In their 5BMF debuts, NYC-based viol consort Parthenia teams up with Boston-based vocal ensemble Blue Heron for a new program of 16^th-century French sacred and secular works, featuring music by Claude Le Jeune, André Pevernage, Eustache Du Caurroy, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and others.

Performers on this program include:
Blue Heron: Scott Metcalfe, director & violin; Michael Barrett, Paul Guttry, Owen McIntosh, Jason McStoots, Martin Near, Shari Wilson, voices
Parthenia: Beverly Au, Lawrence Lipnik, Rosamund Morley, Lisa Terry, viols
With guest performers Emily Walhout, viol and Hank Heijink, lute

Tickets: $40 reserved seating/$25 general admission. $10 student or fixed income available at the door; Under 18 free. BUY NOW

About the performers:
Vocal ensemble Blue Heron, directed by Scott Metcalfe, has been acclaimed by The Boston Globe as “one of the Boston music community’s indispensables” and hailed by Alex Ross in The New Yorker for the “expressive intensity” of its interpretations; the Boston Musical Intelligencer calls Blue Heron “a fantastic model for the fully-realized potential of early music performance in the 21st century.” Combining a commitment to vivid live performance with the study of original source materials and historical performance practices, Blue Heron ranges over a wide and fascinating repertoire. Founded in 1999, Blue Heron presents subscription series in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in New York City. The ensemble has appeared at the Boston Early Music Festival, New York’s 92nd Street Y, The Cloisters, and Music Before 1800, Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., the Pittsburgh Renaissance and Baroque Society, and Monadnock Music in New Hampshire, and with the wind band Piffaro and the viol consort Parthenia in Philadelphia. Blue Heron made its West Coast debut at Festival Mozaic in San Luis Obispo, California, and returned to California in 2012 for a debut at the Berkeley Early Music Festival.

Parthenia, hailed by The New Yorker as “one of the brightest lights in New York’s early-music scene,” is a quartet of viols dedicated to the performance of ancient and contemporary repertoires. Parthenia is presented in concerts across America, and produces its own concert series in New York City, collaborating regularly with the world’s foremost early music artists and ensembles. It has has been featured on radio and television as well as festivals and series including Music Before 1800, Columbia University’s Miller Theatre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

About the venue:

Founded by internationally renowned recorder players Nina Stern and Daphna Mor, East of the River explores haunting and virtuosic melodies from the traditional repertoires of the Balkans, Armenia and the Middle East, as well as gems of the Medieval European classical repertory. In their 5BMF debut, this unique ensemble presents music from these regions in their new program, “Levantera”, named after a strong easterly wind of the Mediterranean.

The program features co-founders Nina Stern and Daphna Mor on recorders, nay, and chalumeau; Uri Sharlin on accordion; John Hadfield on percussion; and Jesse Kotansky on violin and oud.

We are proud to present this program in collaboration with the historic Flushing Town Hall in Queens.

Tickets start at $15 – BUY NOW

About the neighborhood
Known to NYC foodies as a mecca for great eating, historic Flushing is easily accessible by the 7 train. (Check out this list of some of Flushing’s famed eateries, where you can get a great pre-show lunch or post-show dinner!) Flushing Town Hall, an 1862 landmark building, hosts the Flushing Council on Culture and the Arts, which presents an array of high quality arts and educational programs as well as providing vital services to local artists, arts organizations and community residents.

Directions to the venue:

Soprano and 5BMF veteran Nell Snaidas, guitarist Daniel Swenberg and violinist Krista Bennion Feeney will be joined by baritone and 5BMF artistic director Jesse Blumberg for a Liederabend of Schubert and his contemporaries.

Tickets start at $15 – BUY NOW

ABOUT THE VENUE
5BMF is thrilled to return to Fort Greene’s South Oxford Space, whose wood-paneled Great Room hosted our very first program in 2007 and our Valentines in Brooklyn program in 2010. South Oxford Space is easily accessible by multiple transit lines: C to Lafayette Avenue; 2, 3, 4, 5, M, N, Q, R, B, D or LIRR to Atlantic Avenue/Pacific Street; G to Fulton Street.

Soprano and 5BMF veteran Nell Snaidas, guitarist Daniel Swenberg and violinist Krista Bennion Feeney will be joined by baritone and 5BMF artistic director Jesse Blumberg for a Liederabend of Schubert and his contemporaries.

We’re proud to present this program in collaboration with ClassicalCafé at the intimate An Beal Bocht Café in Riverdale.

