman, have announced the inauguration of a new chamber music series that includes baroque and contemporary music played on both baroque and modern instruments. New Directions: Chamber Music from the Baroque to Carter and Pearlman, sponsored by Friends of Daniel Steiner, consists of four programs that complement Boston Baroque’s 2012-13 subscription concerts in NEC’s Jordan Hall and Sanders Theatre by being presented in smaller venues: the Edward Pickman Concert Hall at the Longy School of Music of Bard College (Cambridge, MA) and First Church in Cambridge.

Martin Pearlman comments, “New Directions grows out of my interests as conductor and founder of Boston Baroque, as well as my long-time work as a composer. It brings together Baroque and contemporary music on both early and modern instruments, so that alongside works of Corelli, Couperin and Handel will be pieces that Berio and Ligeti wrote for Baroque instruments, and the Sonata that Elliott Carter wrote for a trio sonata group. My own work will be represented by the first act of a theater piece on the text of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. It is a series that will allow us unusual freedom to experiment with programming, mixed media and other ideas.”

New Directions opens its inaugural season on Sunday, September 23, 2012 at 7:00 p.m. with the premiere of a new work by Martin Pearlman based on James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. The other three concerts will take place on Saturday, November 3, 2012 at 7:00 p.m. featuring baroque and contemporary vocal and instrumental chamber music; Sunday, February 3, 2013 at 3:00 p.m. with chamber music written for baroque ensembles, including Elliott Carter’s Sonata (1952); and Friday, March 22, 2013 at 7:30 p.m. featuring Boston Baroque’s concertmaster, Christina Day Martinson, in Biber’s Mystery Sonatas: Part II.