Dear Listings Editor, FOR: Amsterdam News

Fie on this recession! Let’s play, sing, and dance the ciacona to raise everyone’s spirits! ¡A la vida, vidita bona. Vida, vamanos a chacona!

Sinfonia New York offers a joyful, educational, and vivid program of music, dance, and song. Admission is FREE, as a gift to music lovers in the City.

Thanks for your attention…
Gene Murrow, Executive Director

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, April 27, 2009

CONTACT:
Gene Murrow, Executive Director
SINFONIA NEW YORK
Email
(212) 866 – 0468
www.sinfonianewyork.org

Sinfonia New York
John Scott, Music Director
Christine Gummere, Artistic Director

The Art & Ecstasy of the Chaconne:
From the streets of Spain to the mind of Bach

Date: Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Time: 8 pm

Location: Society for Ethical Culture
2 West 64th Street
New York, NY 10023

Tickets: FREE

Description:

Called "the most unbridled and passionate of dances," the chacona in 17th-century Spain involved whole body undulations, massive hip movements and indecent lyrics. It was banned by the Catholic Church. A person could get up to 200 lashes for dancing the chaconne - and ignoring the dictates of the Spanish Inquisition. As far as the rest of Europe was concerned, anything banned by the Inquisition deserved a closer look.

The concert on May 26th is a visual/musical history of the chaconne, from its origins as a wild and sacrilegious street dance in Spain to its apotheosis in the Bach D Minor Partita for Unaccompanied Violin. Music, dance, and song take us on a tour through Europe via Spain, Italy, England, France and Germany.

Technically, the chaconne, also called passacaille or ground, is a set of variations over a repeating bass line. Each country interprets the chaconne in its own way - quick and fiery, slow and sorrowful, elegant and refined.

In the Chaconne from the Partita in D minor for unaccompanied violin by J.S.Bach we arrive at the zenith of the form: a single voice playing the bass, the upper line, and, when needed, an inner line - a tour-de-force that employs one of the simplest and earthiest of forms to articulate the most profound human emotions.

Program:

The history of the chaconne in music, dance, and song:

Villancico - Juan del Encina
Quel sguardo sdegnosetto - Claudio Monteverdi
Chiacono for violin and continuo – Antonio Bertali
Sdegno campion – Virgilio Mazzocchi
Chacony in g minor - Henry Purcell
Dido’s Lament from Dido and Aeneas – Henry Purcell
Passacaille d’Armide from Armide - Jean-Baptiste Lully
Chaconne – Jean-Marie Leclair
Chaconne de Galatée from Acis et Galatée – Jean-Baptiste Lully
Bist du bei mir – G. H. Stözel
Chaconne from Partita in d minor for unaccompanied violin - Johann Sebastian Bach
Gran chacona (finale) – after Arañes

Artists:

Patricia Beaman. Carlos Fittante – dancers
Nell Snaidas - soprano
Judson Griffin, Christine Gummere
Claire Jolivet, Theresa Salomon – strings
Grant Herreid – lute
Sandra Miller – flute
John Scott – harpsichord

For further information or to set up an interview:

Call 212-866-0468 or Email Website: www.sinfonianewyork.org

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Media services provided by: Gotham Early Music Scene, Inc. 340 Riverside Drive # 1-A, New York, NY 10025 www.gemsny.org

Wednesday, July 30, 2009

CONTACT: -OR-

Gwendolyn Toth, Director Email
Gene Murrow, Executive Director Email
ARTEK Gotham Early Music Scene, Inc.
(212) 967 – 9157 (212) 866 – 0468
http://www.artekearlymusic.org

ARTEK
Gwendolyn Toth, Director

“Twenty-fifth New York Season”

ARTEK announces its 25th season of seven concerts in New York City and Princeton, New Jersey. The season features the ensemble’s debut at Bargemusic and Lincoln Center’s “What Makes it Great” with Rob Kapilow on the “Great Performers” series, and a gala 400th anniversary performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 produced in collaboration with the National Gallery of Art. Acclaimed in the United States and in Europe for their innovative yet historically informed performances of 17th-century music, ARTEK’s ensemble of voices, strings, winds, percussion, and continuo features many of today’s leading interpreters of the repertoire:

Program 1: Graveyard Music

Music & poetry celebrating death, dying and the underworld from 17th century England and Italy. Bargemusic debut!

