by gary freeman bemf report: a french taste for boston’s ... report.pdfvulcain (colin balzer),...

Early Music America Fall 2007 45

JEAN BAPTISTE LULLY’S Psyché (and theyreally do say p’see-SHAY) was the

showpiece of June’s 2007 Boston EarlyMusic Festival. More than any of theuncommon operas Boston’s biennial fes-tival has produced since Rossi’s L’Orfeoin 1997, this North American premierepresented challenges that pushed themusical directors, set and costumedesigners, choreographers, and vocalcoaches well beyond their prior experi-ences. Thirty-five very different scores,plus numerous libretti of Psyché, kept co-music directors Paul O’Dette andStephen Stubbs traveling all over theworld comparing and compromising.O’Dette spent 18 months sending e-mails to Psyché colleagues. “Each of themanuscripts represents one live per-formance, with restrictions and tasteschanging every time. It was up to us toput together an amalgamation of thebest parts of all the manuscripts,”O’Dette explained in one of the paneldiscussions on the resuscitation of Lullyand Thomas Corneille’s 1678 tragédielyrique version of Psyché.

This 1678 version is a transformationof Lully’s 1671 version with Molière’sspoken dialogue. “Musicologist JohnPowell brought the 1671 version to ourattention, feeling it was the missing linkin our chain of French operas, but wefelt that a production with an hour ofdialogue interspersed with French ariaswouldn’t suit our mission,” said O’Detteof that version, a tragicomédie et ballet,which is more in the style of Purcell’sKing Arthur. But Powell’s suggestion didbear fruit. Because of the popularity ofthe 1671 Psyché (83 performances), Lullyhanded Molière’s prose libretto toCorneille and asked him to substitutepoetry to set to music. “But by nowMolière was dead and Louis XIV’s sonwas pushing for a less ‘grotesque’

[comic] opera. Corneille took away lotsof Molière’s comedy,” O’Dette said.

The O’Dette/Stubbs production wasfar from lugubrious, however. Thecyclopses’ comic scene in a manuscriptin Wolfenbüttel, Germany, providedgreat amusement for the productionartists who wanted to include it in thisrevival. Vulcain (Colin Balzer), takingcharge of his anvil-hammering horde ofcyclopses, berated haughty Venus (Kari-na Gauvin) for her jealousy over Psyché(Carolyn Sampson), a fragile mortal. Thethree cross-dressing furies (ZacharyWilder, Jason McStoots, Olivier Laque-rre) Psyché encounters in her descent toHades provided another comic scene,greatly enhanced by Gilbert Blin’s direc-tion. To music that bounced in livelysyncopation, the furies chased oneanother in a futile exercise that got themnowhere. After all, they’re in Hades;where would they go?

The dancing cyclopses humorously

weaving around their anvils and four tallpedestals holding tall vases proved diffi-cult choreography from the beginningfor Lucy Graham. “We’ve been trainedto anticipate the space we need,” she saidduring the panel discussion. “People takeup more room when they’re in costumethan when they’re in jeans and sweats. Itell them, ‘Dance this on a six pence,’”Graham said (an English expressionrelated to our own “stopping on adime”). Space was tight, everyoneagreed; even Cupid’s wings had to beaccommodated.

Psyché was well-fitted to the theme ofthe festival: a “feast of the gods,” namedafter one of several paintings of thatsubject by the Flemish painter Hendrikvan Balen. This fleshy portrait ofwomen and men at an all-you-can-eat

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Frederick Metzger and Carolyn Sampson asL’Amour (Cupid) and Psyché in the BEMF production of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Psyché.

