Early Festivities at Close Encounters with Music: “Baroque Pantheo, A Holiday Concert!”
It’s an evening of Baroque composers, but with a twist: Vivaldi’s sun-dappled orchestral work appears on the program, of course; but there’s also Francesco Geminiani’s Concerto for Two Violins, the lesser-known Giuseppe Valentini, and Henirich Ignatz Frantz von Biber’s Battalia, designed for exhibition and entertainment and demonstrating an experimentalism not generally associated with the Baroque. Welcome to the Close Encounters With Music early holiday celebration where the Baroque pantheon just took on a few worthy new members!
For their third appearance with Close Encounters With Music, Camerata San Marco, an all-women ensemble fashioned after Vivaldi’s La Pietà orphanage players, is joined by violin soloists Jonathan Keren and Cordelia Hagmann and cellist Yehuda Hanani. The concert, Saturday, December 4, 6 PM at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, also includes C.PE. Bach’s Symphony in G, brimming with his signature inventiveness and improvisatory élan.
The new Baroque ensemble Camerata San Marco is comprised of outstanding soloists and chamber musicians who have performed at international festivals and with leading ensembles in concert halls around the world: Marlboro, Kneisel Hall, Alice Tully, Da Capo Chamber Players, Bargemusic, Aspen, and Prussia Cove. They are noted for their precision of attack and synthesis of Baroque performance practice with contemporary virtuosity.
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC
Close Encounters With Music stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Kenji Bunch, John Musto, among others—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and William Wolfram; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.
TICKET INFORMATION
Tickets, $40 (orchestra and mezzanine) and $30 (balcony), are available at The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100, or through Close Encounters With Music at 800-843-0778 or by emailing [email protected]. Subscriptions are $175 ($150 for seniors) for a series of 6 concerts. Visit our website at www.cewm.org.
Note: Tickets for June 4th concert at Tanglewood’s Ozawa Hall can be purchased through CEWM only.
2010-11 CALENDAR
Chamber Orchestra Kremlin, Saturday, October 16, 6PM
Baroque Pantheon: A Holiday Concert Saturday, December 4, 6PM
Thus Spake German Romanticism Saturday, March 12, 6PM
Viola Quintets: Dvorak and Mendelssohn Saturday, April 16, 6PM
The Avalon Quartet: Steve Reich, Osvaldo Golijov and Schubert Saturday, May 7, 6PM
These five performances at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, MA. A reception with light refreshments follows each concert.
Tickets for Conversations with…. events on Sundays, November 21 and May 15, Hudson Opera House, Hudson NY, are $15 per person which includes refreshments.
Fiesta! A Latin Splash of Music and Dance takes place Saturday, June 4, 6PM, at Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, Lenox, MA. Tickets: $50 Orchestra and Loges; $40 Balconies.
For information and tickets for the inaugural season of Close Encounters with Music at the Frick Museum in NYC call 212.547.0696 or www.frick.org.
“A chamber music series on a par with anything heard at the height of the season. For this, we year-rounders are blessed.” —Rogovoy Report
“There’s a palpable mystique about these Close Encounters concerts.” —Berkshire Eagle
“STUNNER CLOSES SEASON! Though Hanani, Prutsman and Upshaw all performed with that rare combination of mutual understanding and technical finesse which makes for the most satisfying chamber music, Hanani deserves special recognition for his astute program choices.”
—Albany Times Union
“An all-star lineup…CEWM’s usual high caliber.” —Metroland
