Lutes and Dragons: GEMAS Concerts in Perspective
Lutes and Dragons: GEMAS Concerts in Perspective
Americas Society's early music concerts in the first quarter of 2014 featured prominent and emerging artists from the United States and Europe.
Co-curated by Music of the Americas Director Sebastián Zubieta and soprano Nell Snaidas, Americas Society's early music concerts this winter spanned several continents in terms of both the musical compositions and the performers themselves. The series was presented in collaboration with Gotham Early Music Scene (GEMS).
On February 27 at the Hispanic Society of America's resplendent Sorolla Room, Spanish vocal group Musica Ficta presented a program of Baroque polyphony popular in Mexico and Spain after the time of Christopher Columbus. In the video below, led by Raúl Mallavibarrena, the group performs Tomás de Torrejón y Valesco's "Desvelado dueño mío" with harpist Manuel Vilas Rodríguez.
On March 8, Argentine lutenist Eduardo Egüez and baritone Furio Zanasi—both based in Italy and frequent collaborators of Egüez's ensemble La Chimera—performed for an intimate crowd at the Americas Society in a program spotlighting the tumultuous career of early opera star Francesco Rasi. Below, the duo present Francesco Cavalli's "Lamento di Apollo" from the opera Gli amori d'Apollo e di Dafne, which deals with Apollo's conflicted feelings after Daphne's transformation into a laurel tree.
The final GEMAS event on March 19 at Americas Society featured Symphonie des Dragons, a wind band led by Baroque oboist Gonzalo X. Ruiz, playing for a packed house in a program of regimental music from seventeenth-century France. In the video below, they perform several marches from a set of pieces from the Philidor Collection.