BEMF Report:A French Taste for Boston’s FestivalIn the spirit of the festivities of the 17th-century Sun King, the biennial early music event proved to be a feast of the gods

By Gary Freeman

46 Fall 2007 Early Music America

buffet atop Mt. Olympus gracedBEMF’s program book and much of thefestival’s literature (see EMAg cover,Spring 2007). A shirtless Zeus, goldenchalice in hand, doesn’t have strength tolift it from the table, but just tips ittoward a ewer held by a serving maid,while wife Hera, also bare-breasted,leans back to scold her inebriated hus-band. Lully’s Psyché is filled with similarcharacters, ascending and descending oninvisible cables in this Boston produc-tion, which was the most elaborate andcomplicated theater piece the festival hasever managed.

Boston’s week-long festival and exhi-bition is known for its plentiful perform-ances, lectures, and master classes. Its280-page program book lists hourlyevents from 9:00 a.m. until 11:00 p.m.each day. Scheduling just the main eventstakes superhuman talents and a lead timeof over a year. But there are also dozens

of concurrent and fringe events thatmust be accommodated in concert halls,churches, and other auditoriumsthroughout the city, preferably withinwalking distance (or a short subway ride)from each other. Excluding the opera’sfive performances, 14 main concertskept audiences moving from Jordan Hallat New England Conserv atory toconcerts downtown at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.

Hellenic hedonismHedonistic pleasures at the gods’

feasting table provided a satisfyingtheme for many of the groups. Texts forvocal programs tended to revolvearound natural beauty (flora and fauna),gulping food and wine, and the sexualexploits resulting therefrom. The fiveFrenchmen in the Ensemble ClémentJanequin, named after the 16th-centurychanson composer who found musicalbeauty in everything from Kyries tosquawking chickens, sat at a table facingthe audience. Though it is a group that

knows the difference between singinglike a barnyard animal and a chorister inthe papal chapel, it’s truly the barnyardonomatopoeia that impresses the audi-ence. “It is really interesting for us tosing those kinds of pieces,” founderDominique Visse says about the group’srepertoire. “We take Janequin’s spellingsof the sounds literally; we just sing whatis written, but of course we try to barkthe best we can....”

The group’s second program, at 11:00p.m., faded out in an encore of slurredcrooning and the bumpy, awkwardrhythms of drunken sailors, as thesingers slumped at the table and soonstarted snoring. The group is master ofwhatever it chooses to sing, sacred orsecular, but at Boston’s festival seemedto please the gods most of all withhumor.

Alexander Weimann’s late-night key-board program paid tribute to Apolloand Jupiter on three different instru-ments. On a 1978 turquoise blue Dowdreproduction of a 1628 Ruckers,Weimann played a sonata from The Feastof Apollo, a composition by Sgr. Tubel, ashe’s identified in the 1728 printed score;on a continuo organ he played an ariafrom Pachelbel’s Hexachordum Apollinis;and on a reproduction of an 1805 Walterfortepiano, he played his own arrange-ment of Mozart’s “Jupiter” symphony.Weimann easily adapted the horns to thekeyboard, but the volume was missingfrom the stirring measures of mountingviolins in the first and last movements,and the music may not have reached thegods’ ears.

In texts that glorified Renaissancegardens, the Orlando Consort sang aprogram that spanned Europe from1250 to 1560. The program easilybecame a survey of horticultural hitmotet tunes – Gombert’s “Quam pul-chra es,’ Crequillon’s “Des herb aisassés,” Brumel’s “Sicut lilium” – demon-strating every kind of cadence, texture,and poetic scheme Renaissance com-posers had the courage to use. Thesefour Englishmen expertly varied andcontrolled their dynamics, colors, andtextures, according to the musical styleand subject.

In a concert featuring the BEMF cho-rus and orchestra, held on the off-night

Shopping the Exhibition

Want a psaltery? A critical edition? Some gut strings? A harpsichord? It’s likely that you could find it at early music’s biennial shopping mall, the Boston Early Music Festival’s exhibition.Approximately 100 exhibitors—instrument makers and dealers, music retailers and publishers, CDlabels, educational organizations and the like—set up shop on three floors of the Radisson Hotel inBoston. One could try out a viol, lust after a recorder, watch a video, or pick up a t-shirt.

