2018 – 2019 Season
Programs and artists subject to change.
Monday, November 5th
8:00pm
The Fabbri Library of the House of the Redeemer
7 East 95th Street
Nigel North, Lute
A Decoration of Silence
The lute music of “il Divino” Francesco Canova da Milano (1497 – 1543)
In the late 15th century, the Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino wrote that music was “nothing but a decoration of silence”, and music could bring on a “divine frenzy”. The Italian lutenist Francesco da Milano, known as “il divino”, was said to have sent his audiences into a trance and rob them of all their senses, save one, that of hearing.
Set in the 17th-century library of the House of the Redeemer, this recital by one of the world's leading lutenists transports the 21st century listener into a historical world of sensual delight.
Click here to listen.
Friday, November 9th
8:00pm
The Fabbri Library of the House of the Redeemer
7 East 95th Street
Tenor Riccardo Pisani
with Ensemble Ricercare Antico
Serena Bellini, recorders
Giovanni Bellini, archlute
Matteo Coticoni, violone
Francesco Tomasi, theorbo, baroque guitar, and artistic direction
Giulio Il Romano
A Concert for Caccini (1551 – 1618)
An acclaimed ensemble of Florentine and Roman virtuosi makes their New York and US debut with a commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the death of Giulio Caccini (1551 – 1618).
Roman by birth and Florentine by choice, Giulio Caccini was a founding member of the Florentine Camerata, sometimes known as the Camerata Bardi, the gathering of composers, poets, theorists, and performers who gave life to a new art form called opera.
Please join us in the ravishing 17th-century library of the House of the Redeemer, a space of the same era as opera's birth, to honor the composer, tenor, and multi-instrumentalist who changed the course of music history.
Click here to listen.
Thursday
December 13th
8:00pm
The Brotherhood Synagogue
28 Gramercy Park South
Online sales have ended.
Tickets will be available at the door.
Jessica Gould, Soprano
Pascal Valois, Early Romantic Guitar
In the Wake of the Marseillaise
Songs of Love, Loss, and Triumph from the Age of Emancipation
The fall of the Ancien Régime radically re-shuffled the social order throughout European capitals, ushering in a new era in inter-religious understanding and mass democratization.
As the ghetto walls separating Jew from Gentile came tumbling down along with the unquestioning acceptance of clerical and royal authority, a newly ascendant bourgeois class demanded new compositions for the domestic sphere, with popular references and playable scores accessible to those with neither an aristocratic pedigree nor a piano.
Songs for soprano and Early Romantic Guitar by Cimarosa, Crescentini, Doisy, Haydn, Domenico Puccini and Fernando Sor join jewel-like arrangements from the popular operas of the day by Rossini and Halévy, speaking of an age of liberation and a growing taste for Bel Canto singing.
The historic Brotherhood Synagogue on Gramercy Park, housed in a mid 19th-century structure that was once a stop on the Underground Railroad, sets the stage for songs from an age of liberation.
Pascal Valois, French Canadian virtuoso on Early Romantic Guitar, joins soprano and Salon/Sanctuary Artistic Director Jessica Gould, playing an instrument constructed in 1821.
“A dramatic intensity that honored the text” — The New York Times
“Pascal Valois and his instrument are united in an absolutely masterful and rigorous delivery.”— Journal Le Métropolitain de Toronto
"gentle and affecting...intense and dramatic...a joyous luminosity" — Lute News, UK
"An extraordinary voice, very clear diction, rich and inimitable sound" — Monica Huggett
Click here to read the program notes
Wednesday, March 13th 8:00pm
The Brotherhood Synagogue
28 Gramercy Park South
Ester, Liberatrice del popolo ebreo
Alessandro Stradella
Ester: Jessica Gould; Speranza Celeste: Sarah Pillow; Mardocheo: José Lemos; Aman: Ian Pomerantz; Assuero: Jonathan Woody; Due Ebree: Martha Sullivan & Amanda Sidebottom
Grant Herreid & Daniel Swenberg, lutes; Loren Ludwig, viola da gamba; Elliot Figg, harpsichord
Known as the "Caravaggio of Music", the violent and volatile Alessandro Stradella can be considered a bridge between Carissimi and Handel. His innumerable works, both sacred and secular, still await a broader hearing in our time.
The historic Brotherhood Synagogue, once a stop on the Underground Railroad sets the stage for this work dedicated to the Hebrew Queen who saved her people, in the first New York performance in over 30 years.
Friday, May 10th
8:30pm
The Church of St. Francis Xavier
46 West 16th Street
I Sacri Musicali Affetti
Barbara Strozzi
Jessica Gould, soprano
Elena Biscuola, mezzo-soprano
Paula Chateauneuf & Catherine Liddell, theorbo
Christa Patton, baroque harp
Katie Rietman, baroque cello
Caitlyn Koester, chamber organ
In honor of the 400th anniversary of the birth of Barbara Strozzi, we draw from the only sacred volume from her prolific compositional output, I Sacri Musicali Affetti.
Commissioned by a female patron and featuring motets dedicated mostly to female saints, we close our New York season with this performance of daringly expressive and formally inventive pieces by one of the baroque era's greatest composers.
Click here to hear an interview with soprano Jessica Gould on Barbara Strozzi, broadcast live on WKCR, Teri Nowel Towe program director
Click here to read an interview with mezzo-soprano Elena Biscuola in i-Italy