Date: Saturday, October 31, 2009

Time: 8 pm

Location: Bargemusic, Fulton Landing, Brooklyn

Tickets: (718) 624-2083 or (718) 624-4061, or email

Note: This concert will also be performed on Friday, October 30, 2009 at 8pm at All Saints Church, Princeton, NJ.

Program 2: Monteverdi’s “Vespers of 1610”

Gala 400th anniversary performance of Monetverdi’s masterpiece, featuring an historically accurate ensemble of 30 instrumentalists and singers composed of several of America’s most celebrated early music groups— ARTEK, Piffaro (Renaissance wind band), Parthenia (viol consort), and singers from the National Gallery of Art Vocal Ensemble.

Date: Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Time: 8 pm

Location: Church of St. Ignatius Loyola
Park Avenue at 74th Street
Manhattan

Tickets: Call (212) 288-2520 or online at http://www.smssconcerts.org/tickets.php

Note: This concert will also be performed on Sunday, January 17, 2010 at 6:30 pm at The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Program 3: Venice to Vienna

Violinist Robert Mealy in a program of virtuoso baroque violin repertoire, accompanied by ARTEK's sumptuous continuo section (theorbo, lute, harp, guitar, gamba, lirone, harpsichord & organ.

Date: Sunday, March 21, 2010

Time: 4 pm

Location: Immanuel Church
122 East 88th St (corner of Lexington Avenue)
Manhattan

Tickets: Call (212) 866-0468 or online at: http://www.gemsny.org/artek2010.html

Note: This concert will also be performed on Friday, March 19, 2010 at 8 pm, All Saints Church, Princeton, NJ

Program 4: Monteverdi Madrigals

ARTEK joins master commentator, composer, conductor Rob Kapilow on his celebrated “What Makes it Great” series at Lincoln Center.

Date: Monday, May 3, 2010

Time: 7:30 pm

Location: Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th Street
Lincoln Center
Manhattan

Tickets: Call Centercharge at (212) 721-6500 or online at: http://www.lincolncenter.org/show_events_list.asp?eventcode=20329

About the ensemble:
ARTEK, directed by Gwendolyn Toth, has earned a reputation as one of America's premier ensembles performing 17th-century Italian and German music. The ensemble gained international recognition for its recording of Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo in 1995, and toured with the Mark Morris Dance Group throughout America, the United Kingdom, and Europe from 1997 to 2002. ARTEK created a special musical theater show I'll Never See the Stars Again, with madrigals by Monteverdi and postmodern staging, for performances in New York City in 2002 and 2003 and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2005, receiving high acclaim for this innovative dramatic presentation.

“What reaches the ears is the aural equivalent of a fine aged brandy: warm, smooth, and seamlessly blended.” The New York Times

Jessica Tranzillo, soprano
Barbara Hollinshead, mezzo-soprano
Biraj Birkakaty and Drew Minter, countertenors
Philip Anderson and Michael Brown, tenors
Peter Becker, baritone
Robert Mealy, violin
Lisa Terry, viola da gamba
Motomi Igarashi, violone
Christa Patton, harp
Charles Weaver, lute
Grant Herreid, lute
Daniel Swenberg, theorbo
Danny Mallon, Percussion
Dongsok Shin, harpsichord
Gwendolyn Toth, harpsichord and director

For further information or to set up an interview:
Call (212) 967 – 9157 or Email Website: http://www.artekearlymusic.org

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Media services provided by: Gotham Early Music Scene, Inc. 340 Riverside Drive # 1-A, New York, NY 10025 www.gemsny.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday, April 12, 2010

CONTACT:

Gene Murrow
Gotham Early Music Scene, Inc.
(212) 866 – 0468
Email

SALON/SANCTUARY CONCERTS
Monica Huggett, violin, and Audrey Axinn, fortepiano

Internationally celebrated baroque violinist Monica Huggett, the first Artistic Director of The Juilliard School's new Historical Performance Program, accompanied by fortepianist and Juilliard faculty member Audrey Axinn, offers a recital of violin sonatas from the classical period at 8 pm on Thursday, May 6, 2010 at the Abigail Adams Smith Auditorium. The Auditorium at 417 East 61st Street is part of the 18th-century Mount Vernon House and Museum complex, and providing an unusually intimate and historically resonant venue for these works.

