FOUR SEASONS - Sarasa Chamber Music Ensemble
St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Church, Brattleboro, VT
Directed by cellist Timothy Merton, Sarasa performs the ever-popular Four Seasons of Antonio Vivaldi, featuring the scintillating violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock. The performance will include recitations of the poetry that inspired Vivaldi's image-rich music.
The Sarasa Ensemble Brattleboro program will also feature Georg Philipp Telemann’s Concerto for 4 violins in C major and Johann Sebastian Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in E major with Charles Sherman as soloist.
An open reception will immediately follow the concert across the street at the BMC.
Sarasa "radiates eloquence and elegance, and is comprised of some of the most significant players of early music performing today." (Boston Globe, 2008)
Part of the Brattleboro Music Center Chamber Music Series.
Tickets $30, $20, $10 (limited viewing)
Purchase On-line:
Saturday, January 23, 7:30 pm, Sarasa Chamber Ensemble Tickets
Or call the BMC at 802-257-4523
About the Concert:
The Sarasa Chamber Music Ensemble performs music from the early Baroque through the Romantic eras. It has received critical acclaim for its “informed and impassioned music-making” and is hailed for its “great clarity” and “irresistible energy.” Drawing on a pool of more than sixty world-class musicians from the United States, Europe, and Canada, the ensemble varies in size according to the particular program of each of its concerts. The ensemble produces the Sarasa Chamber Music Series in Cambridge and Concord, Massachusetts, and has toured throughout New England and in Cuba, Ireland, and India.
The Sarasa Ensemble’s Brattleboro appearance will include Elizabeth Blumenstock, violin soloist, Charles Sherman, harpsichord soloist, Sarah Darling, violin, Amie Weiss, violin, Jenny Stirling, viola, and Timothy Merton, cello.
Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, composed in 1723, is not only his best-known work but also among the most popular pieces of Baroque music. The texture of each of the four violin concertos comprising The Four Seasons vary greatly in echo to the respective seasons they represent.
“Although many audience members are familiar with Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons there is a good chance that many do not know that the Seasons depict extremely specific things from teeth chattering, and ice skating, to dogs barking and bugs biting, as part of the poem they were composed around,” explains Sarasa director and cellist Timothy Merton. “Sarasa will be illustrating with a very amusing "musical glossary" what is going on in the piece before actually performing each movement.”
Sarasa’s performance of The Four Seasons will feature violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock, described as “…among the finest Baroque violinists of our time,” by Early Music America. Blumenstock is widely admired as a performer of interpretive eloquence and technical sparkle. A frequent soloist, concertmaster, and leader with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, the Santa Fe Pro Musica, and the Italian ensemble Il Complesso Barocco, she is also a member of several of California’s finest period instrument ensembles. Elizabeth has appeared throughout the United States and abroad.
Sarasa’s Artistic Director and cellist Timothy Merton, and violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock share a common local tie to the Brattleboro area as alumni of the Putney School in Putney, Vermont.
Timothy Merton’s career as cellist has spanned both sides of the Atlantic. From 1989 to 1996 he lived in England, where he performed with many of the leading early-music ensembles and orchestras, and his performances have taken him to diverse audiences around the world. Now living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Timothy is a guest performer in a variety of ensembles in both the USA and Europe.
The Sarasa Ensemble Brattleboro program will also feature Georg Philipp Telemann’s Concerto for 4 violins in C major and Johann Sebastian Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in E major with Charles Sherman as soloist.
Charles Sherman is one of America's leading performers of historical keyboard instruments. He is especially recognized for his mastery of the art of basso continuo realization and for his solo performances of the full range of 17th and 18th century keyboard literature. He has toured and recorded extensively as principal keyboard player of the acclaimed Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and other noted ensembles.
The Sarasa Ensemble was formed in response to a concert played by its founder, Timothy Merton, in the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in 1997, at the urging of a friend who was a prison volunteer. An inmate who heard that first concert remarked, “When art is well executed, it projects a message that transcends language, culture, and even aesthetic boundaries.” Sarasa took these words to heart and since then has been bringing high-quality music to those who ordinarily have little access to it. 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 twelve outreach concerts and facilitates four residency programs in teenage correctional centers. Through these programs Sarasa seeks to address the spiritual and emotional suffering of incarcerated youth and provide them with joy, hope and opportunities for healing through self-expression.
The Sarasa Ensemble’s The Four Seasons performance, part of the Brattleboro Music Center’s Chamber Music Series, will be held on Saturday, January 23, 7:30 pm at St. Michael’s Catholic Church on Walnut Street in Brattleboro, Vermont. An open reception will immediately follow the concert across the street at the BMC.
Sarasa Chamber Music Ensemble / Vivaldi's The Four Seasons
Tickets $30, $20, $10 (limited viewing)
Purchase On-line:
Saturday, January 23, 7:30 pm, Sarasa Chamber Ensemble Tickets
Or call the BMC at 802-257-4523 |
