Kim Leeds and Dani Zanuttini-Frank make their SoHIP debut with a compelling program of English and Italian music that explores imagery of burning love and icy rejection. Lute songs of the 17th century prominently feature these amorous themes, often through surprising allegories of pastoral idylls, militaristic conquests, and discordant bodily organs. Across its different allegorical incarnations, love pushes our 17th century poets to the physical breaking point: blazing heat and bitter cold express love's blistering sensation throughout this program. The duo performs works by Girolamo Frescobaldi, Barbara Strozzi, Francesca Caccini, Henry Purcell, William Lawes, and others. Learn More

EPSG:4326

Blistering Passions

The Chapel at West Parish

Emmanuel Church

St. Anne's Episcopal Church

Xacarilla explores the sumptuous sound world of 17th-c. Spanish songs and dances. “Cantos y Suspiros” tells of the pleasures and treacheries of love as depicted in nature by the birds, wind, sea, and forest. This rich poetic landscape is illuminated by the music of master composers Juan Hidalgo, Juan de Návas, José Marín, Cristóbal Galán, Santiago de Murcia, Diego Fernández de Huete, and others. Selected songs from a collection held at the Hispanic Society of America in New York City round out the program. Colombian soprano Camila Parias’ crystalline tone joins eloquent plucked strings, plaintive winds, and colorful percussion to bring to life these rarely-heard love songs. Learn More

Cantos Y Suspiros

Sempervirens presents a brand new program spanning the Middle Ages to the present day. Four virtuoso recorder players join forces to perform music originally written for lute, organ, piano, voice, saxophone, and even symphony orchestra, all arranged to highlight the remarkable sound of the recorder consort. This highly varied repertoire includes vocal works by 15th-c. Franco-Flemish masters Busnois and Josquin, keyboard variations of Bach and Sweelinck, selections from Ligeti’s Bagatelles and Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, and dances ranging from the Medieval estampie to the Romantic tango. You’ll discover music that’s so compelling, Sempervirens just had to make arrangements to play it! 

Let’s Make Arrangements

The Berlin Trio will present a set of quartets featuring the enchanting and unusual instrumentation of flute, viola, and fortepiano. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach composed these distinctive quartets in 1788, and they embody the expressive and innovative style characteristic of Berlin court composers during this transitional period between the late Baroque and early Classical eras. The writing is equitable for all three instruments, with elegant motives and virtuosic embellishments gracefully exchanged between them. Autographs from arts patron Sara Levy’s personal library suggest that she commissioned these quartets for her salon, which served as a hub for intellectuals, attracting some of the most talented composers associated with King Frederick “the Great’s” court. 

The 18th-century Salon: Music By Bach’s Son

Guts Baroque with featured guest Andrus Madsen will perform whimsical, varied, and fantastical instrumental music from the 17th-century courts of what is now Germany and Austria. Emperor Leopold I, himself a musician and composer, brought several prominent Italian musicians across the Alps to Vienna. These guests, including violin virtuoso Antonio Bertali, received good salaries and plenty of opportunities to perform, to compose, and to teach the new generation of German musicians the Stylus Fantasticus: the Italian style of purely instrumental fantasies made popular by Italian composers such as Girolamo Frescobaldi. Bertali’s student Johann Heinrich Schmelzer further developed the style, and his innovations helped spread it throughout what is now Germany, teaching and inspiring other prominent composers including Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber. Learn More

Fantasticus!

The Pandora Consort explores the mystical visions of Hildegard von Bingen through her illuminations and music. Hildegard is an impressive figure in many regards; she was a theologian, philosopher, botanist, doctor, magistra (mother superior), and one of the first named composers of music. Hildegard experienced visions (“umbra viventis lucis” or “the reflection of the living light”) from the age of three up to her death, and many of her writings and illuminations are a result of these visions. Hildegard’s writings, visions, and music are inextricably linked in her life and philosophy. Taking inspiration from her life, we weave them together in a concert program focused on four of her most famous visions that influenced her spiritual philosophy. Working with visual artist Cate Duckwall to bring these visions to life, this concert features music from Hildegard’s vast oeuvre accompanied by artistic animations of key illuminations, creating a multimedia experience. Learn More

Hildegard Reanimated: Vision In Vision

MIRYAM traces the thread of Jewish resilience and creativity from medieval Iberia to Baroque Amsterdam. Shir Levi’im (the song of the Levites) refers both to the ancient Levites who sang psalms of worship in the Temple, and 11th c. Sephardic poet Yehuda Halevi, whose surname evokes this musical heritage. In 1593, Portuguese Jews began to resettle in Amsterdam, and by 1675 the thriving community had built the Esnoga or synagogue. Its library contains a wealth of historical documents including Hebrew-language musical scores spanning the late Baroque and early Classical eras. This collection allows a glimpse into the rich musical life of the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam, who commissioned works from both Christian and Jewish composers. The program features music of Caceres and Lidarti, mystical poems by Yehuda Halevi, and a new setting of the Kaddish Shalem, a central prayer of thanksgiving and praise. Learn More