Listing Information

Date:
Thursday May 6, 2010
Time: 8 pm
Location: Abigail Adams Smith Auditorium
417 East 61st Street (between York and First Avenues),
Manhattan
Public Transportation: N, R, W or 4, 5, 6 trains to Lexington Avenue/59th Street
M31 or M57 bus
Artists: Monica Huggett, baroque violin
Audrey Axinn, fortepiano
Program: Violin sonatas by Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven, and von Weber
Tickets: $25 per concert, general admission
Order online at: www.gemsny.org
Telephone: (212) 866 – 0468
Email
OR at the door

Program
Sonata in D Major, D. 384
Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828)
Sonata in E-flat Major. KV 380
Wolfgang A. Mozart (1756 – 1791)
Sonata in F Major, Op. 24, "Spring"
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827)
Sonata in G Major, Op. 10, no. 2
Carl Maria von Weber (1786 – 1826)

About the Artists

Monica Huggett has an international reputation as one of the foremost baroque violinists of our time. During her studies of modern violin at the Royal Academy of Music she was introduced to the baroque violin and immediately felt a complete empathy with the instrument. She has been one of its most fervent champions ever since. From age seventeen, Monica has earned her living solely as a violinist and artistic director – beginning in London as a freelance violinist – and currently as the newly-appointed first artistic director of the Juilliard School’s Historical Performance Program and Artistic Director of the Portland Baroque Orchestra. In the intervening four decades, she co-founded the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra with Ton Koopman; founded her own London-based ensemble Sonnerie; worked with Christopher Hogwood at the Academy of Ancient Music; with Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert; and toured the United States in concert with James Galway. She has served as guest director of the Arion Baroque Orchestra, Montreal; Tafelmusik, Toronto; the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; Philharmonia Baroque, San Francisco; the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra; the Seville Baroque Orchestra; and Concerto Copenhagen. She also performs frequently as a solo violinist all over the world. She has recorded for EMI, Decca, Teldec, Erato, Phillips and many other labels.

Audrey Axinn appears regularly throughout the United States and Europe performing on early and modern keyboard instruments. She debuted as a fortepianist in 1999 at the Boston Early Music Festival and has become a sought-after specialist in eighteenth and early nineteenth-century music. Critics have written: “Axinn is an artist…her touch is magical and the fluidity of her playing exceptional. Her musical sensibility reminds one of Landowska.”

She has performed recitals at the Edinburgh International Festival, the Vleeshuis Museum in Antwerp, the Willet-Holthuysen Museum in Amsterdam and the the Cappella de’Turchini in Naples and here in New York at the Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall, Bargemusic, the 92nd Street, Merkin Concert Hall and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has partnered with some exceptional performers including Jaime Laredo, Sharon Robinson, Eugene Fodor, Matt Haimovitz, Daniel Heifetz, Gil Morgenstern and Hila Plitmann and has recorded for Koch International and Newport Classics labels.

Ms. Axinn is on the faculty of The Juilliard School where she teaches fortepiano chamber music. She is currently in her second year as Assistant Dean at the Mannes College of Music where she also teaches classes in performance practice and instrumental accompanying. She holds a Masters degree and a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree from The Juilliard School, as well as degrees from The Curtis Institute of Music and Manhattan School of Music.

Ms. Axinn has studied for many years with esteemed piano pedagogue, Zitta Zohar. She studied in the Netherlands on a Fulbright Scholarship with Stanley Hogland and Bart van Oort and has also worked with Malcolm Bilson and Jos van Immerseel.

About the Series

The Salon/Sanctuary series offers an opportunity to hear early music in the kinds of spaces for which it was intended. Sacred music is presented in the intimate Church of the Epiphany, while salon repertoire will be heard in the 1799 Abigail Adams Smith Museum.

Salon/Sanctuary is sponsored by the Gruson Fund for Brain Tumor Research and Care and produced by Gotham Early Music Scene, Inc. Both believe that our need for the arts becomes ever more urgent in times of stress, whether our plight involves a stagnant economy or intractable illness. A simple concert becomes a sacred window of tranquility, and the salon becomes a sanctuary from daily troubles.