I had a mission: a bass viol bow. I have owned an instrument for several years, but I use a bor-rowed bow. My teacher gave me a few shopping tips in advance: Watch out for excessive vibrationin the upper third of the bow. Play some fast notes. Make sure the lower strings speak. I had an-other goal as well: to buy a bow that cost less than my instrument.

Bowmaker No. 1 had gorgeously carved bows, nicely balanced and relatively light. Bowmaker No.2’s were also elegant, if plainer-looking, and heavy. I tried out a selection of both on a six-string

viol by an Austrian maker. It was an extremelynice instrument—and, at 10,000 euros, a lotmore expensive than mine. What bow would-n’t work well on it? This was a problem, espe-cially as all the bows cost more than I hadplanned to spend. I took some business cards.

On another floor, I found Bowmaker No. 3,looking lonely behind his table in the hallway.He was delighted to see me. I tried out acouple of bows on the rather unresponsive in-strument he had handy, and we chattedabout his work: a violinist from theNetherlands, he started making historicalbows 10 years ago, and now does more mak-ing than playing. The bows felt springy andsounded good. So did the prices. I decided totake two to try out at home on my own viol.That was certainly easy. Now, how aboutthose harpsichords?

—Heidi Waleson

Brent Wissick tries outa gamba by PeterHütmannsberger.

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for the opera, a cantata about three feistygoddesses fighting for Paris’s goldenapple, set by John Eccles, provided theaudience with an embarrassingly humor-ous look at godly in-fighting. Juno(Pamela Dellal), Pallas (AmandaForsythe), and Venus (Ellen Hargis) viedfor the affection of the mortal Paris(Aaron Sheehan). Each goddess sneeredat her rivals, strutted in front of Paris,and sang about her many virtues. Parisawarded his apple to Venus, who seemedto outshine the other beauties in herrecitation of Congreve’s flowery text.

Not all concerts paid obeisance toClassical gods. Sequentia’s concert(altered due to the illness of directorBenjamin Bagby) aimed at MedievalGermanic mythology in a story populat-ed by characters who have reappearedthroughout the centuries in variousNiebelungen tales. The Medieval language(as translated in supertitles) was poignantand pithy as sung by the two women,Agnethe Christensen and Lena SusanneNorin, and would no doubt have caughtthe gods’ attention, if Christensen’s ini-tial, loud rallying scream hadn’t. Themany strophes and refrains of theSwedish ballads and hymns that formedGary Freeman, an arts writer for the Communi-ty Newspaper Co., a chain in the Boston area,has a masters of music and music literaturefrom Boston University.

At its awards ceremony, the AmericanRecorder Society presented the 2007Distinguished Achievement Award to musicologist and editor Joel Newman (right) and the Presidential Special HonorAward to British author and researcherAnthony Rowland-Jones.


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the second part of the program pre-served tradition in music and text, if byno other way, by repetition.

The first piece of the interesting program by Nachtmusique, six skilledwoodwind players led by Eric Hoeprich,told the story of neither Classical norGermanic gods, just strange ones.Johann Stumpf, a contemporary ofMozart, dressed up The Magic Flute inwoodwind garb. Some of the five move-ments Nachtmusique played were moreeffectively transcribed than others. Theviolins in the overture were conspicu-ously missing, but Papageno’s “hmms”in his famous padlock aria gained evenmore humor when taken up at a rapidclip by the bassoons.

The traditional French romances andlaments on Le Poème Harmonique’sprogram were presented not to entertainand flatter the gods but to comfort thoseburdened by them. The early songbooksof the 15th century present these piecesin authentic, unadulterated form. Manyof the melodies and texts are unpub-lished, and the rest are rarely performed,at least in their early versions. The groupsat somberly in a wide, dimly lit semi-cir-cle on the stage in spacious, darkenedJordan Hall. Mostly, their instrumentsprovided delicate accompaniment forthree excellent singers (soprano ClaireLefilliâtre, tenor Serge Goubioud, bari-tone Arnaud Marzorati), who told fablesin music. The constant, sad drone of thehurdy-gurdy in “Le Roi Renaud” sup-ported the song of the king’s wife, who,

The Brophy School Recorder Club performsduring the 2007 Boston Early Music Festival.

