Past Events

Tune Your Harps – Jewish Baroque Music
– Join us for a special concert featuring the music of Jewish baroque composers, plus selections from Handel’s Esther. The concert will feature Erin McAdams, soprano, and Jeffrey Jones-Ragona, tenor. Music by Salamone Rossi, Thomas Lupo, and George Frideric Handel

Just in time for Carnival season, we present a chamber program made up of early baroque works from Venice and northern Italy. Often seen as a reaction against the controlled restraint of the late Renaissance, music in 17th-century Italy changed drastically, and the expressivity and emotional frankness of the music of Monteverdi and his contemporaries can be arresting, even today. Works by Monteverdi, Merula, Uccellini, Caccini, and others, performed by a small ensemble including violin, recorder, cello, dulcian, harp, and theorbo.

Just in time for Carnival season, we present a chamber program made up of early baroque works from Venice and northern Italy. Often seen as a reaction against the controlled restraint of the late Renaissance, music in 17th-century Italy changed drastically, and the expressivity and emotional frankness of the music of Monteverdi and his contemporaries can be arresting, even today. Works by Monteverdi, Merula, Uccellini, Caccini, and others, performed by a small ensemble including violin, recorder, cello, dulcian, harp, and theorbo.

A fully staged performance of the chamber opera Pimpinone, Telemann’s comedic romp in which an ungovernable maid (Austin’s Gitanjali Mathur) trains a cunning eye on a hapless gentleman of means (NY’s Peter Walker).

The Spanish sought to create a “New Spain” in what is today Mexico and the southwestern United States, and this included the composition of appropriately beautiful music for their new churches and cathedrals. Soon, archives in the New World came to be filled with works that would rival those found in Old Spain herself. We’ll commemorate the 300th anniversary of San Antonio’s founding with 16th- and 17th-century music from both Old and New Spain, including motets by Cristóbal de Morales and Duarte Lôbo, Mateo Flecha’s ensalada La bomba, villancicos by Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla and Juan de Araújo, and a Mass setting by Manuel de Sumaya. The concert, part of the 2018 joint meeting of the American Musicological Society and the Society for Music Theory, will feature the Texas premiere of Francisco López Capillas’s Missa de Batalla, an exciting work based upon a motet by the French composer Clément Janequin.

A fully staged performance of the chamber opera Pimpinone, Telemann’s comedic romp in which an ungovernable maid (Austin’s Gitanjali Mathur) trains a cunning eye on a hapless gentleman of means (NY’s Peter Walker).

The Spanish sought to create a “New Spain” in what is today Mexico and the southwestern United States, and this included the composition of appropriately beautiful music for their new churches and cathedrals. Soon, archives in the New World came to be filled with works that would rival those found in Old Spain herself. We’ll commemorate the 300th anniversary of San Antonio’s founding with 16th- and 17th-century music from both Old and New Spain, including motets by Cristóbal de Morales and Duarte Lôbo, Mateo Flecha’s ensalada La bomba, villancicos by Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla and Juan de Araújo, and a Mass setting by Manuel de Sumaya. The concert will feature the Texas premiere of Francisco López Capillas’s Missa de Batalla, an exciting work based upon a motet by the French composer Clément Janequin.

Sound The Trumpet
Music of Handel featuring the regal sound of the Natural Trumpet,
Including a suite for a Trumpet and Strings based on Handel’s “Water Music” and “Eternal Source Of Light Divine” from the Birthday Ode for Queen Anne.
Plus, a concerto by Vivaldi from his famous “L’Estro Armonico” collection of concerti, a rarely heard symphony by Brescianello, and an anonymous string transcription of selections from Rameau’s “Nouvelles suites de pièces de clavecin”

