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The Fredonia School of Music will present a “Baroque Festival with a Fresh Perspective” on Wednesday, Feb. 28, and Thursday, March 8 featuring two of the world’s leading period ensembles, the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and the Leipzig Baroque Soloists. Both artistic groups will be in-residence on campus that week and will present performances, special lectures, master classes, coaching and educational outreach to area high schools.
The Baroque Festival concerts on Wednesday and Thursday begin at 8 p.m. in the Juliet J. Rosch Recital Hall in Mason Hall. Each concert will feature an informative pre-concert talk at 7 p.m. and will conclude with a post-concert reception. Tickets are available through the Central Ticket Office (673-3501) at the Williams Center on the Fredonia campus.
Toronto-based Tafelmusik has been performing since 1979 and in that time has achieved international recognition for its concerts and its recordings of historical music. The orchestra’s Feb. 28 concert at Fredonia is entitled “The Four Seasons: A Cycle of the Sun” and it will feature Vivaldi’s renowned Four Seasons cycle of concertos along with other works that express themes based on the seasons. Visit Tafelmusik's website.
The 18-member orchestra will be joined by special guests Wen Zhao performing on the pipa, a four-stringed, pear-shaped instrumented thought to have originated in China around 400 A.D., and Aruna Narayan on the sarangi, an ancient bowed instrument that has been played in India for centuries and may have had its origin in Afghanistan.
Vocalists Sylvia Cloutier and June Shappa will perform, as well. Both are members of Aqsarniit, a group of young Inuit performing artists from Nunavik (northern Quebec), Nunavut (eastern Arctic) and Greenland who work to preserve and promote Inuit culture. Part of the group’s cultural repertoire is throat singing, a kind of musical game of alternating sound and silence that is used to imitate the seasonal sounds of the environment.
The Leipzig Baroque Soloists quintet, which will perform in Fredonia’s Rosch Recital Hall on March 8, is part of the larger Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, possibly the oldest orchestra in Europe whose concerts in Leipzig, Germany, date back to the early 18th century. The group will present a lively, diverse program of Baroque music, including works by Arcangelo Corelli, Johann Friedrich Fasch, Joseph Boden de Boismortier, Johann Sebastian Bach and more.
The quintet features Fredonia School of Music’s new trumpet professor Roderick MacDonald. Fredonia School of Music Assistant Professor Sean Duggan will join the group on harpsichord for this performance. The ensemble also includes Stefan Arzberger on violin, Thomas Hipper on oboe, Thomas Reinhardt on bassoon and Tobias Martin on double bass.
The Baroque Festival at Fredonia is part of the School of Music Rosch Musical Arts Series and is being funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional funding funding provided by the Carnahan-Jackson Humanities Fund of the Fredonia College Foundation and the Faculty Student Association at Fredonia. Sun Life Financial of Canada is sponsoring the Tafelmusik Orchestra's current tour.
For more information about the festival and other upcoming activities at the Fredonia School of Music, visit the Fredonia School of Music's website.
