Concerts by virtuoso performers on period instruments in attractive venues in the New London, CT area

8 pm, Friday, June 13, 2008 Mystic Arts Center, Mystic Trefoil “That’s Amore! Love and Music in Fourteenth-Century Italy” Hailed for their “sensitive interpretations and choices of performing medium” (Early Music America Magazine), Trefoil (Drew Minter, Mark Rimple, Marcia Young) combines countertenor and soprano voices with harp and lute in a program exploring musical expressions of love in the era of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Madrigals, ballate, and caccias offer a window into the courtly love of the period, while sacred repertory demonstrates love in the spiritual realm. Hear an excerpt from Ave stella matutina from Trefoil's CD Christo è Nato. Directions | Order Tickets

8 pm, Saturday, June 14, 2008 Harkness Chapel, Connecticut College, New London Ciaramella “Gli Oltremontati — Music from Over the Mountains” The Renaissance may have begun in Italy, but musicians from the Low Countries led the way in musical matters. Ciaramella brings its “keen blend of historical authority and sheer panache” (Cleveland Plain Dealer) to bear on a program of Northern music from Italian manuscripts, demonstrating the great southern migration of musicians and music in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Hear Grenon's Nova vobis gaudia from Ciaramella’s CD Sacred and Secular Music from Renaissance Germany. Directions | Order Tickets
6 pm, Sunday, June 15, 2008 St. John’s Episcopal Church, Niantic Robert Crowe, male soprano with Kenneth Hamrick, organ “Domine! The Virtuoso Solo Motets of Giacomo Carissimi” With his flare for dramatic gestures and rhetorical flourishes, Roman composer Giacomo Carissimi (1605 – 1674) might well be considered the inventor of the oratorio. His solo motets are composed in the same vein, and Robert Crowe, whom the Richmond Times-Dispatch labeled “a male coloratura soprano who could send the Queen of the Night scampering for daylight,” is uniquely suited to interpret them. Hear an excerpt from Robert Crowe’s new Carissimi CD Directions | Order Tickets
8 pm, Saturday, June 21, 2008 Lyman Allyn Museum, Connecticut College, New London Boston Hausmusik “The Roman Connection: Italian Influence on Classical Style” Though we usually associate classical style with music composed in 18th-century Vienna, many aspects of it have their roots in Italy. Boston Hausmusik (Sylvia Berry, fortepiano; Abigail Karr, violin; Kate Bennett Haynes, cello) explore these aspects in works by Lodovico Giustini (1685 - 1743), the first composer to publish sonatas specifically for the piano, and their manifestations in “Hausmusik” by J. C. Bach, Boccherini, Clementi, and Beethoven. Hear an excerpt of Mozart’s Piano Trio, K 548, from Boston Hausmusik’s recent concert in Cambridge, MA. Directions | Order Tickets
6 pm, Sunday, June 22, 2008 Christ the King Church, Old Lyme, CT Exsultemus “Tomás Luis de Victoria and the Spanish ‘Nation’ in Rome” Beginning in 1492, Spaniards began an unprecedented period of cultural domination. They succeeded in capturing the last Moorish stronghold in Granada, in beginning to colonize the Americas, and, with the election of Roderigo Borgia as the first Spanish pope, in achieving unparalleled access to the Papacy. The Spanish influence in Rome (and the New World) was palpable for the next two centuries, not least in the area of liturgical music. Exsultemus, known for its “crisp and superb” counterpoint (Renaissance Magazine) presents some of the most powerful and widely-traveled music by Spanish composers active in Rome during the sixteenth century, including some of Thomás Luis de Victoria’s moving Lamentations for Holy Week. Hear Exsultemus perform Heinrich Isaac’s Quis dabit. Directions | Order Tickets
8 pm, Saturday, June 28, 2008 Evans Hall, Connecticut College, New London Sinfonia New York The new period-instrument orchestra from New York makes its Connecticut debut with classical favorites: Mozart’s Divertimento for Strings in D, K. 136; Mozart’s Serenade #12 in C Minor for winds, K. 388; and Haydn’s Symphony No. 6, “Le Matin.” Directions | Order Tickets
6 pm, Sunday, June 29, 2008 Evans Hall, Connecticut College, New London Connecticut Early Music Festival Productions After studying with the more famous Arcangelo Corelli in Rome, Francesco Gasparini (1661 – 1727) became so successful as an opera composer in Venice that Charles III of Spain invited the composer to establish Barcelona as an operatic center. Gasparini declined, but he did compose a grand accademia — a secular cantata of operatic proportions — in honor of Charles’s marriage to Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel in August of 1708. In the final concert of the festival, Connecticut Early Music Festival Productions performs excerpts from Gasparini’s unknown masterwork as well as the Concerto Grosso in C, Op. 6, No. 10, by Corelli, his teacher. Directions | Order Tickets