Program:
Handel Suite for Trumpet and Strings in D Major
Handel Concerto Grosso op 6 no.1 in G Major
Handel “Eternal source of light divine” from Ode for Queen Anne’s Birthday
Handel “Ombra mai fu” from Xerxes
Vivaldi Concerto for 2 Violins in A minor RV 522
Brescianello Symphony No.1 in D Major
Rameau selections from “Nouvelles suites de pièces de clavecin”
1.La Forqueray (Suite V)
2.L’enharmonique (Suite VI)
3.L’Egyptienne (Suite VI)

Featuring
Jesus Politron, Countertenor
Daniel Miller, Natural Trumpet

Daniel Johnson, Artistic Director presents Alegri­a: The Spanish Renaissance

Seriously? There are ensaladas on this concert?!? Usually, if you want an ensalada you go to a restaurant, not a concert, right?

Not so fast, my friend; these ensaladas are a treat for the ears and the spirit, but have nothing to do with the delectable edible! Like most salads, they are created from a little of this and little of that, but that’s where the similarity ends. Filled with drama, Biblical quotations, exhortations, lovely melodies, and lots of humor, the ensaladas are toe-tappers from beginning to end! They were extraordinarily popular in many of the Cathedrals of Renaissance Spain—and were even banned in a few!

For a more solemn contrast, our program will explore some of the glorious wealth of polyphonic sacred music from the cathedrals and monasteries of 16th-century Spain, a repertoire that has served as inspiration for fans of choral music everywhere, with selections by Morales, Ceballos, and Peñalosa.

Other pieces in the concert feature the viol consort, led by our guest artist, viola da gamba star Wendy Gillespie, guest percussionist Peter Maund, and 3 sackbut (early trombone) players, led by University of Texas trombone faculty Nathaniel Brickens.

Soloists and featured singers include Jenifer Thyssen, Gitanjali Mathur, Laura Mercado Wright, Cayla Cardiff, Jeffrey Jones Ragona, David Lopez, Tim O’Brien, and featured countertenor, Ryland Angel.

¡Bailamos!

Tonight’s concert consists of music from the Spanish theater during the period known as the siglo de oro. The fame of the poets and playwrights of this time is in stark contrast to the relative obscurity of the music that accompanied their words. Poetry, theater, and music interacted in diverse ways in baroque theaters. Spoken plays were spiced with music—either incidental pieces written for the occasion, or popular tunes worked into the plot. Opera, of course, had its own poetry sung throughout. However, the strength of the spoken theater tradition in Spain helped resist the influence of opera, hardly composed at all in Spain until the mid-18th century. The Zarzuela was developed at court around 1630, with spoken dialogue and newly composed music throughout, such that both music and declamation are integral to the drama. We are complementing the Zarzuela songs with a variety of instrumental music; from the virtuosic guitar music that Spain has been known for since this time to the fashionable, Italian-inflected style of the famous immigrant Andrea Falconieri, to the most rustic dances. We cannot be sure exactly what music was played during spoken plays, but we know there was a good deal of music, and we’re presenting a wide range of what might have been. It is a misfortune that the names of masters such as Sebastián Durón, Juan Hidalgo de Polanco, and Antoni Lliteres are unknown as they are; we are delighted to celebrate their achievements.

“Unknown Unknowns” ABO closes its seventh season with an exploration of some of the Classical era’s lesser-known masters. Our understanding of the Classical era today is so altered by the magnitude of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven that we often forget that many, many composers other than those three were active in the second half of the eighteenth century. This program will introduce you to a varied group of works from the Classical era’s “Unknown Unknowns,” including music by Reicha, Holzbauer, Bonno, and Grétry.

“Unknown Unknowns” ABO closes its seventh season with an exploration of some of the Classical era’s lesser-known masters. Our understanding of the Classical era today is so altered by the magnitude of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven that we often forget that many, many composers other than those three were active in the second half of the eighteenth century. This program will introduce you to a varied group of works from the Classical era’s “Unknown Unknowns,” including music by Reicha, Holzbauer, Bonno, and Grétry.