BEMF Report


finding her husband had died, calledupon the earth to swallow her up. In asimilarly tragic ballad, “Le Roi a fait bat-tre tambour,” ending in a poignant fall tothe dominant by bass Marzorati, themarquise, who had been abducted by theking, died. But Le Poème Harmonique’shumor wasn’t damped, for in addition toa wild drinking song of sailors boastingabout the superiority of the French overthe English, the group’s concert finishedwith a whirling, tongue-twisting pattersong called “La moliera qu’a nau escus.”This was the first appearance of LePoème Harmonique in Boston, and itsurely won’t be the last.

Fringe concertsMany of the 60-plus fringe concerts

told stories, too, though not necessarilyabout gods. The Baroque Orchestra ofNorth Jersey, under the direction ofRobert Butts, aired for the first timemovements from a newly discovered (atthe National Park Service in Morristown,New Jersey!) 1693 version of AlessandroScarlatti’s oratorio La Giuditta, the Bibli-cal story of Judith beheading Holfernes.Butts’s research shows this manuscript to be earlier and more complete (or atleast slightly longer) than the other twoexisting manuscripts in Cambridge andNaples.

Another prominent premiere amongthe fringe concerts was ChristophGraupner’s Concerto d’amore for violad’amore, oboe d’amore, and flute (GWV477) performed by Concerto Antico.The 12-movement Baroque suite, in thestyle of Telemann and Bach orchestralsuites, remains in manuscript in theDresden Library. Graupner was stronglyrooted in the Baroque (he studied with

Kuhnau and Keiser), but his 113 sym-phonies show more than just a tendencytoward Classical forms.

New York’s Continuo Collective puton a semi-staged version of FrancescaCaccini’s La liberazione de Ruggiero dall’isolaD’Alcina. Caccini, daughter of the morefamous Giulio, stands as the first womanto write an opera. Librettist FerdinandoSaracinelli tells a comic story of goodoutwitting evil. Metaphorical choruses,allegorical characters, and an elevatedmoral text unfortunately shackled Cacci-ni into rather static development. ButCaccini’s melodic gifts were notable. As asinger, she was pursued by France’sHenry IV for a position in his court. Thecast and orchestra of the New YorkContinuo Collective were numerous, aswas the audience.

In the royal white and gold musicians’hall at Boston’s Gamble mansion, the sixmusicians of Harmonious Blacksmithperformed popular Renais sancemelodies from solo madrigals andrecorder sonatas in highly ornamentedversions showing improvisational free-dom and excitement. Joseph Gascho andJustin Godoy’s partnership on harpsi-chord and recorder produced many min-utes of sublime, free-flowing melodiesthat never sounded the same way twice.And Ah Young Hong is a soprano whonegotiated complicated fioritura well—all the way up the scale.

Besides the many musical perform-ances the festival filled many rooms ofexhibits and instrument makers whodemonstrated every possible crook,

Tarantella Recorder Trio (Sarah Cantor, HéloïseDegrugillier, and Justin Godoy) playing the music of Henry Purcell.

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Further coverageA sampling of other concerts and events re-

ported by Martha Bixler (MB), Tina Chancey (TC),John Temple (JT), and Ben Dunham (BD)

Tuesday, June 12Seven Times Salt takes its catchy but slightly

inappropriate name from Shakespeare’s Hamlet,specifically from a speech by Laertes describingthe tears that “burn out the sense and virtue ofmine eye” as he contemplates the madness over-taking his sister Ophelia. The group (KarenBurciaga, treble viol, violin; Daniel Meyers,recorders, flute, bagpipes; Josh Schreiber Shalem,bass viol; and Matthew Wright, lute), performedmusic from the time of Henry VIII and Elizabeth Iin the packed chapel of the Beacon Hill FriendsHouse. The number of short pieces, combinedwith a certain lack of poise, gave the performancea somewhat retro air. Matthew Wright gave us alovely rendition, solo, of Henry VIII’s “If Love NowReigned.” —MB