Tickets start at $15 – BUY NOW

In addition to this concert, “Wörter mit Freunden” will have an encore performance in Brooklyn on Tuesday, January 15th. More details here…

ABOUT THE VENUE
Located in the Fieldston neighborhood of the Bronx, An Beal Bocht Café offers music, poetry, comedy, theater and art exhibits, making it a premiere venue showcasing both Irish and local artistic talents – and a great menu of food and drinks!

The renowned Clarion Music Society makes its 5BMF debut in a program featuring sacred and secular works of Salamone Rossi, the Italian Jewish master of the late Renaissance/early Baroque, alongside works from the same era by Monteverdi, Gesualdo, and others.

Led by conductor Steven Fox, the Soloists from the Clarion Society will include:

Bradley Brookshire, harpsichord
David Walker, theorbo
Sherezade Panthaki, soprano
Molly Quinn, soprano
Luthien Brackett, mezzo-soprano
Steven Fox, tenor
Cantor Daniel Pincus, tenor
Jesse Blumberg, baritone
Craig Phillips, bass
And featuring special guest: Cantor Joshua Breitzer

Tickets start at $15 – BUY NOW

Venue Details
Park Slope’s historic Congregation Beth Elohim is easily accessible via the 2 or 3 trains (Grand Army Plaza), B or Q trains (7th Avenue) or F train (7th Avenue.)

In collaboration with The Performing Garage Presents, 5BMF continues its 100th birthday celebrations of Schoenberg’s monumental Pierrot Lunaire, performed by mezzo-soprano and 5BMF veteran Hai-Ting Chinn and the Proteus Ensemble.

NEW! Read our “5ive Minutes” interview with Hai-Ting in which she shares her thoughts on the challenging and intriguing Pierrot.

Part II of The Pierrot Project will include:
Debussy: Syrinx (1913)
Berg: 4 Stücke, Op. 5 (1913)
Schoenberg: Sechs kleine Klavierstücke, Op. 19 (1911)
Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire (1912)

Tickets start at $15 – BUY NOW

Mezzo-soprano and 5BMF veteran Hai-Ting Chinn and the Proteus Ensemble commemorate the 100^th Birthday of Schoenberg’s monumental Pierrot Lunaire, in a new program of French and Viennese music from the turn of last century.

NEW! Read our “5ive Minutes” interview with Hai-Ting in which she shares her thoughts on the challenging and intriguing Pierrot Lunaire, which she will perform in Part II of The Pierrot Project on October 16th.

Part I of The Pierrot Project will include:
Debussy: Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (1891-94)
Debussy: Chansons de Bilitis (1897-98)
Ravel: Sonata for Violin and Cello  (1920-22)
Schoenberg: Chamber Symphony, Op. 9 (1906)

Tickets start at $15 - BUY ONLINE NOW

About the Venue
The historic Staten Island Museum traces its beginnings to 1881, when it was founded by a group of young naturalists. The museum offers exhibits exploring the connections between natural science, art and history.

For directions to the museum, please click here.

5BMF: Hai-Ting, thank you so much for taking a few minutes out of your Pierrot prep to chat with us. It’s so great to have you open our 6th Season; you’ve performed Wolf with us in Queens, Bach in the Bronx, and Brahms in Bryant Park, and now Debussy in Staten Island and Schoenberg in SoHo. You’re quite the versatile artist!

Hai-Ting Chinn: You have quite the versatile series! What a great thing for the city. And it’s an honor to be part of it.

5BMF: What first drew you to Pierrot Lunaire, and when did you first perform it?

HTC: I first learned about Pierrot Lunaire while I was at Eastman School of Music as an undergrad. Jan DeGaetani, who taught at ESM, had recently passed away, and everyone in the voice department was still talking sadly and admiringly about her. She was a champion of new and challenging music, even for young singers, and her recording of Pierrot was the first one I heard. Some combination of her passion and the somehow-mysterious nature of the piece made it fascinating to my teen-age self, and it hasn’t gotten any less fascinating over the years. I first performed it myself five or six years ago, at the Greenwich House Music School, with the same ensemble who is joining me this time.

5BMF: You’re teaming up with the Proteus Ensemble for these two programs. Besides being a Pierrot Ensemble, what makes them perfect for this assignment?

HTC: Well, first off, they’re just great, and they are masters of the music from this period. Also, we have now a mutual history with this piece – this will be the fourth time we’ve performed it together – plus, I’ve known several of them since school, and it’s amazing to watch and listen to these incredible musicians grow over the course of their lives and careers. I hope they enjoy working with me half as much as I do with them.

5BMF: What do you think it is about Pierrot that still sounds new and revolutionary, 100 years after its premiere?

