Join us for our Festival finale with Vox Luminis, performing Johann Sebastian Bach’s iconic Magnificat, as well as a setting of the same text by Bach’s venerable predecessor at St. Thomas’s Church in Leipzig, Johann Kuhnau. Enjoy these two sumptuous and exuberant works, which demonstrate the high level of instrumental and vocal playing available to Kuhnau and Bach over their seven decades as cantors of St. Thomas. This exultant Christmas in June will leave listeners eagerly awaiting the return of the Festival in 2024.

EPSG:4326

Vox Luminis

First Congregational Church

This concert features all of William Lawes’ extraordinary music for six viols, played by the Barefoot All-Stars!
Lawes was the most innovative of the post-Elizabethan composers. The “Setts” for six viols are a cornerstone of the repertoire, combining complex counterpoint with daring harmonic invention and an idiosyncratic melodic sense.
The Barefoot All-Stars have been bringing viol consort music to the Bay Area for nearly a decade. Formed as an occasional ad hoc group of viol players for the popular Barefoot Chamber Concerts series, the All-Stars have become a local institution.

The Barefoot All-Stars

The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life

Fire & Grace & Ash (Edwin Huizinga, violin; William Coulter, guitar; Ashley Broder, mandolin) join forces with mezzo-soprano Kara Dugan in a compelling musical journey, taking the music of Johann Sebastian Bach as the starting point for a dynamic fusion of Baroque and folk, spanning the centuries from Vivaldi to the “father of bluegrass,” Bill Monroe! This concert promises to keep your foot tapping as you waltz home from a late night at the Festival!

Fire & Grace & Ash

Saint Mark's Episcopal Church

This is the opera for our times! Delve into the life of Artemisia Gentileschi—internationally-renowned painter and modern feminist icon—in this unique one-woman show featuring singer and actress Sarah Chalfy, from New York-based ensemble ARTEK (Gwendolyn Toth, director). She led a life more dramatic than an Italian opera: trained in art by her father, raped as a teenager, Artemisia survived a sensational trial to become an internationally renowned painter, and the secret lover of a Florentine nobleman.

ARTEK: Artemisia—Light and Shadow

The first American musician to win major international prizes in both organ and harpsichord, Dirst is widely admired for his stylish playing and conducting. This hour-long program, featuring music from an era when leading composers largely ignored the organ—”the king of instruments”—includes masterworks like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Adagio and Allegro in F Minor” (KV 594) and a delightful trio sonata by Johann Ludwig Krebs.

Additional works include concertos by John Stanley, who succeeded Handel as organ soloist for the Covent Garden oratorios, and Christian Friederich Rüppe, whose sole surviving keyboard concerto, according to its original source, is suitable for performance on either fortepiano or organ.

Music from the Organ’s Nadir—Between Bach and Mendelssohn

On January 10, 1430, Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy founded the chivalric confraternity known as the Order of the Golden Fleece. Dedicated to “the exaltation of the faith and the Holy Church,” “the honor of St. Andrew,” and “the practice of virtues and good habits,” the Order and its members supported the creation of some of Europe’s most exquisite polyphony in the late 1400s. In this concert, GRAMMY Award-winning ensemble Chanticleer will present a program that includes music by Guillaume Du Fay, Johannes Ockeghem, Antoine Busnois, and Cristóbal Morales.

Founded in 1978 as an affiliate of The San Francisco Early Music Society, then also in its infancy, this is Chanticleer’s first appearance at the Festival in over a decade and a half. We are delighted to return to SFEMS’s roots in this special concert!

CHANTICLEER: No Mean Reward—Chanticleer and the Golden Fleece

In this engrossing presentation, baritone and musicologist Jean Bernard Cerin explores the tale—across centuries and continents—of “Lisette quitté la plaine,” a enduringly popular folk tune from Cerin’s native Haiti. From France and Pennsylvania, to Louisiana and back to Haiti, the remarkable journey of “Lisette” over two centuries is a testament to the connecting power of music, as well as to the complicated legacies of empire and enslavement.

This program will feature a showing of “Lisette,” a feature-length documentary by Cerin and Brandi Berry, as well as performances from Cerin, who will be joined by Bay Area-based soprano Michele Kennedy, as well as pianist and musicologist Nicholas Mathew.

Lisette—A Song’s Journey From Haiti and Back

The future is now! Early Music America’s (EMA) Emerging Artists Showcase will present several competitively-chosen ensembles that reflect the future of historically informed performance. The groups will be announced in the space in late March, so please stay tuned for what promises to be an exciting announcement!

As the premier service organization for the field in North America, EMA has paved the way for greater appreciation for early music for over three decades.

Early Music America: Emerging Artists Showcase

Internationally-renowned Festival favorite Vox Luminis returns with Dietrich Buxtehude’s remarkable meditation on the body of the crucified Christ. A work of deep profundity, the seven-cantata Membra Jesu nostri employs relatively limited vocal and instrumental forces—for the most part, five voice parts, two violins and basso continuo—to create an atmosphere of dramatic exultation. Be prepared to be entranced by Vox Luminis’s traversal of this most ambitious work by the master of Lübeck.