Wednesday, June 13The Stony Brook Baroque Players, winners of

the 2007 EMA Collegium Grant, presented astunning concert at the Boston Center for AdultEducation. These young musicians are mostlygraduate students coached and directed byArthur Haas. Their concert, titled “La Pazzia, ex-plored the thread of madness in 100 years ofItalian music of the 17th and 18th centuries; cer-tainly mezzo-soprano Christine Free’s extremelyexpressive singing turned Monteverdi’s Lamentod’Arianna into a veritable mad song. Arthur Haasslipped his 21 players in and out of various seatswith great skill, but perhaps the most madly excit-ing piece on the program was Vivaldi’s triosonata version of “La Follia,” performed withgreat virtuosity on the full complement of instru-ments. —MB

Thursday, June 14One of the most exciting fringe concerts was

that given by the ensemble Dulce Melos, a groupof four talented young performers who met asgraduate students at the Basel Music Academy(Schola Cantorum Basiliensis) in Switzerland.Margit Übellacker, dulcemelos (hammered dul-cimer), Yukiko Yaita, recorders, pipe, and stringdrum, Elizabeth Rumsey, Medieval fiddle andrecorder, and Marc Lewon, lute, gittern, andvoice, were presented, in their North Americandebut, by the Lute Society of America and theBasel Schola. The theme of their concert was“Metamorphoses,” or “the four elements andtheir powers” as in Ovid (43 B.C.-18 A.D.) and

the Heidelberg Book of Destiny (1491 A.D.) Theireasy virtuosity, combined with expressive playingand singing, created transformations of the musicthat were always fascinating and sometimesbreathtaking. –MB

The large space of the Church of theCovenant was filled with the sounds of theunlikely duo of pardessus de viole (JoannaBlendulf) and violin (David Wilson) in a programof mostly 18th-century music from France. Real-ized in performances characterized by grace anddexterity, dynamic contrast and emotional con-tent, music by Leclair, Montéclair, Boismortier, andCorrette was chosen to demonstrate how suc-cessfully the typical bass continuo of the periodcould be dispensed with. —BD

Friday, June 15One of two programs that travelled to Boston

with the University of North Texas BaroqueOrchestra and Collegium Singers focused on theessentials of a Christmas Vespers service in Colo-nial Peru. Ensemble Lipzodes (dulcian, shawms,and recorders) filled out the instrumental tex-tures, which used no bowed strings (otherwiseengaged in the UNT concert of French Baroquemusic). Among the well-performed selections wasa delightful negrilla “En Belé samo, Tumé,” ahumorous dialogue based on dialect renderingsof Spanish. —BD

The Tarantella Recorder Trio (Sarah Cantor,Héloïse Degrugillier, and Justin Godoy) was a fi-nalist in the EMA Medieval/Renaissance competi-tion last year, and this concert certainly demon-strated why. Since recorder consorts sacrificegreat amounts of timbral variety, they often cre-ate it through imaginative programming and col-laborations. In this tour through seven centuriesof early music, the stand-outs were the ars subtil-ior pieces, played with finesse and a nice sense ofline; Ruffo’s “La Gamba,” almost too fast for thehuman ear to register; and a wacky version of aVivaldi sopranino concerto that played havoc withthe original. The Vivaldi showed guest artistJudith Linsenberg at her best; her “take no pris-oners” command of technical issues and extro-

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BEMF Report

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Christine Free performs Monteverdi’s“Lamento d’Arianna” with Arthur Haas and the Stony Brook Baroque Players.


verted phrasing added a real sheen to the per-formance. The music of group member and com-poser Justin Godoy added a great deal toTarantella’s presentation.—TC

