The San Francisco Early Music Society presents Hallifax & Jeffrey with Marie Dalby Szuts, Josh Lee and John Lenti

The San Francisco Early Music Society's 2016-17 Season comes to a close the weekend of April 7 with three concerts by HALLIFAX & JEFFREY with guests Marie Dalby Szuts, Josh Lee and John Lenti, in a program dedicated to French music for viola da gamba from Louis Couperin to Marin Marais and Michel Corrette. Hallifax & Jeffrey are the duo of Peter Hallifax and Julie Jeffrey, and together with Szuts and Lee they comprise a consort of bass viols. Lenti on theorbo will play the continuo parts.

Hallifax & Jeffrey performs at 8 p.m. Friday, April 7 at First Presbyterian Church in Palo Alto; at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 8 at St. John's Presbyterian Church in Berkeley; and at 4 p.m. Sunday, April 9 at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in San Francisco. Individual tickets from $34 to $40 are available for purchase online at sfems.org.

Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Hallifax & Jeffrey first performed in 2005 in a series of concerts of the music of Forqueray, the last of the great French 18th-century viol players. They specialize in the duos and chamber ensembles of Couperin, Dollé and Marais, and among the English, of Simpson, Locke, Jenkins and their contemporaries. Most recently they have immersed themselves in the vast repertoire of English music for lyra viols by Hume, Coperario and Lawes.

For their concerts next month they will play rarely heard music for a large ensemble of viols with and without continuo, works such as Louis Couperin's Pavanne originally scored for keyboard; Jean de Sainte-Colombe's Le Trembleur; François Couperin's La Sultane; a Sarabande from Marais' Pièces à deux violes; and Corrette's "fiery" five-part suite, Le Phénix. The program will also include substantial excerpts from Marc-Antoine Charpentier's chamber opera La descente d'Orphée aux enfers, based on the myth of Orpheus.

For more information, visit sfems.org.

ABOUT THE SAN FRANCISCO EARLY MUSIC SOCIETY
Founded in 1975, SFEMS is the leading early music community-based service and membership organization in the US. Under the direction of Executive Director Harvey Malloy and President Robert Cole, it is the focal institution in Northern California for the advancement of historically informed performance of early music. Through its concert series, publications, outreach activities, affiliate support and educational programs, SFEMS encourages the development of amateurs, supports professionals, and increases public involvement and participation in early music. SFEMS is the lead presenter of the Berkeley Festival & Exhibition of early music.

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