Vox Luminis: Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu nostri

As one of the first great music historians, Charles Burney met many of the most famous musical personages of his time, while actively seeking out “old music.” His tours across Europe in the early 1770s culminated in the writing of the four-volume A General History of Music, the first work of its kind in the English language and still an invaluable resource about the tastes and interests of late-eighteenth-century audiences.

In this recital, renowned keyboardists Annette Richards and David Yearsley take the listener through Burney’s travels as he might have done, recounting them to his friends and daughters during many an evening soirée. Enjoy both a geographical, as well as an organological tour, as Richards and Yearsley play music from Italy, Germany, and Spain on the organ, harpsichord, and fortepiano.

A Musical Tour Recollected in Company—Tracing Burney

University of California, Berkeley

The “queen of the Baroque violin” (Sunday Times), Festival favorite Rachel Podger returns with a selection of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sonatas and partitas for solo violin, a foundation of the Baroque repertoire. Podger’s now-classic recording of the complete set of sonatas and partitas has become a benchmark account of these masterworks, and this special one-night-only concert is sure not to disappoint!

Bach Sonatas and Partitas

Beloved Bay Area favorites Cynthia Keiko Black (violin), Elizabeth Blumenstock (violin), Corey Jamason (harpsichord), and Elisabeth Reed (viola da gamba) join together for a dynamic program of deeply expressive chamber music from 17th-century Germany and Austria. Enjoy music for solo and duo violins, viola da gamba, and harpsichord by Dietrich Becker, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, Dieterich Buxtehude, Johann Jakob Froberger, Johann Pachelbel, and Johann Heinrich Schmelzer.

Black, Blumenstock, Jamason & Reed: Teutonic Titans

San Francisco Conservatory of Music

In the second and final concert of their American and Festival debut, the Sollazzo Ensemble explores the intellectual ferment that was 14th-century Florence, the epicenter of a cultural blossoming that has shaped Italian culture until the present day. Savor sacred and secular works by Francesco Landini, Vincenzo da Rimini, as well as various Florentine composers known only by their first name (Donato, Giovanni, Lorenzo, and Paolo). Don’t miss this rich exploration of the glories of the trecento!

The winners of the prestigious 2015 York Early Music International Young Artists Competition, the Sollazzo Ensemble has become one Europe’s most sought-after medieval ensembles.

Sollazzo Ensemble: Firenze 1350

Although we were unable to celebrate Ludwig van Beethoven’s 250th birthday at the 2020 Festival, cellist Keiran Campbell (principal, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra) and fortepianist Sezi Seskir (Bucknell University) join forces for an exploration of music by Beethoven and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, whose embracing of the empfindsamer Stil (“sensitive style”) presaged Beethoven’s dramatic extravagances. Among works the duo will play will include Beethoven’s Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 5, No. 2; as well as C.P.E. Bach’s Gamba Sonata in C major, Wq. 136.

Beethoven and C.P.E. Bach

In this intimate and imaginative recital, soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon (“dazzling, virtuoso singing,” Boston Globe) and fortepianist Nicholas Mathew explore female figures on the boundaries of society, from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “Mignon,” as seen through the eyes of Robert Schumann; to Franz Schubert’s monumental “Viola” (Blumenballade; D. 786) and “Vergissmeinnicht” (“Forget-me-not,” D. 792), which explore female sexuality and desire in utterly contrasting ways.Fitz Gibbon and Mathew will also present Clara Schumann’s Sechs Lieder, Op. 13; despite her lifelong reputation as a celebrity pianist, Clara’s modern-day fame has more often than not unjustly focused on her role as Robert’s champion, rather than for her considerable compositional talents.This concert will be presented on a replica of an 1820 Viennese piano by Conrad Graf, whose instruments were favored by all three composers.

Dark Dreams—Lieder of Franz Schubert, Clara Schumann, & Robert Schumann

Our opening day festivities continue with a trio of Bach cantatas presented by local early music luminaries, the Cantata Collective. For this performance, they will be joined by the luminous soprano Sherezade Panthaki—a Bay Area favorite frequently featured with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale—as well as the dignified baritone Paul Max Tipton. In addition to presenting two beloved cantatas for solo voice, Mein Herz schwimmt in Blut (BWV 199) and Ich habe genug (BWV 82), the ensemble will join together for Ich geh und suche mit Verlangen (BWV 49), a sumptuously scored “dialogue cantata” between the Soul and Jesus, her bridegroom.

Cantata Collective

For the opening concert of our 2022 Festival, we eagerly welcome the Basel-based Sollazzo Ensemble in their long-awaited American and Festival debut.Around 1320, two French treatises revolutionized the music world: Ars Novae Musicae by Jean de Muris, and the collection Ars Nova, attributed to Philippe de Vitry. From these writings sprung a new chapter of Western music: rich and ornate melodies, dense polyphony and novel rhythmic patterns are woven together to form a new expressive tapestry, particularly in sacred music. The winners of the prestigious 2015 York Early Music International Young Artists Competition, they have become one Europe’s most sought-after medieval ensembles.

Berkeley Festival & Exhibition

Jun 12, 2022

Vox Luminis

Jun 12, 2022

The Barefoot All-Stars

Jun 11, 2022

Fire & Grace & Ash

Jun 11, 2022

ARTEK: Artemisia—Light and Shadow

Jun 11, 2022

Music from the Organ’s Nadir—Between Bach and Mendelssohn

Berkeley Festival & Exhibition

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