In 1968, at New York’s Hunter College audito-rium, I got my first glimpse of Andrea von Rammand the Studio der frühen Musik and chills randown my back. When Ensemble La Rota (TobieMiller, Esteban La Rotta, Sarah Barnes, ÉmilieBrûlé) started their BEMF concert, those chillscame back again—a response to the eerie senseof the past becoming present, created throughthe telling of a musical story by an expressive andflexible voice accompanied by a stylish, impro-visatory back-up band. Building on that, thegroup also understood the art of balancing unlikeinstruments without blend, preparing and resolv-ing dissonance, creating a fluid hierarchy of tex-tures, and integrating the singer into the instru-mental timbres. Singer Sarah Barnes and instru-mentalist Tobie Miller were featured in some dazzling solo work. I was particularly blown away by Miller’s hurdy-gurdy playing in a dancefrom the Robertsbridge Codex—never heard dynamics on that instrument before. La Rota won the 2006 EMA Medieval/Renaissance compe-tition and I think you’ll be hearing great thingsfrom them. —TC

Nearly 100 consumers, musicians, and indus-try representatives met in the Radisson’s CityRoom on Friday afternoon for a lively discussionon the sorry state of classical music retailing andthe potential of emerging distribution models.With few bricks-and-mortar stores left and musi-cally knowledgeable salespeople even scarcer,consumers have had to turn to online retailers, in-ternet newsgroups, and download services to ob-tain anything other than lowest-common-denom-inator content. The consensus was that while allthese channels are flawed, they are at least theo-retically susceptible of improvement. Other brightspots in a generally dark picture include the emer-gence of independent labels, self-publishing byperformers (from individuals to symphony orches-tras), and the recognition that more music isavailable than ever before for those who can find it.—JT

Saturday, June 16As a viol player, I have a soft spot for col-

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groups featuring women performers andwomen’s music. But even if I were neither ofthese things, I would still have enjoyed the con-cert by La Donna Musicale (Sherezade Panthaki,Lydia H. Knutson, Daniela Tosic, Na’ama Lion,Cécile Garcia-Moeller, Ruth McKay, NorikoYasuda, Catherine Liddell, Laury Gutiérrez). Howcan the group lose? Excellent performers who ac-tively share the music with their audience, out-standing music stylishly performed, improvisedornaments and counter melodies, virtuosic turnsby Lion and Garcia-Moeller, moving and passion-ate lyrics by Panthaki, Knutson, and Tosic. The en-tire group had a kind of balanced energy thatgave the concert a real buoyancy. —TC

In Gordon Chapel at Old South Church, theRainier Baroque Band featured the generoustenor of James Brown, chair of Tacoma’s PacificLutheran University vocal studies department, in“Les Piliers de l’Empire,” a program presentingmostly late-17th-century composers, like FrançoisCouperin, Marais, and Montéclair. The appealingdynamics of James Smith’s Baroque guitar wereheard in a prelude and chaconne by FrancescoCorbetta, an Italian guitar virtuoso, teacher, andcomposer who worked at the royal court of LouisXIV in Paris. —BD

Silvia Berry’s fortepiano recital at the FirstChurch opened with the quiet, searching adagioof Mozart’s Sonata in E-flat Major, K. 282, agutsy gambit that revealed a poetic sensibility anda willingness to draw listeners in with spaces topause and reflect. These qualities contrasted nice-ly with up-tempo movements, which were han-dled with verve. —BD

Every Festival reveals at least one unexpecteddiscovery, and, for me, this may have been thecombination of mandolin and fortepiano in thehands of Richard Walz and Shuann Chai. Walz,who began the study of mandolin as a child withItalian immigrant Alfonso Ballasone, displayed atotally satisfying level of virtuosity in the GrandeSonata for Fortepiano and Mandolin by JohannNepomuk Hummel in a program that also includ-ed a work by the elusive Vincent Neuling and fourworks by Beethoven. —BD

BEMF Report

Richard Walz and Shuann Chai after their recital for mandolin and fortepiano.

