SpringFest23 March 26 – April 9, 2023

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Four Musicasts: A SpringFest Playlist featuring

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Musicivic Everywhere

Event Details

Premiers as a single playlist, March 26, 2023 at 7:00 PM ET – Available through April 9, 2023

Spring: Transitions & Hope”

Celebrating Song”
“Dance!”

“Folk & Baroque”


Celebrating Song

This delightful showcase will trace voice as instrument across time and genre featuring songs performed by ten different Musicast ensembles. The works span 13th century teenage love songs, sacred, opera, folk and love songs from the Baroque, and contemporary folk, art and American songbook.

“Ich folge dir gleichfalls mit freudigen Schritten” (from St. John Passion)
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Performed by Bahareh Poureslami (soprano), Pauline Kempf (baroque violin), Cullen O’Neil (baroque cello)

“Nò, di voi non vo’ fidarmi”
George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)
Performed by Musica Mundana

“Tirsis”
Étienne Moulinié (1599-1676)
Performed by Disordering the Attic : Tersis Etienne M…

“Je voudrois bien, ô Cloris”
Antoine Boësset (1586-1643), arr. by Rebecca Nelson
Performed by Rebeca Nelson

“Setting the Woods on Fire”
Hank Williams (1923-1953)
Performed by Ackley Duo

2 Songs by Martim Codax (13th century poet-composer)
Performed by Alkemie

“One for my Baby”
Harold Arlen (1905-1986)
Lyrics by Johnny Mercer (1909-1976)
Performed by Reames Duo

“Blue is the Color of My Heart”
Taylor Ackley
Performed by Deep Roots Ensemble

“III. Dreamplace” from Maroon Dreams
Efrain Amaya (b.1959)
Performed by Bell’Art Ensemble

“The Bees of St. Mary’s”
Fiona Gillespie
Performed by Chivalrous Crickets


Spring: Transition & Hope

This spring, perhaps more than any in recent memory, captures the travails and uncertainty of emerging new life, pregnant with hope, transitions, and the fears of disappointment and loss. This concert assembles performances from across almost two full years of Musicast expressing hope, and yearning, and poignancy of moment.

The program begins with a nostalgic country song, “The flowers of Montana” and immediately segues to a more abstract classical works very loosely themed around flowers and trees. Then a renaissance piece celebrates love with an analogy of lips and roses. We go romantic art melody with Zach Silberschlag, before transitioning to full throttle Schumann art song. The early spring/nature infused hopes of love contains seeds of doubt, that love may be unrequited or lost. Then a Scottish folk song yearns for peace and reconciliation now on a geo- political scale. Given our geo-political tragedy under way, we finish this concert with contemplation and prayers.

Program:

“The Flowers of Montana”
Patsy Montana (1908-1996)
Performed by Ackley Duo

“III. White Lily” Hungarian Folk Song From the Cisk District, Sz. 35a
Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
Performed by Driftwood Trio

“Rain Tree Sketch for solo piano”
Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996)
Performed by Alan Hankers of Pathos Trio

“Lady, when I behold”
John Wilbye (1574-1638)
Performed by Alkemie Florilegium (Alkemie): Lady When I behold

Melodies by Brahms, and Drigo
arr. Zach Silberschlag
Performed by Zach Silberschlag (Trumpet/Flugehorn) & Jan C Knutson (Guitar)

Dichterliebe, Op. 48 (1840).
Composed by Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
(A Poet’s Love) Text by Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
Performed by Reames Duo

“Both Sides the Tweed”
Scottish Folk Song
Performed by Disordering the Attic

Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750)
Performed by Itzkoff/Warner

Amazing Grace
Lee Dengler (b. 1949)
Performed by Ellen Fast of the Jade Piano Trio


“Dance!”

Alkemie
Niccolo Seligmann
Die Welts Tanz
Der Wolf Tanz


Musicivic Baroque
Antonio Bertali (1605-1669)
Chaconne

Reames Duo
Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983)
Chacarera
Zamba


The Charles Salinger Trio
Edgar Sampson (1907-1973)
Stomping at the Savoy

The Cool Trio
David N. Baker (1931-2016)
The Heritage Trio
III. BBBB

Bell’Art Ensemble
Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000)
Mihr

Quartet Salonnieres
Zuchu Ft Diamond Platnumz
Cheche (Cover by Quartet Salonnieres)


Folk & Baroque

Folk & Baroque

Sweet honey sucking bees – Yet, sweet, take heed
Lady, when I behold
Adieu, sweet Amaryllis

John Wilbye (1574-1638)
Performed by Alkemie

Wilbye’s music was primarily intended as at-home entertainment for friends to play or sing together. However, not every friend-group (or COVID pod) contains four or five singers of the appropriate ranges! Iconography from the time suggests that a healthy mix of voices and instruments was common in athome music making. We chose to perform the two-part madrigal “Sweet honey-sucking bees – Yet, sweet, take heed” in what has become the conventional madrigal style of unaccompanied voices, but arranged “Lady, when I behold” and “Adieu, sweet Amaryllis” for a single voice with instruments covering the other parts. 

In both “Sweet honey-sucking bees” and “Lady, when I behold,” Wilbye compares the sweetness of flowers with the sweetness of a lover’s lips. While the amaryllis is now generally known as a certain type of showy
flower, the name was not tied to a specific plant until the eighteenth century. The term had previously been in use, however, as another name for the lily. It is not difficult to imagine “Adieu, sweet Amaryllis” as both a bittersweet farewell to one’s beloved, as well as a lament for the departure of the flowers in autumn.

“Suite in the Old Style” for violin and piano

A. Schnittke(1934 – 1998)
V. Pantomime
Performed by Shea Kim Duo

Baroque influences (and nostalgia) with modern sensibility and humor.

Nuit Sur La Corde À Linge (2021)

Mathilde Côté
Performed by Quartet Salonnières

Gut stringed instruments as a vehicle for very modern musical story telling.

Maria durch ein Dornwald ging,

German folk song
Performed by Digital Camerata (on Rebecca Nelson’s Musicast “Do Not Lament”

Chocolate (don’t tell mom),

Rebecca Nelson
Performed by
Rebecca Nelson, guitar, violins
Philip Nelson, bass

Do Not Lament,
Rebecca Nelson
Performed by
Rebecca Nelson, vocals
Joshua Stauffer, theorbo

Contemporary stories leveraging baroque, folk, bluegrass strategies and sensibilities.

Glacier Suite
II.
III.
Taylor Ackley
Performed by Deep Roots Ensemble

Their style blends classical chamber music instrumentation and techniques with traditional American music performance practice and jazz improvisation into a refined and cohesive approach to making music. This results in an artistic output which is highly innovative while remaining familiar and relatable to audiences with a wide range of tastes.

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