San Francisco Early Music Society Announces 2019-20 Season

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From: John Hill <johnhillpr@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Aug 8, 2019 at 3:26 PM
Subject: News: SF Early Music Society announces 2019-20 Season
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Costanoan Trio opens the season on September 20 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Contact: John Hill johnhillpr@gmail.com 510.435.7128 THE SAN FRANCISCO EARLY MUSIC SOCIETY ANNOUNCES ITS 2019-20 CONCERT SEASON
September 20 - 22 | COSTANOAN TRIO November 22 - 24 | AQUILA & TRES HERMANICAS December 13 | ACADEMY OF ANCIENT MUSIC January 10 - 12 | LES VOIX HUMAINES February 14 - 16 | MUSICA PACIFICA March 20 - 22 | RACHEL BARTON PINE & JORY VINIKOUR sfems.org SAN FRANCISCO, CA, August 8, 2019 -One of the nation's leading organizations for the advancement of early music, the San Francisco Early Music Society (SFEMS) has announced its 2019-20 season featuring six wide-ranging programs plus a three-concert series in partnership with the California Jazz Conservatory. The season runs from September 20 through March 22, with concerts presented in Palo Alto, Berkeley and San Francisco.
"This season we welcome the return of treasured friends - Musica Pacifica and Les Voix Humaines - in addition to many more artists new to our series, artists including violinist Rachel Barton Pine and harpsichordist Jory Vinikour, the medieval musicians of Aquila & Tres Hermanicas, the Costanoan Trio, and for a special Baroque holiday event, the Academy of Ancient Music," said Joyce Johnson Hamilton, SFEMS board president.
"Earlier this year we introduced Derek Tam as SFEMS' new executive director. We are delighted now to feature Derek in another role, as a fortepianist performing in the season's opening concert with the Costanoan Trio."
In addition to its six-concert season, SFEMS also continues its partnership with the California Jazz Conservatory, presenting three Sunday afternoon concerts of early music with an eye to the improvisational common thread that links early music and jazz.
On October 20, soprano Michele Kennedy, violinists Gail Hernández Rosa and Daria D'Andrea, cellist Frédéric Rosselet, bassist Daniel Turkos, and harpsichordist Melody Hung Nishinaga will perform a program of rarely-heard gems from the jungles of eastern Bolivia, works by indigenous composers from the 18th century, as well as Europeans who made their way to New Spain.
On January 19, narrator Nick Jones joins soprano Rita Lilly and Derek Tam on fortepiano in a program of English parlor music from the time of Jane Austen - works from Handel and Haydn to country dances and drinking songs.
Closing the series is a concert on May 10, Chinese Baroque, featuring David Wong on guqin and guzheng, and Addi Liu on violin. This unusual program explores the cultural exchanges between Western Europe and China in the 17th and 18th centuries, with works written by the missionary Teodorico Pedrini, as well as transcriptions of Chinese tunes as (mis)heard by Western ears.
Individual tickets for the California Jazz Conservatory series are $25. Tickets for SFEMS' mainstage concert season are $50, with discounts for seniors, students and season subscribers. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit sfems.org or call 510-528-1725. Detailed information about concert times and venues follows below. September 20 - 22 | COSTANOAN TRIO Representing "the best of emerging early music talent" (Early Music America), the Costanoan Trio is Cynthia Black, violin, Frédéric Rosselet, cello, and Derek Tam, fortepiano. Exploring the piano trio repertoire of the late 18th and early 19th centuries on period instruments, the Costanoan Trio attempts to recreate the world of domestic music-making in intimate concert spaces. Their program features trios by the four great composer-pianists of the late 18th century - Haydn, Mozart, Clementi and Beethoven.
November 22 - 24 | AQUILA & TRES HERMANICAS Two new medieval music ensembles team up for this concert celebrating Sephardic music and medieval cantigas. In Christian and Sephardic cultures, both the rose and the almond remain powerful symbols. The rose, marked by beauty and sensual fragrance, evokes love, fragility and the Virgin Mary, while the almond symbolizes renewal, hope and virginity. Among Sephardic communities, there also circulates a myth linking the bottom of the almond to the entrance to the underworld. This program celebrates the sacred and secular delights of both cultures through storytelling, song and dance.
December 13 | ACADEMY OF ANCIENT MUSIC Founded in Cambridge, England, in 1973, the Academy of Ancient Music is one of the most renowned organizations of the early music revival. Under the direction of Bojan Čičić, the orchestra will be joined by rising young soprano Rowan Pierce and trumpeter David Blackadder in a program of joyful music for the season with works by Clarke, Handel, Corelli, Tonelli, Handel and Purcell.
January 10 - 12 | LES VOIX HUMAINES The Quebecois group, Les Voix Humaines, including gambists Susie Napper and Margaret Little, has for more than three decades specialized in the performances of music from the French baroque. For their debut concert for SFEMS, however, they will take audiences on a deep dive into one of the greatest works of the English baroque: John Dowland's Lachrimae, or Seven Teares, written for five viols and lute.
February 14 - 16 | MUSICA PACIFICA David Greenberg, baroque violinist and Cape Breton-style fiddler extraordinaire, joins Musica Pacifica for a program of exciting, 18th-century Scottish traditional and baroque music. In this high-energy, foot-tapping program, Cape Breton's driving strathspeys and reels, soulful airs and merry jigs are heard alongside more studied compositions of Purcell, Barsanti, and Matteis and The Division Violin. The music of ancient Scottish composers James Oswald, "Red Rob" Mackintosh and Niel Gow delightfully blur distinctions between classical and folk music.
