Piffaro's Season Finale Showcases the Best of Renaissance Spain and a Special Young Musician

Piffaro, The Renaissance Band wraps up its season of music from Renaissance-era Spain with a concert showcasing music written for the celebrated wind bands of the cathedrals and churches of the Iberian Peninsula. A very special young guest joins the band: 16-year-old Teresa Deskur, winner of Piffaro's 2016 National Recorder Competition for Young Players. Tickets are $29-49 (youth and full-time students free with ID) and are available at www.piffaro.org or by calling 215-235-8469. Support for this concert is provided by The Paul M. Angell Family Foundation.

Piffaro artistic co-director Bob Wiemken says, "During the Renaissance period, the concert hall as we know it today - a temple set aside for the performance of music and only music, at a remove from daily life - didn't yet exist. The Church was the center of the Spanish community and life revolved around the liturgical calendar. Music in all its variety enhanced common occasions and feast days alike, educating, edifying, and entertaining parishioners."

Piffaro's program will showcase the variety of music performed by the celebrated wind bands in the cathedrals & churches that dotted the Iberian Peninsula: intricate and moving polyphony, rambunctious villançicos that would have still been wet from the composer's pen when performed, virtuosic instrumental displays, and even some of the dance crazes of the day. Composers include Francisco Guerrero, Alonso Lobo, Philippe Rogier and Tomas de Victoria. The pool of repertoire to draw on is deep because, as Wiemken notes, "Cathedrals were the leading repositories of music from the recent past as well as the most current trends in composition." Collections sampled in this concert were housed in private royal chapels in Madrid, cathedrals in Seville, Salamanca and Toledo, and small collegiate churches in Lerma and Santiago de Compostela.

Cornettist Kiri Tollaksen and sackbut player Erik Schmalz add color to the instrumentation, but the featured guest hasn't even been to conservatory yet. High-school student Teresa Deskur was 16 years old when she won Piffaro's biannual National Recorder Competition for Young Players one year ago.

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