Tickets for each of the five series concerts are $25, general admission. All proceeds after expenses benefit scientific research in search of a cure.

About the Sponsor
The Gruson Fund for Brain Tumor Research and Care is a non-profit organization dedicated to encourage and support scientific research to advance the treatment of and the eventual cure of brain tumors. In furtherance of this objective, The Gruson Fund: Funds research into the causes of brain tumors and the most advantageous techniques and types of treatment available to brain tumor patients, advances research on an international level by supporting lectures, collaborative projects and fellowships among educational institutions and hospitals; and works with educational and other non-profit organizations having the same objectives as The Gruson Fund.

For further information, please see: www.grusonfund.org

The Church of the Epiphany has generously donated their space for these concerts.

About the Producer

Gotham Early Music Scene, Inc. (GEMS) is a non-profit corporation dedicated to advancing and promoting the music of the medieval, Renaissance, baroque and classical periods in New York City. GEMS promotes excellence in our field by producing projects of exceptional quality (e.g. Sinfonia New York’s concerts, The Play of Daniel at the Cloisters, the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 at St. Ignatius of Loyola, our annual fall showcase concerts), supports the professional community with a number of critical services (publicity and marketing, online ticketing, front-of-house), and secures work for New York based musicians throughout the country via our active booking agency, GEMS Live!

For further information or to set up an interview:
www.gemsny.org Email (212) 866-0468

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Media services provided by: Gotham Early Music Scene, Inc., 340 Riverside Drive #1-A, New York, NY 10025; www.gemsny.org.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

CONTACT:
Amelia Roosevelt, Repast Baroque Ensemble
347-453-9137
www.repastbaroque.org
Email

-OR-

Gene Murrow
Gotham Early Music Scene, Inc.
(212) 866 – 0468
Email

Repast Baroque Ensemble

Dreams of the Sun King
Music of the French Baroque

Date: Thursday, May 6, 2010
Time: 8 pm
Location: Baruch Performing Arts Center
55 Lexington Ave at 25th Street
(entrance on 25th Street between Lexington and 3rd Ave)

Transportation: Subway - #6 to 23rd Street
Bus – M101/102 Lexington & Third Avenues
M23 Crosstown
Tickets: $25 General
$12 Students & Seniors

Theatermania (212) 352-3101 or www.theatermania.com
For detailed information, visit www.repastbaroque.org

Names of Artists:

Amelia Roosevelt, baroque violin
John Mark Rozendaal, viola da gamba
Avi Stein, harpsichord
With guest Debra Nagy, baroque oboe

Description:

Repast begins with Lully's bed-time music for King Louis XIV and journeys through 18th Century France, including works by Couperin, Marais, and Rameau.

About the Artists:

Debra Nagy, baroque oboe and director, performs frequently with baroque ensembles and orchestras in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Cleveland, Denver, Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. In addition, Debra performs on shawms and recorders with Ciaramella, a group devoted to fifteenth-century music, and has been a guest with Piffaro, the Newberry Consort, and Blue Heron. She received her doctorate in Early Music at Case Western Reserve University in 2007, where she currently directs the Collegium Musicum. A graduate of Oberlin, Debra was the first-prize winner in the 2002 American Bach Soloists Young Artist Competition, and spent 2002-2003 researching Renaissance double reed instruments in Brussels and Amsterdam as the recipient of a Belgian American Educational Foundation Grant. Debra can be heard on the Capstone, Bright Angel, Naxos, Hänssler Classics, and ATMA labels and has had live performances featured on CBC Radio Canada, Klara (Belgium), WQXR (New York City), WCLV (Cleveland), WKSU (Kent), and WGBH Boston.

Described as "A graceful, energetic ensemble . . ." and acclaimed for its "vital performances" and "robust" playing by Allan Kozinn of The New York Times,Repast is a collaboration of three period-instrument virtuosi presenting vivid renditions of music of the baroque era. The group’s name, meaning a meal or a feast, is a double-entendre: out of the revival of past music comes a delectable, spiritually nourishing experience.

For further information or to set up an interview: Call 347-453-9137 or Email Website: www.repastbaroque.org.

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Media services provided by: Gotham Early Music Scene, Inc., 340 Riverside Drive #1-A, New York, NY 10025; www.gemsny.org.