The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: FREE Just Bach concerts start again this Wednesday at noon. Bach Around the Clock has almost filled performing slots

January 19, 2020
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ALERT: Bach Around the Clock, a daylong celebration of the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach with performances by professional and amateur musicians, will take place on Saturday, March 28, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, 1833 Regent Street, in Madison. The festival schedule of performers is almost full, but a few spaces are still available. Please contact BATC soon if you are thinking about performing.

By Jacob Stockinger

The Just Bach series of FREE monthly noontime concerts (below) will start again this week on Wednesday, Jan. 22, at noon at Luther Memorial Church, 1021 University Avenue.

It is free and open to the public, with a goodwill offering collected. Food and beverages for lunch are allowed. 

Singers for the concert are: Sarah Brailey, soprano; Lindsey Meekhof, mezzo-soprano; James Mauk, tenor; and UW-Madison professor Paul Rowe, bass-baritone (below, in a photo by Michael R. Anderson).

The period-instrument players are: Brian Ellingboe, bassoon; Marika Fischer Hoyt, violin 1; Thalia Coombs, violin 2; Micah Behr, viola; Anton TenWolde, cello; and Mark Brampton Smith, organ.

The concert will open with the Toccata and Fugue in F Major, BWV 540, performed by organist Mark Brampton Smith (below).

Just Bach co-founder, UW graduate student and acclaimed soprano Sarah Brailey (below) will lead the chorale sing-along, a beloved audience-participation feature of the programs.

The concert closes with Cantata 155 ‘Mein Gott, wie lang,’ ach lange?’ (My God, how long, ah, how long?). You can hear the title aria in the YouTube video at the bottom.

Says co-founder and baroque violist-violinist Marika Fischer Hoyt (below): “It is a beautiful five-movement work about enduring the darkness of hard times and emerging once more into the light.

“The four vocal soloists shine in the first four movements (including an alto-tenor duet featuring a lovely bassoon obbligato part), and the Cantata concludes with a Chorale in which all take part.

Other Just Bach concerts this spring, all Wednesdays at noon, are: Feb. 19, March 25, April 15 and May 20.

Future programs will be announced at: https://justbach.org


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Classical music: The New Milwaukee Consort performs Renaissance and early Baroque love songs this Monday night in Spring Green

August 3, 2019
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By Jacob Stockinger

The Rural Musicians Forum will present the New Milwaukee Consort in a program of Baroque love songs on this coming Monday, Aug. 5, at 7:30 p.m. at the Unity Chapel in Spring Green.

This group of professionals and experts in early music includes soprano Kristin Knutson (below top), who competed in the 2015 Handel Aria Competition  in Madison (in the YouTube video at the bottom);  cellist and viol player Charlie Rasmussen (below middle); and lutenist Tim Sterner Miller (below bottom). They will perform on period instruments, bringing audiences back in time to the courts and chambers of Italy, England and France.

The New Milwaukee Consort is dedicated to the music of the European Renaissance and Baroque eras, crafting intimate performances around stories in words and music that resonate across the centuries.

They particularly relish bringing lesser-known sounds of the 17th century to modern audiences, from the work of women composers such as Barbara Strozzi (below) to music from handwritten manuscripts documenting the early development of the cello and ongoing experiments on the lute.

This concert features music from the chamber cantatas of the Venetian singer and composer Strozzi to celebrate her 400th birthday as well as works by her compatriots Claudio Monteverdi and Taruinio Merula; Elizabethan songs by lutenist and composer John Dowland (below); and “airs de cour” (Court music) by French court composer Etienne Moulinie.

Interwoven with these vocal works are pieces for the lute by Dowland and his contemporary Nicholas Vallet; for the viola da gamba by Tobia Hume and Marin Marais (below); and for the cello by Giulio Ruvo, Francesco Supriani and Giuseppe Jacchini.

This is an opportunity to enjoy some of the most precious pieces of Renaissance and Baroque era in the beautiful Unity Chapel (below) designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

The Chapel is located at 6597 County Highway T in Spring Green.

Admission is by free will offering, with a suggested donation of $15.


Posted in Classical music
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