Category: Cantabile

We played:

• Weelkes, Come, Sirrah Jack, Ho!
• Lassus, Fiera Stella/Ma tu prendi
• Morley: Now is the month of Maying; April is in my mistress’ face
• Wise, Judith and Holofernes

Thanks to Ishmael for taking notes.

We meet on Tuesdays at 7:45 pm, at 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA. Let me know if you want to come.

Our new warmup piece is Come, sirrah Jack, Ho!, transposed down a fifth. (The link in the playlist above is only transposed down a fourth, which is what we played last week, but won’t in the future, so don’t use that for printing.)

If you’re coming, also let me know if you need me to print it for you.

Several people like the idea of performing at a porchfest or similar event. It looks like we’ve been too slow to organize for any of the ones we know about this summer (how Cambridge expected anyone to organize an application in the time they gave us is baffling), but in future we should be more on the ball. So if you’re connected with anything like that, please let me know when the applications and performances are happening some time in advance of when we’d have to do them.

To explain, in order for there to be a performance, there have to be people who commit to being at the performance time and place, and at some rehearsals before the performance date. None of this happens by magic – every performance you’ve ever seen has happened because someone did some organizing for it.

We meet on Tuesdays at 7:45 pm, at 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA. Let me know if you want to come.

Our new warmup piece is Weelkes, Come, Sirrah Jack, Ho! If you’re coming, also let me know if you need me to print it for you.

We meet on Tuesdays at 7:45 pm, at 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA. Let me know if you want to come.

Our current warmup piece is Weelkes, O now weepe, now sing. If you’re coming, also let me know if you need me to print it for you.

We played:

• Weelkes, O now weepe, now sing
• Arcadelt, Margot labourez les vignes
• Lassus, Margot labourez les vignes
• A. Gabrielli: Laura Soave, vida di via mia
• Ravenscroft: Now God be with old Simeon

Thanks to Ishmael for taking notes.

We meet on Tuesdays at 7:45 pm, at 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA. Let me know if you want to come.

Our current warmup piece is Weelkes, O now weepe, now sing. If you’re coming, also let me know if you need me to print it for you.

The two city council orders which would have stopped or delayed the removal of parking on my street both failed. So sometime this summer, it will be harder to park here. People with no mobility issues who aren’t carrying heavy instruments will probably be able to just park at meters or in loading zones a block or two away.

Other people may need some assistance getting their instruments in from a temporary spot in a driveway or double parking. Please feel free to request the assistance.

We played:

• Morley, It was a lover and his lass
• Senfl, Im Meyen
• Holborne: 6. The New-yeeres gift; 55. The night watch; 37. Pavan; 63. The fairie-round; The Marie-Golde
• Ravenscroft, Of all the birds

Thanks to Ishmael for taking notes.

We meet on Tuesdays at 7:45 pm, at 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA. Let me know if you want to come.

Our current warmup piece is Morley’s “It was a lover and his lass”. If you’re coming, also let me know if you need me to print it for you. We are thinking of switching to another piece soon, so I’ll email the regular attenders if I get around to doing anything about that before Tuesday. Otherwise, it’s a good piece and another week on it won’t kill us.

I blogged on Tuesday morning about the events I went to on Monday night, and intend to add more items after I recover from the strenuous week. You should be able to see anything that’s up at the time you look at the BEMF 25 category on my blog.

I don’t normally discuss my political views on this list, and I wouldn’t be doing it now, except that this particular political crisis may well pose an existential threat to the continuation of this group.

The problem is that the Cambridge project for increasing bicycle safety, which originally did not include changes to my street (Broadway), is now scheduled to install Protected Bike Lanes and remove over half the parking on my block by the end of the summer. I believe that reasonably mobile people will still be able to park within four or five blocks of here, but someone with less mobility because of either physical impairment or carrying heavy instruments or both, will stop coming. We’re none of us as young as we used to be.

The last chance to stop this project is tomorrow, Monday, June 16, because the Cambridge City Council stops meeting for the summer, and the work is scheduled to happen before it resumes.

If you want more information about this, let me know and I will send you both the email I wrote to the councillors and the one from the “The Coalition to Save Broadway Parking”. This is especially true if you might want to write a councillor, since the one from the Coalition had a suggested cut-and-paste mail and all the relevant email addresses.

I think it would help if everyone signed the Petition, maybe with a comment if you aren’t a resident of Cambridge saying that you’re a regular visitor.

