ArtsRock Classical Candlelight Concerts Presents Parthenia Viol Consort, February 23

ArtsRock presents Parthenia Viol Consort in the second of this season's Candlelight Concerts at the historic First Reformed Church in Nyack.

This enchanting program combines music and poetry spanning the centuries from the 1400's to the present day, interspersed with dramatic readings by actor Jonathan Richards in a captivating performance animating the ancient and modern in a beautiful setting filled with candlelight.

Martin Kennedy's “Tomb Sonnets” premiered by Parthenia in 2018, sets historic texts by Petrarch, John Keats and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to transcendent music for countertenor and viol consort, featuring countertenor Ryland Angel. Contemporary composer Richard Einhorn's arrangement of “The Lament of Mary Queen of Scots” sets poetry by Scottish poet Robert Burns in a work featured on Parthenia's 2015 recording “The Flaming Fire”. The program includes music by 16th century Italian composer Giovanni Gabrieli, resident organist and composer at St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, as well as his contemporary Girolamo Frescobaldi, organist at St. Peter's in Rome.

 

Friday February 23rd 2024 at 8PM

First Reformed Church of Nyack, 18 South Broadway, Nyack, NY 10960

Tickets available at ArtsRock.org

Email: Info@ArtsRock.org / Phone: (855) 278-7762

 

The viola da gamba quartet PARTHENIA brings early music into the present with a ravishing sound and a remarkable sense of ensemble, animating both ancient and fresh-commissioned repertoire to critical acclaim. These “local early-music stars,” hailed by The New Yorker and music critics throughout the world, are “one of the brightest lights in New York's early-music scene.” The ensemble appears regularly in concerts across America, and produces its own series in New York City, collaborating with the world's foremost early music specialists. The quartet has been featured in prestigious festivals and series as wide-ranging as Music Before 1800, the Regensburg Tage Alter Musik, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and in a featured concert at the Venice Biennale. Parthenia's discography includes As it Fell on a Holie Eve – Music for an Elizabethan Christmas, with soprano Julianne Baird, The Flaming Fire – Mary Queen of Scots and Her World with Ryland Angel (countertenor) and Dongsok Shin (virginal), A Reliquary for William Blake, and Within the Labyrinth.

Parthenia is Beverly Au, Lawrence Lipnik, Rosamund Morley and Lisa Terry.

 

Born on St Cecilia's day, the Grammy-nominated British countertenor RYLAND ANGEL has built an international reputation on both the opera and concert stage, in repertoire ranging from the Baroque to new operatic commissions at major opera houses, concert halls and festivals throughout Europe and the USA. He has performed in Monteverdi's Orfeo, Gavin Bryars's Doctor Ox's Experiment (English National Opera), The Fairy Queen (Barcelona), Gluck's Orfeo (Koblenz), Dido and Aeneas (Opera Comique), The Play of Daniel (Spoleto) and many more. Angel has sung on over 70 recordings and film soundtracks, including The Flaming Fire – Mary Queen of Scots and Her World with Parthenia. 

 

The viol, or viola da gamba, is a family of stringed instruments celebrated in European music from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. Today on both sides of the Atlantic, soloists as well as viol groups—known as “consorts”—have rediscovered the lost repertoire and ethereal beauty of this early instrument. The viol was first known as the “bowed guitar” (vihuela da arco), a joint descendent of the medieval fiddle and the 15th-century Spanish guitar. Unlike its cousin, the arm-supported violin (viola da braccio), the viol is held upright on the leg (gamba) or between the legs; its bow is gripped underhand; and its body is made of bent or molded wood. These characteristics lend a distinctive lightness and resonance to viol sound that have inspired a wave of new works by 21st-century composers and a growing enthusiasm on the part of international audiences.

 

Explore Nyack – spend a day or a weekend and discover all that Nyack has to offer! 

Information on local dining, shopping and attractions is found here 

Special rates for ArtsRock ticketholders at Hotel Nyack!

Reservations may be made online or by phone

Online Reservations:  Click Here for Group Link

Hotel Front Desk: 845-675-8700; Reference Group Name (ArtsRock Candlelight Concert)

All reservations must be made by: February 19th, 2024