Jewish Musicians at the Tudor Court, NYC, Nov 4
Miller Theatre at Columbia University
commences the Early Music series with
JEWISH MUSICIANS AT THE TUDOR COURT
England's famed viol ensemble FRETWORK comes to Miller to perform this fascinating program
Saturday, November 4, 8:00PM
with a 7:00PM pre-conceert lecture by Alan G. Stewart, professor
of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University
Single Tickets: $35
Students $21 with valid ID
Columbia University's Miller Theatre is located north of the Main Campus Gate
at 116th St & Broadway on the ground floor of Dodge Hall.
"This may be the single most interesting evening of Jewish music in town this fall."—George Robinson, The Jewish Week 9/8/06
From Miller Theatre's Executive Director George Steel, who "has been the champ at parlaying his own enthusiasms for new and early music into artistic success" (New York Magazine): "Our program with Fretwork promises to be startling and ear-opening. That many of the central musicians in one of England's greatest musical royal families were Jewish is a revelation, and this program should do much to rewrite assumptions about the Tudor style."
The scholarly detective work of musicologist Roger Prior has revealed that the majority of the instrumentalists in the Tudor Royal Household were Jewish. Recruited from Italy by Henry VIII, several of the founding families of Tudor court music-the Bassanos, the Comys, and the Lupos-were Spanish and Portuguese Jews who had settled in Italy after the Expulsion of 1492. Energized by Prior's discoveries, George Steel invited Fretwork, described as “the finest viol consort on the planet,” (the UK's Evening Standard), to create a program exploring the extraordinary legacy of these musical pioneers.
Program
Augustine Bassano: Pavan & Galliard No. 1
Heironymus Bassano: Fantasia No. 1 in 5 parts
Joseph Lupo: Pavan in 5 parts
Thomas Lupo: Pavan, Air, and Fantasias, in 3, 4, and 5 parts
Theophilus Lupo: Shows & nightly revels in 2 parts
Philip van Wilder: Fantasia con e senza pause
Leonora Duarte: Two Symphonies in 5 parts; A suite of dances from the 'Lumley Part Books'
Orlando Gough: Birds on Fire, Parts I and II
Heinrich Isaac: La mi la sol
Salmone Rossi 'Ebreo': Simphoniae; Ruggiero
Artists
FRETWORK (Wendy Gillespie, Asako Morikawa, Susanna Pell, Richard Boothby, Richard Campbell, and Richard Tunnicliffe)
Since its London debut in 1986, FRETWORK has given concerts and broadcasts around the world, made numerous highly successful recordings, set new standards in the performance of the great English music for viol consort, and generated a living repertory for the medium. In addition to frequent appearances throughout Western Europe, the group has visited Russia, Lithuania, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and Canada. The group's wide range of repertoire includes In Nomines and Fantasias by Christopher Tye, Thomas Tallis, Robert Parsons, and William Byrd; dance music by Anthony Holborne and John Dowland; grand sonority of six-part consorts; organ works by Orlando Gibbons and William Lawes; and the late flowering of the tradition in the music of Matthew Locke and Henry Purcell. While many of Fretwork's audiences are already familiar with its series of Virgin Classics recordings of works by the great English composers, its repertory includes not only works from 16th Century and 17th Century Flanders, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, but also entirely new music. One of the most successful ideas of recent years has been the combination of the contemporary with ancient music. Fretwork has worked with the leading singers of all the various types of music they perform, such as Michael Chance, James Bowman, Catherine Bott, Emma Kirkby, Susan Bickley, Paul Agnew, John Potter, and Richard Wistreich.