Everyone who’s a Cambridge voter should also consider writing any city councillors they have a relationship with. The organizers of the group trying to block this project believe that Councillors Nolan and Siddiqui are the ones that aren’t on board yet, but might be convinced by a demonstration of voter support.

If you’re near Central Square tomorrow afternoon, there will be a demonstration in front of City Hall starting at 4:45 and ending some time before 6, when the Council meeting starts. The more people show up for that, the better. I have seen on-the-fence councillors about the cast their votes, and it’s obvious that one of the pictures going through their minds is the mass of people asking them to vote right.

We played:

• Morley, It was a lover and his lass
• Senfl, Im Meyen
• Palestrina, Vestiva i colli
• Weelkes, As Vesta was from Latmos Hill descending
• Ravenscroft, Of all the birds

Thanks to Ishmael for taking notes.

We meet on Tuesdays at 7:45 pm, at 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA. Let me know if you want to come.

Our current warmup piece is Morley’s “It was a lover and his lass”. If you’re coming, also let me know if you need me to print it for you.

We will not meet on Tuesday, June 10, the week of the Boston Early Music Festival.

I’ve been saying, “We may organize a field trip to one or more of the concerts that week [of BEMF].” So far nobody’s done anything about that. I have gotten as far as buying my own tickets for the events I want to attend for sure. Several of these are for 10:30 concerts, which don’t have assigned seats, so if we want to go to those together, we just have to organize meeting up and going in together, or even just waving and sitting in some kind of proximity with no organization at all. So those are:

• Monday, Jordan Hall, Aaron Sheehan and Paul Odette
• Tuesday, Jordan Hall, Pacifica MusicWorks
• Wednesday, Emmanuel Church, English Cornet and Sackbut Ensemble
• Friday, Emmanuel Church, Concerto Romano
• Saturday, Jordan Hall, BEMF Chamber Ensemble and Friends

I don’t know how many of the fringe events I’ll get to, but I recommend:

• Wednesday, 2pm, Judith Conrad, clavichord
• Wednesday, 1pm and Saturday, 1pm, Hesperus and Renaissonics, Improv jam
• Friday, 3:30pm, In Stile Moderno

We can discuss the earlier concerts and other events like the exhibition and masterclasses on Tuesday night, if people want to be organized about those. Otherwise, we’ll probably all be running into each other all week and maybe managing to find time to go have a drink.

We played:

• Morley, It was a lover and his lass
• Gibbons, Now each flow’ry bank of May
• Palestrina, Vestiva i colli
• Guerrero, Canite tuba
• Senfl, Wohl kumbt der Mai

Thanks to Pace for taking notes.

We meet on Tuesdays at 7:45 pm, at 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA. Let me know if you want to come.

Our current warmup piece is Morley’s “It was a lover and his lass”. If you’re coming, also let me know if you need me to print it for you.

We will not meet on Tuesday, June 10, the week of the Boston Early Music Festival. We may organize a field trip to one or more of the concerts that week.

We meet on Tuesdays at 7:45 pm, at 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA. Let me know if you want to come.

Our current warmup piece is Morley’s “It was a lover and his lass”. If you’re coming, also let me know if you need me to print it for you.

We will not meet on Tuesday, June 10, the week of the Boston Early Music Festival. We may organize a field trip to one or more of the concerts that week.

We played:

• Morley, It was a lover and his lass
• Byrd, Why do I use my paper, ink and pen
• Isaac, Innsbruck
• Gibbons, Now each flow’ry bank of May
• Ravenscroft: As I mee walked; To Portsmouth

Thanks to Ishmael for taking notes.

We meet on Tuesdays at 7:45 pm, at 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA. Let me know if you want to come.

Our current warmup piece is Morley’s “It was a lover and his lass”. If you’re coming, also let me know if you need me to print it for you.

We played:

• Willaert, As tu point veu
• Byrd, This sweet and merry month of May
• Palestrina, Vestiva i colli
• Lassus, Bonjour, mon coeur
• Senfl, Wohl kumbt der Mai

Thanks to Ishmael for taking notes.

We meet on Tuesdays at 7:45 pm, at 233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA.

Please let me know if you would like to come. Also let me know if you want me to print you a copy of the warmup piece.

We will be moving on to a new warmup piece soon, so let me know of you have ideas about what to do. Ideally it should be a three part piece with 2 or 3 clefs and ranges that aren’t too extreme for our singers.