HTC: I suppose if you could put your finger on exactly what it is that makes it sound revolutionary, it wouldn’t sound so revolutionary…but I’ll take a crack at it. At the time, one of the revolutionary things about it was its atonality. That was new to the original audiences, and although we are used to some even more radical atonality built on Schoenberg’s beginning, I think his use of it at this period is magical; to me, it feels like listening to a language that you knew when you were a infant, that sounds intensely familiar but that you can’t translate or attach any meaning to – it feels like the meaning is there but you can’t grasp it. It’s like the tonality of dreams. Which is absolutely perfect for this piece and these poems.

“It feels like listening to a language that you knew when you were a infant, that sounds intensely familiar but that you can’t translate or attach any meaning to – it feels like the meaning is there but you can’t grasp it. It’s like the tonality of dreams.”

Something even more obvious that makes Pierrot sound mysterious to us today is the use of “Sprechstimme,” the highly-inflected, half-sung-half-spoken vocal technique. Those who know the history will know that a sort of sing-song performance of poetry was fairly common around this period, especially in German. In fact, the actress who commissioned the piece, Albertine Zehme, was touring Europe declaiming these same poems to another piece of music, by Otto Vrieslander. Apparently she wasn’t satisfied with that other piece, and she asked Schoenberg to compose something new. I wonder if she had any inkling what she was getting into! The previous piece was basically just background music to which she gave dramatic readings; but Schoenberg specified exact (and incredibly complicated) rhythmic delivery and pitches that are supposed to be approximated but never dwelt on steadily. Except for a small number of pitches (nine?) that are actually to be sung, Schoenberg is essentially composing the exact inflection he wants the spoken text to have. And it’s extreme, and wide ranging. I guess what I’m saying is that this old German technique of declaiming poetry, with a little extra specificity by Schoenberg, sounds revolutionary now because it’s not something anyone would think of doing any more. In fact, in some ways, it may sound more revolutionary to us today that in did when it was premiered. Just think of this: at its premiere, it not only got a standing ovation, but the audience demanded a repeat on the spot! I somehow can’t imagine a contemporary audience wanting to hear it twice in one night.

5BMF: You’ve performed everything from cantatas to song cycles to operatic and theatrical works. Where does Pierrot fit in, in terms of the challenges it presents to the performers?

HTC: To me personally, the strict rhythmic challenge is the biggest hurdle, and though that’s kind of a boring technical answer, the instrumentalists might agree. Although they have a whole lot of notes to play. Schoenberg also wrote in his performance notes that the speaker should not add any of their own interpretation to his: that it was all there in the music, and anything that the speaker/singer might add based on their own feeling for the words would detract rather than add to the performance. How to add none of your own emphasis or inflection, and yet give a completely dedicated, dramatic, and heart-felt performances of these poems? It’s a bit of a gauntlet he threw down a century ago, and still a fascinating challenge today.

5BMF: What would you say to a potential concertgoer who gets a bit queasy seeing the word ‘Schoenberg’ on a concert announcement?

HTC: Take some Dramamine and suck it up. If you get on board, it’s worth the ride.

Hai-Ting Chinn and the Proteus Ensemble will perform Pierrot Lunaire on October 16th, in the second part of 5BMF’s The Pierrot Project. Part I, on October 14th, will feature works by Debussy, Ravel and Schoenberg. Buy your tickets today and join us for these exciting concerts!

Our exciting Five Borough Songbook completes its citywide journey with its final borough premiere in Staten Island!  Joining us for this concert is a newly assembled cast who will also be performing the Songbook in the Bronx on May 31st.

Tickets start at $15 – buy online now for a 10% discount!

About the Venue
The historic Staten Island Museum traces its beginnings to 1881, when it was founded by a group of young naturalists. The museum offers exhibits exploring the connections between natural science, art and history.

For directions to the museum, please click here.

Our critically acclaimed Five Borough Songbook completes its citywide tour with a premiere in the Bronx!

A newly assembled cast will take on the Songbook on May 31st:
Katherine Whyte, soprano
Jamie Van Eyck, mezzo-soprano
Gregory Zavracky, tenor
Jesse Blumberg, baritone
Johnny Gandelsman, violin
Cameron Stowe and Erika Switzer, piano

Join us at 6:30 PM for a special Composer Chat, and hear many of our Songbook composers discuss their new works and how they came to be a part of this project.

Tickets start at $15 – buy online now for a 10% discount!

About the Venue
The Bronx Museum of the Arts, founded in 1971 and located on the distinctive Grand Concourse, focuses on 20th-century and contemporary art. Come early for a chance to stroll the exhibits of this landmark museum!

The museum is easily accessible via the B train (167th St/Grand Concourse Station), the 4 train (161st St/Yankee Stadium Station) or the Melrose stop on Metro North. (Take note: the D train skips 167th St during rush hour!)

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