The Dryden Ensemble Announces 2022-23 Concert Season

The Dryden Ensemble has announced its upcoming Swan Season, celebrating 28 years of music making. It includes a three-concert series and one special event at the Princeton Theological Seminary Chapel, 64 Mercer Street, Princeton, NJ, and two concerts at Trinity Episcopal Church, 6587 Upper York Road, Solebury, Pennsylvania. General admission tickets are $25 per concert, patron tickets are $40, and student tickets are free with a valid ID. Subscriptions and single tickets are available online at www.drydenensemble.org.

On November 12 and 13, the ensemble will present "Versailles: Intrigue & Envy" featuring actors Roberta Maxwell and Paul Hecht in dramatic readings based on the letters of Madame de Sévigné and others. The musicians will perform chamber music from the court of Louis XIV by Jean-Baptiste Lully, Marin Marais, Louis and François Couperin, and others, for violin, oboe, viola da gamba, lute, and harpsichord.

The series continues on March 25 and 26 with a concert entitled "Pergolesi & Bach," a memorial to those who died during the pandemic. The program features soprano Teresa Wakim and mezzo-soprano Kristen Dubenion-Smith in works by J. S. Bach and Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, a work written in the final weeks of the composer's short life.

On Sunday, April 16, 2023, the ensemble concludes its season with a special theatrical entertainment. The details will be announced at a later date.

On Sunday, February 5, the ensemble will offer a special event based on the life of Anna Magdalena Bach, Bach's second wife. It combines a reading of poems based on her life by Jane McKinley with chamber music by J. S. Bach, performed by Lisa Terry, viola da gamba, and Webb Wiggins, harpsichord. This event is free to the public.

About The Dryden Ensemble:

Named in honor of John Dryden, the English poet laureate whose words inspired Baroque composers including Purcell and Handel, the Dryden Ensemble specializes in performing music of the 17th and 18th centuries on period instruments. A line from Dryden's Song to St. Cecilia captures the essence of baroque music and the ensemble's philosophy: "What Passion cannot Musick raise and quell!"