Concert next week in Cumberland, Maryland

Armonia Celeste appears in Cumberland, Maryland, next week, as Mountainside Baroque presents “Benedicite Dominus” (Bless the Lord), the next concert in its “Before Bach” series. Carissimi’s famous oratorio “Jepthe” will be the concert centerpiece, with tenor Stephen Caldwell, baritone Ryan Mullaney, and bass Les Anders joining the three women’s voices of Armonia Celeste. Additional sacred music from Carissimi and other composers from the 17th-century Roman German College, the most famous musical establishment in Rome at that time, will comprise the rest of the concert.

Viola da gamba, harpsichord, and the instruments of Armonia Celeste (lute, theorbo, and Baroque triple harp) will support the voices in historically informed accompaniment. The harp featured in the concert, with its three sets of parallel strings, is an Italian copy of the famous Roman Barberini harp dating from ca. 1630. One of the largest and most elaborately decorated harps of the 17th century, it was depicted in paintings of the time.

The concert will take place at 4:00 PM on Sunday, January 15, 2012, at the Shrine of SS. Peter and Paul (125 Fayette St.). (Overflow parking in the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church parking lot across the street will be allowed for this performance.) Tickets ($10 general/$7 students) will be available at the door. For further information, call 301-338-2940 or e-mail umbrella@mindspring.com. For more information about Armonia Celeste, please visit www.armoniaceleste.com.

Dallas concert a big hit

We kicked off our Texas tour with an exciting performance in Dallas that had audience members raving enthusiastically! It was very gratifying for us to meet so many wonderful, intelligent people after the show and hear how the performance moved them. One man–a musician himself–said it was the finest musical evening he had ever been to! That is a compliment we will treasure.

We repeat “Udite Amanti: Lovers, Beware” tomorrow night in Denton and Sunday afternoon in Tyler. The Denton newspaper published a feature article about us today that we will post on the website. Hopefully it helps bring in an audience as warm and wonderful as the one we had in Dallas!

Attention Texas peeps!

Next week (September 15-18) Armonia Celeste is undertaking a concert tour of Texas! The program, “Udite Amanti–Lovers, Beware! Music from the Courts of 17th-Century Rome,” features some rare muscological gems performed with the ensemble’s signature verve.

With a theme charting the perils and folly of the heart, the music for the program comes from composers under the patronage of the powerful Barberini family, or who were heard at the Barberini court during the mid-1600s,  especially Luigi Rossi and Giacomo Carissimi (who in 1688, along with Antonio Cesti, were named by G.A. Perti as “the three greatest lights of our profession”). Other composers on the program include Girolamo Frescobaldi, Antonio Francesco Tenaglia, Marco Marazzoli, and Marc’Antonio Pasqualini (one of the Barbarini castrati).

There is an especial tie-in with the harp in this program. Perhaps the most famous surviving harp from the Baroque era is the Barberini harp (pictured above), which was played by Marazzoli. Costanza de Ponte, the wife of Luigi Rossi, one of the project’s featured composers, was a famous harpist of the time as well. For some of the first instances in centuries, Paula will play their music on her baroque harps during these performances.

Lyle will also provide additional exciting rhythmic continuo on baroque guitar, on the plangent theorbo, and the charming lute, while the beautiful voices of Sarah, Rebecca, and Dianna will entwine in exquisite harmony above it all, in trios, duets, and solos–lamenting, exulting, and despairing over the ravishments and embattlements of love.

Don’t miss this opportunity to hear the ensemble perform this program live near you! Armonia Celeste and this program are currently finalists in the prestigious Naxos/Early Music America recording competition–if AC wins, you will eventually be able to purchase a recording of this program on the Naxos label!

Performances:

Thursday, September 15,  7:00 pm
Emmanuel Hall, Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church
9800 Preston Road, Dallas, Texas 75230
Suggested donation: $10

Friday, September 16,  7:30 pm
Trinity Presbyterian Church
2200 N. Bell, Denton, Texas 76209
$10 general $7 students

Sunday, September 18, 4:00 pm
Marvin United Methodist Church
300 W. Erwin Street, Tyler, Texas 75702
Free

For more information, please see our website: www.armoniaceleste.com. Please be sure to come and say hello after the concert!

We are Naxos/EMA competition finalists!

We at Armonia Celeste are very excited to announce that our ensemble is a finalist in the 2011 Naxos/Early Music America recording competition!

This prestigious competition is a collaboration between Early Music America and the well-known Naxos recording label, whose aim is “to promote the career development of emerging early music artists and the philosophy of historically informed performance by offering to the public a CD of the highest quality.” The prize for winning this competition is a debut commercial CD recording, which will be produced and marketed by Naxos.

Armonia Celeste was selected as one of five finalists from an original applicant pool of over a hundred ensembles. We’re pleased to have this “validation” of our emergence as one of the outstanding new early music ensembles in North America.

We’re expecting to hear very soon whether we’ve won, and will keep you in the loop! The competition is very stiff, with some fine ensembles in the final five, so keep your fingers crossed for us…

What’s up with y’all’s name? And how do you pronounce it anyway??

OK. We realized–too late–that the name might be something of an ongoing problem. “Armonia Celeste”?? How do you pronounce it, and what does it mean, and why couldn’t we pick a regular old English name that people wouldn’t stumble over?

Let’s take these questions one at a time.

First, it’s pronounced like “Ar-mo-NEE-a Chay-LESS-tay” in English.  NOT “Ammonia sell-EST.” (We bet you can come up with some other ways not to pronounce it.)

Second, it’s Italian for “celestial (or heavenly) harmony,” and it seemed to perfectly sum up what our ensemble is about:

1)       The name is a bit archaic-sounding, like our historical music;

2)       It’s Italian, like most of our repertoire; and

3)       The “heavenly harmony” part brings to mind the fact that our rep is based in the writing from the late 1500s through the mid-1600s for a trio of women’s voices, singing in a style like close harmony–not unlike the Lennon sisters–except just from 400 years ago. Sarah, Rebecca, and Dianna are accompanied by Lyle and Paula on a variety of plucked-stringed instruments of the period, which we feel are the most expressive and sublime sounds of the era. Armonia celeste. That’s us.

Why couldn’t we have picked an English name? Well, we couldn’t think of anything that conveyed all of the above any better. Can you? (Leave your suggestion as a comment below. You might just give us a new nickname…or the title of our next CD or concert program. OK, we hope we’re not asking for trouble here…)

Harp, lute, and voice(s) = music of the angels (armonia celeste)!

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Concert tour planning underway!

Armonia Celeste is busy organizing concert tours for 2011 and 2012! Look for us in Texas this fall, in the American Southeast in the spring of 2012, and in the New York and Midatlantic regions of the U.S. in the summer of 2012. We are working on an exciting new program featuring little-known musicological gems, and plans for recording it are underway.  The coming year is going to be a big one for us, and we can’t wait to share what we are working on with you!

Where would you like to see Armonia Celeste tour next? Let us know by leaving us a comment below, and we’ll try to make it happen!