Catacoustic’s Season 14 just wrapped up. Here’s a look back:
We actually never got a break between Season 13 and Season
14, because last summer was as busy as the rest of the year. Our collaboration
with Cincinnati Opera is now the stuff of legend: Their first ever Baroque Opera, La Calisto, set all kinds of attendance records
and created a buzz that went all the way to a review in Opera News. The singers brought the house down (including local
countertenor and frequent Catacoustic guest Michael Maniaci) but the pit
orchestra, with its core of Catacoustic performers, received an unusual amount
of attention: it was “a constant source of delight,” according to Opera News.
The other half of that collaboration was a concert, part of
the Cincinnati Remembers WWI series. Poetry from the Great War, performed by
members of the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, was interspersed with music from
the Baroque period on themes of war and loss. Catacoustic’s instrumentalists
and the Opera’s singers performed exquisitely, and there was more than one
tear-stained face by the end.
No sooner had all that wrapped up than we were off to the
annual Conclave of the Viola da Gamba Society of America. Catacoustic was a
featured performer on their concert night, presenting the Italian music that is
one of their specialties. Annalisa played her lirone – always an event – and
another local singer, Melissa Harvey, stopped hearts with some laments that
never seemed to go on long enough.
The summer also saw the release of our newest CD.
Secret of the Muse is a collection of music
written for pardessus, the viol-violin hybrid wildly popular in
pre-Revolutionary France. Most of this music had never been recorded before. To
purchase a copy, click here:
http://catacoustic.com/store/
And one last thing from our crazy summer of 2014: We awarded
our fourth annual Early Music Scholarship to not one but to two young viol
players. The awards helped them purchase their own instruments, setting them on
the path to a career in early music.
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| Lutenist Dan Swenberg and baritone Aaron Cain | at CCM |
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In September, Season 14 officially opened with a masterwork
by Dieterich Buxtehude,
Membra Jesu
Nostri. This oratorio is very rarely performed, and requires 12 musicians. Some
of those musicians lectured and held lessons and workshops for local students
at UC-CCM, while they were in town. We held the concert on a sunny Sunday
afternoon, in a building known for its Tiffany stained glass windows, so it was
truly a multi-sensory experience. Mary Ellyn Hutton included it on her list of the best concerts of 2014.
In November we had tenor Sumner Thompson sing – to the
accompaniment of the rarely heard lirone and Baroque harp – spectacular 16th
century Italian songs almost certainly never performed in Cincinnati before. Thompson
has an extraordinary voice that straddles the tenor and baritone ranges, and he
was returning to town after singing in Carmen
during the summer.
January and February found us playing at four branches of
the Public Library, for a series called
Music of the Renaissance. Well over 100
people came to what proved to be lively informal concerts with lots of
questions and story-telling. These were also a performance opportunity for our
scholarship winners, as part of our pre-professional mentoring program.
At the end of February, after an extremely successful month
of Early Music Festival, we had another singer, soprano Shannon Mercer. This
repertoire was French, 18th century sacred music for voice and
pardessus. Shannon Mercer could make a stone weep, her voice is so beautiful.
In March we had a concert of English music, from their
complicated, contrarian Baroque period. Local soprano, Melissa Harvey, sang
with us again, and we were in a beautiful new venue in Covington with more astonishing
stained glass windows. We had trouble resuming after the intermission, because
everyone was so busy enjoying the building.
In April we planned a very special departure. People have
often asked us to play more modern music – an odd request of a Baroque ensemble!
But we figured out how to manage it.
Annalisa assembled four of the best viol players in the United States to tackle
contemporary music that ranged from all over the globe, with music based on Australian
Aboriginal chant, that channeled the folk music of Britain, and that set to
music Medieval Chinese poetry. Mixed in were Renaissance pieces that stood
apart from their time, written by cantankerous free-thinkers of the past. The
amazing Michael Maniaci sang – even in Chinese! – the musicians spoke about this
deeply unusual music, there was an encore that made the people sitting around
me sigh with delight. It was an afternoon that won’t soon be forgotten.
And while those extraordinary musicians were in town,
Catacoustic hosted a workshop for local singers and viol players, giving about
10 local people the chance to study with master teachers from around the
country.
After all this, we’re taking time this summer to get stuff done! We start right away with this year's yard sale to raise funds for next year's scholarship. It's May 23 -- details at
https://www.facebook.com/events/396183820566331/ We have some beautiful things to sell this year, so tell all your friends and come out to support early music in Cincinnati!
And stay tuned:
planning for Season 15 is well under way,
and we plan to make it very special.
In 2014 Catacoustic was fortunate enough to be able to award two scholarships, to two young music students to purchase their own viols. Here's what both of them have been up to this past year.
I am so fortunate to have been one of the 2014 recipients of the Catacoustic scholarship. With the money received, I was able to purchase my first viola da gamba. In the past three years, I have grown increasingly close to this instrument. Its music, its history, its society, from my first encounter to the present, have been a source of intrigue and delight. 