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EARLY MUSIC AMERICA Presents Annual Awards

At its annual meeting and awards ceremony onJune 15, Early Music America recognized hon-orees in three major categories.

Mary Springfels received the HowardMayer Brown Award for lifetime achieve-ment in the field of early music. Spring felshas been musician-in-residence at the NewberryLibrary since 1982 and is the founder and direc-tor of the Newberry Consort. A veteran of theearly music movement in America, she has per-formed and recorded extensively on viola dagamba with such ensembles as the New York ProMusica, the Waverly Consort, Concert Royal,Sequentia, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, theSeattle Baroque Orchestra, Music of theBaroque, Musica Sacra, the MarlboroughFestival, the New York City Opera, and ChicagoOpera Theater, where she also serves as an artis-tic advisor. In Chicago, Ms. Springfels is a seniorlecturer at both the University of Chicago andNorthwestern University and is much in demandas a teacher and player in summer festivalsthroughout the U.S., among them the SanFrancisco, Madison, and Amherst Early MusicFestivals, and the Conclave of the Viola daGamba Society of America. In 2004, she delivered the keynote address to the Berkeley Festival andExhibition for Early Music America. She can be heard on over two dozen recordings, ten of whichare critically acclaimed Newberry Consort projects.

Sarah Mead received the Thomas Binkley Award for outstanding achievement in per-formance and scholarship by the director of a university or college collegium musicum.Mead holds degrees in music and historical performance from Yale and Stanford. This year she cel-ebrated her 25th year directing the Early Music Ensemble at Brandeis University, where she also fre-quently serves as a guest choral conductor. In the Boston area, she has performed with EmmanuelMusic, the Handel and Haydn Society, the Boston Viol Consortium, and Brewster Village Consort,and she is a member of the Spiritus Collective in New York. She is the author of Plain and Easy: APractical Guide to Renaissance Theory and a contributor to A Performer’s Guide to RenaissanceMusic. She has taught early music ensembles at Tufts and Northeastern Universities as well as atTrinity College of Music in London and is a regular guest lecturer at the Longy School of Music. Sheis also program director for Early Music Week at Pinewoods Camp.

The Sarasa Ensemble was the recipient of the Early Music Outreach Award, which honorsensembles or individual artists for excellence in early music outreach and/or educational projectsfor children or adults. The Sarasa Ensemble performs music from the early Baroque through theRomantic eras. The ensemble produces the Sarasa Chamber Music Series in Cambridge andConcord, Massachusetts, and summer concerts based in Putney, Vermont. Sarasa was formed inresponse to a concert played by its founder, Timothy Merton, in the Sing Sing Correctional Facilityin 1997. Since then the ensemble has performed in adult and adolescent correctional facilities,homes for the elderly, mental hospitals, and institutions for the disabled. For the last several years,Sarasa has been working almost exclusively with teenagers in the greater Boston area. Every concert season the group plays more than 12 outreach concerts and facilitates four residency programs in teenage correctional centers.

Early Music America also presented scholarships to help five outstanding students attend sum-mer early music workshops and receive advanced training in the field of early music. This year’swinners are soprano Suzanne Anderson, a graduate student at USC, who attended theAccademia d’Amore in Seattle; keyboardist Hsuan Chang, a graduate student at IndianaUniversity, who attended the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute; lutenist Paul Kieffer, a highschool student who studies at the St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists, who attendedAmherst Early Music; Baroque violinist Andrew Fouts, an artist’s diploma candidate at IndianaUniversity, who attended the Vancouver Early Music Baroque Program; and Alexa Raine-Wright,recorder, a high school student from St. Paul, who attended Amherst Early Music.

EMA executive director Maria Coldwell(left) with Mary Springfels (center) andSarah Mead. Inset, Deborah Hoover,accepting for the Sarasa Ensemble.

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