Shir Levi’im: A Song Of Levites

The experience of exile can take many forms–from banishment to estrangement to homesickness. The despair of being unwillingly separated from all that is familiar resonates deeply in the human soul. Voices and viols unite in 16th-century polyphony from Spain, France, Holland, Italy, England, and Germany that depicts both physical and psychological exile. From well-known composers Dowland, Rossi, and Ferrabosco to the less known Ruimonte, Camphuysen, and Cavendish, the ensemble has sought out a variety of perspectives on displacement and isolation. Two New England composers, Will Ayton and Roy Sansom, contribute contemporary perspectives on ancient themes. As our society experiences social fragmentation, massive migration, and wars between neighbors, the themes of exile and separation resonate with many of us. This concert connects us across time with people who experienced similar upheavals and sought hope through music just as we do today. Learn More

So Far From Home

This newly researched program celebrates the virtuosic repertory of nun composers. The music stretches across several eras and empires, from the convents of 17th-century Italy, forward to contemporary Ethiopia with music by Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, and all the way back to the 9th-century Eastern Roman Empire with the works of Kassia of Byzantium. This program ignites the heart with Rosa Giacinta Badalla’s exuberant Alleluias, delights the mind with Kassia’s meditative chants, animates the body with Chiara Margarita Cozzolani’s passionate depictions, and sweetens the soul with Hildegard von Bingen’s soaring melodies. Suore Project takes inspiration from these composers’ cloistered lives and their valiant efforts to perform and publish amidst restrictions on musical expression.

Suore Project

West Parish

St. Anne's in-the-Fields

The Pandora Consort presents a musical exploration of the role of women and witchcraft throughout history. This performance features vocal works ranging from Hildegard von Bingen to New England folk songs to ensemble works by living composers Amy Beth Kirsten and Kerry Andrews. The music is accompanied by poetry and art that embodies the spirit of rebellious women, and it draws from historical accounts of accused witches and witchcraft with a modern interpretation of creating one’s own feminine power. The Pandora Consort and guest vocalists Gina Marie Falk and Lea Peterson weave a musical spell you’ll not soon forget. 

The Pandora Consort

Virtuosic chamber music with specified instrumental parts flourished in Italy in the early 1600s, especially in the cities of Venice and Rome, as shown in the dramatic works of Cavalli, Marini, and Castello among others. This was echoed later in the century in the Germanic lands to the north, especially in the Habsburg Empire and the Hanseatic League, in the strange and intriguing sonatas of Schmelzer, Bertali, Legrenzi, and their contemporaries. Bridging these northern and southern schools is ARDENZA, a new ensemble passionate about the 17th century. In addition to the delightful, built-in tempo and dynamic contrasts that define this repertoire, the full instrumentation is contrasted with solos and duets featuring all members of the ensemble. 

Ardenza

The early Baroque was a time of experimentation, when stylistic elements of Renaissance polyphony met and mingled with the developing practice of basso continuo. England and Italy saw a blossoming interest in virtuosic instrumental music which later became 18th-c. suite and sonata forms. Contrasting moods and tempi of these early works would later develop into standardized Baroque sonatas with their own florid style of melodrama. Loosely-organized instrumental suites have one foot in the older world of consort music and familiar dance forms, and the other in the new, filling out the harmonies with a continuo section. Mystic River Baroque employs a broad palette of timbres and characters to highlight the colorful, mercurial music of Castello, Cima, Locke and others.

Mystic River Baroque

Hesperus brings their famous “cine-concert” to Boston and accompanies the classic silent film “The Three Musketeers” starring Douglas Fairbanks. The year is 1625, and swashbuckling swordsman D’Artagnan joins forces with the Three Musketeers to save the French Queen’s honor from the machinations of the cruel Cardinal Richelieu. This 1921 melodrama, an adaptation of Alexander Dumas’ 1844 novel, comes alive with a real-time soundtrack of French renaissance dances, folk songs, and theatrical chansons by Gervaise, Compère, Sermisy and others performed on period instruments. 

Hesperus

The Boston Recorder Orchestra, the nation’s only Renaissance recorder orchestra, brings together professional and community players performing on a handmade, matched set of instruments ranging from garklein to contrabass by Italian master craftsman Francesco LiVirghi. This program presents the many voices of the orchestra in intertwining conversations of Renaissance polyphony, madrigals of women and black composers, grand works for antiphonal choirs, Ukrainian traditional music, sparkling dances, and a few crickets. Ten sizes of Renaissance recorders highlight the magnificent works of Josquin des Prés, John Dunstable, Vittoria Aleotti, Vicente Lusitano, Claude Gervaise and more.

Boston Recorder Orchestra

We welcome back Handel and Haydn Society cellists Sarah Freiberg and Colleen McGary-Smith, who formed the duo Tutti Bassi in 2012 to explore the rich repertoire of baroque cello sonatas and duos on original instruments. The duo chose some favorites to record on their 2022 album "Have Cellos, Will Travel" and is excited to share these 18th-c. musical gems with SoHIP audiences. The program includes works by Johann Ernst Galliard, Giovanni Batista Cirri, Stephen Paxton, Willem De Fesch, Francesco Barsanti, the slightly better-known Joseph Bodin de Boismortier (1689-1755) and the very popular Anonymous–-in the form of cello duos of popular 18th-century French tunes published in Paris

Society For Historically Informed Performance

6 - 8 Aug, 2024

Blistering Passions

Jul 30 - Aug 1, 2024

Cantos Y Suspiros

Society For Historically Informed Performance