March 20 - 22 | RACHEL BARTON PINE & JORY VINIKOUR Two of today's finest exponents of their instruments perform some of the baroque era's greatest chamber music. Following the critically acclaimed release of their 2018 album of Johann Sebastian Bach's sonatas for violin and harpsichord, Rachel Barton Pine and Jory Vinikour team up again to present several of the sonatas on that album, as well as solo partitas written for their respective instruments.
ABOUT THE SAN FRANCISCO EARLY MUSIC SOCIETY
Founded in 1975, SFEMS is one of the nation's leading organizations for the advancement of historically informed performance of early music. Through its concert series, publications, outreach activities, affiliate support and educational programs SFEMS encourages the development of amateurs, supports professionals, and increases public involvement and participation in early music. SFEMS is the lead presenter of the Berkeley Festival & Exhibition of early music.
Among the hundreds of ensembles and solo artists SFEMS has supported over four-plus decades are many whose national or regional debuts occurred under its auspices: Anonymous 4, Benjamin Bagby, Frans Brüggen, Concerto Palatino, Fretwork, Laurette Goldberg, Hilliard Ensemble, John Holloway, Emma Kirkby & Anthony Rooley, Wieland Kuijken, Gustav Leonhardt, PAN, Joshua Rifkin, Jordi Savall, Max Van Egmond and Vox Luminis, to name a few. FACT SHEET WHO: Costanoan Trio
Cynthia Black, violin; Frédéric Rosselet, cello; Derek Tam, fortepiano
PROGRAM: The Harmonious Four
WHEN & WHERE: Friday, September 20 | PALO ALTO 8 p.m. @ First Presbyterian Church 1140 Cowper Street
Saturday, September 21 | BERKELEY 7:30 p.m. @ St. John's Presbyterian Church 2727 College Avenue
Sunday, September 22 | SAN FRANCISCO 4 p.m. @ Church of the Advent 251 Fell Street
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WHO: Aquila & Tres Hermanicas
Tres Hermanicas: Nell Snaidas, voice, early guitars; Shira Kammen, vielle, rebec, medieval harp, voice; Daphna Mor, voice, ney, recorders Aquila: Phoebe Rosquist, voice; Michele Kennedy, voice; Peter Maund, percussion; Gary Haggerty, oud, saz, percussion; Shira Kammen, vielle, rebec, medieval harp, voice
PROGRAM: Roses & Almonds
WHEN & WHERE: Friday, November 22 | PALO ALTO 8 p.m. @ First Presbyterian Church 1140 Cowper Street
Saturday, November 23 | BERKELEY 7:30 p.m. @ St. John's Presbyterian Church 2727 College Avenue
Sunday, November 24 | SAN FRANCISCO 4 p.m. @ Church of the Advent 251 Fell Street
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WHO: Academy of Ancient Music
Bojan Čičić, Director Rowan Pierce, soprano; David Blackadder, trumpet; Bojan Čičić, violin
PROGRAM: Rejoice
WHEN & WHERE: Friday, December 13| BERKELEY 8 p.m. @ First Congregational Church 2345 Channing Way
* * * WHO: Les Voix Humaines
Mélisande Corriveau, Margaret Little, Felix Deak, Marie-Laurence Primeau and Susie Napper, viols; with Nigel North, lute
PROGRAM: Lachrimae
WHEN & WHERE: Friday, January 10 | PALO ALTO 8 p.m. @ First Presbyterian Church 1140 Cowper Street
Saturday, January 11 | BERKELEY 7:30 p.m. @ St. John's Presbyterian Church 2727 College Avenue
Sunday, January 12 | SAN FRANCISCO 4 p.m. @ Church of the Advent 251 Fell Street
* * * WHO: Musica Pacifica
Judith Linsenberg, recorders; Ingrid Matthews and David Greenberg, violin; William Skeen, cello; Peter Maund, percussion; Charles Sherman, harpsichord
PROGRAM: Airs of Caledonia
WHEN & WHERE: Friday, February 14 | PALO ALTO 8 p.m. @ First Presbyterian Church 1140 Cowper Street
Saturday, February 15 | BERKELEY 7:30 p.m. @ St. John's Presbyterian Church 2727 College Avenue
Sunday, February 16 | SAN FRANCISCO 4 p.m. @ St. Mark's Lutheran Church 1111 O'Farrell Street
* * *
WHO: Rachel Barton Pine & Jory Vinikour
Rachel Barton Pine, violin; Jory Vinikour, harpsichord
PROGRAM: Music of Johann Sebastian Bach
WHEN & WHERE: Friday, March 20 | PALO ALTO 8 p.m. @ First Presbyterian Church 1140 Cowper Street
Saturday, March 21 | BERKELEY 7:30 p.m. @ First Presbyterian Church 2407 Dana Street
Sunday, March 22 | SAN FRANCISCO 4 p.m. @ Church of the Advent 251 Fell Street
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TICKETS: $50 general | $45 seniors | $15 students (under age 30 with ID, available only at box office)
Memberships and subscriptions for three or more concerts are available with discounts up to 25%.
Tickets may be purchased online at sfems.org or by phone at 510-528-1725. The box office may also be reached by email at tickets@sfems.org.
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High-resolution photos are available for download here.
For all other press inquiries, please contact John Hill at johnhillpr@gmail.com. San Francisco Early Music Society | P.O. Box 27495, San Francisco, CA 94127 Unsubscribe newsdesk@broadwayworld.com Update Profile | About Constant Contact Sent by johnhillpr@gmail.com in collaboration with Try email marketing for free today!