Category: Cantabile

The Cantabile Renaissance Band

News of the week of February 7, 2012

Meeting Report

We played:

Schedule

We will be meeting as usual on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

Tuesday February 28 will not be a dropin rehearsal, as the
Morley group will pre-empt that time.

On March 6, I will be working at the polls for the presidential primary, so someone
will have to open up if we want to meet that night.

Walk for Hunger

We have again been invited to play at the Walk for Hunger, in
our usual time and place. This year it’s on May 6, and we’ll
probably be playing informally starting at 10 am and doing our usual two
sets at noon and 2 pm.

If you’d like to play, please let me know as soon as possible. In
addition to being available on May 6, you should also plan to come
for both of the Tuesdays immediately before that (April 24 and May
1), and as many other Tuesdays in March and April as you need to
learn the music.

I would like to have a playlist by the beginning of March, but
I can’t do that until I have the list of performers, so please let
me know as soon as you can.

Also let me know if there are pieces you’d particularly like to
play, or pieces that would cause you to not want to play if they
appeared on the playlist. We would like to have a mix of the
complicated polyphony we spend most of our time on and simpler
polyphony that comes across better in the noisy outdoor setting.
We need to spend at least half the time on instruments, since it’s
quite strenuous singing in that setting.

News of the week of January 31, 2012

Meeting report

We played:

Schedule

We will be meeting as usual on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

Tuesday February 28 will not be a dropin rehearsal, as the
Morley group will pre-empt that time. If there’s interest, we
could have a dropin meeting on Thursday, March 1 instead.

News of the week of January 24, 2012

Meeting Report

We played:

Schedule

We will be meeting as usual on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

Other events

There are several concerts of Renaissance music this
weekend:

  • Convivium Musicum is
    playing works of Orlandus Lassus on Saturday, January 28 at 7 PM
    in the
    Cambridge Friends Meeting house and on Sunday, January 29 at at
    4 PM at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline.
  • Music for Viols and Friends presents “The Tudor Consort,”
    music from the courts of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, performed
    by mezzosoprano Pamela Dellal, El Dorado Ensemble (Carol Lewis,
    Mai-Lan Broekman, Paul Johnson, Janet Haas and Alice Mroszczyk,
    viols; Olav Chris Henriksen, lute & renaissance guitar) and
    special guest Wendy Gillespie, viol. The concert features songs,
    dances, fantasies & solos by Henry VIII himself, van Wilder,
    Ferrabosco I, Tallis, Byrd, Johnson, Morley & others. It will be
    Friday, January 27, 2012 at 8 pm in Lindsay Chapel, First Church in
    Cambridge, Congregational, Cambridge MA, and also Sunday, January 29,
    2012 at 3 pm at the Somerville Museum.
  • Exultemus is playing
    double choir music for voices and brass on Saturday, January 28
    at 8pm in the University Lutheran Church, Harvard Square, and on
    Sunday, January 29, at 3pm at the First Lutheran Church of Boston.

News of the week of January 17, 2012

Meeting report

We played:

Schedule

We will be meeting as usual on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

Other event

Trium, literally “of three,” is a trio of superb sopranos
who have dedicated themselves to the exploration and performance
of music of three equal voices. On January 22, 2012, they will
present Portraits in Miniature.  In the tradition of the
Renaissance miniature portrait, a tiny detailed devotion to a
beloved subject, Trium will explore, luxuriate and
celebrate bite-size portions of a variety of periods and styles,
from the Notre Dame school in medieval Paris to the sixteenth
century Flemish motet, to the English Madrigal style, with a
soupcon of turn of the century and contemporary.  The concert will
take place at the historic Loring-Greenough House, 12 South
Street, Jamaica Plain MA, as part of the Sunday Afternoon at
the Greenough House parlor concert series.
Trium was founded in 1997 to perform a benefit concert at
Emmanuel Church in Boston, but Shannon Larkin, Margaret Johnson,
and Susan Trout are well known individually for their work with
Handel & Haydn Society, Boston Baroque, and Emmanuel Music.
Each of the voices has a distinctly unique quality, and when they
come together they make a gloriously blended sound that is even
greater than the sum of its parts. Margaret’s pure sweet tone and
stratospheric range surround each piece with a halo of brilliance.
Shannon’s clarion soprano weaves in with a shimmer and dips down
into mezzo warmth. Susan’s brilliantly radiant and richly warm
tone adds depth and beauty before carrying its strength to the top
of the staff. Whether they are singing a finely tuned dissonant
chord in a Renaissance motet or an exquisitely blended unison in a
contemporary art song, Trium makes music “of three” sound like so
much more.

Report on the December 13, 2011 meeting

Meeting report

I think they did Christmas hymns and Holborne before I got
there. Then we played:

Schedule

For the near future, we will be having our regular dropin
meetings on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

Other events

The Delight
Consort Christmas Concert is on Sunday at the Loring-Greenough
House at 3 PM. Their schedule also includes several other holiday
events farther away from here.

News of the week of December 6, 2011

Meeting report

We played:

  • Hymns celebrating the spring weather we’ve been
    enjoying
  • Holborne
  • Cavendish, Come, gentle swains
  • Rore, Mia benigna fortuna
  • Ravenscroft, To Portsmouth

Schedule

We have resumed our every week dropin meetings on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place. Anne has
kindly volunteered to arrive on time and let people in next week,
December 13,
when I’ll be running a special primary to replace Warren Tolman in
the state senate.

Party

This year’s Christmas party is on Sunday, December 11, at 4 PM
at my place.

If you know that you’re coming and what you’re bringing, let me
know, so I can coordinate. But please come at the last minute
even if you haven’t told me, and don’t have time to cook
anything. Potato chips and bottles are good contributions to a
potluck, and don’t need coordination since if more people
bring them than eat them, we just won’t open them all.

Invite your friends, especially if you know people who might be
interested in joining our group. There’s a printable
invitation if you want hard copy to give them.