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Music in the Round’s May Festival 2012 examines the magne tic qualities of this magical city. A home to generations of outstanding French composers and musicians, Paris was equall y an irresistible lure throughout the ages to musicians, artists and writers from all around the world. Join us as Lully, Berlioz, Fauré, Debussy and Messiaen rub shoulders with Bach, Chopin, de Falla, Stravinsky and Cole Porter!
Just a Note
A Look Ahead to April and May
Annabelle Lawson, Rebecca Knight and Fenella Humphreys from the Lawson Trio answer our questions…
Favourite piece of music? A: Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. R: Monteverdi Vespers - it has everything! F: Impossible! I couldn’t live without Bach, Haydn and late Beethoven string quartets ... I also need my regular John Coltrane and U2 fixes!
Who or what is your biggest influence? A: Musically speaking, it would have to be my father, Peter Lawson, who taught me from the age of four until I was eighteen, and who still acts as a mentor. R: For me eclecticism is the key - the power of the ever-fresh creativity in so many folk music traditions - from Mali to Mongolia ... But if I were to name one classical musician as an inspiration it would be the pianist, Sviatoslav Richter. F: One of my first violin teachers, Sidney Griller. What do you like to do in your spare time? A: Bake cakes, listen to different world musics, daydream, workout. R: Listen to and play gypsy and Eastern European folk music. Learn Russian and Serbo-Croatian languages. Travel! F: Knit, read and discover new whiskies. What book are you reading? A: The Human Stain by Philip Roth. R: Milan Kundera – Encounter: Essays F: Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. Favourite place in the world? A: Wherever my boyfriend is – soppy but true! R: Sarajevo. F: Split between Papa Westray on Orkney and Prussia Cove in Cornwall. If you hadn’t worked in music, what do you think you would have chosen as a career? A: I don’t know – I’d like to be a drummer in a samba band!
Sheffield
Thu 5 Apr, 7.45pm Ensemble 360 Bach, Janáček & Schumann Crucible Studio
R: It certainly wouldn’t have happened at school in the UK but I really love the sound of the Armenian duduk. It’s soulful like the cello! F: Cello. If you hadn’t become a musician, what do you think you would have chosen as a career? A: I’d like either to have trained as a psychotherapist or become a Salsa instructor! R: Some mixture of artist, translator, humanitarian aid worker... F: Something to do with gardening or archaeology. In one sentence sum up your average working day A: An adrenalin-fuelled juggling act, with many unexpected, magical moments! R: Days are usually fraught with fighting crowded transport systems with cello in tow, and co-ordinating freelance orchestral work and teaching with trio rehearsal schedules, so I savour all the quality cello playing time I can get my hands on! F: Exciting, challenging and constantly changing.
The Lawson Trio is touring to Warwick, Sheffield, Newcastleunder-Lyme and Portsmouth from January until May.
4th Floor | Sheffield Central Library | Surrey Street | Sheffield S1 1XZ Tel: 0114 281 4660 Fax: 0114 281 4661 Email: info@musicintheround.co.uk www.musicintheround.co.uk | Registered Charity No. 326811
Thu 12 Apr, 7.45pm Tim Horton Beethoven Crucible Studio Fri 13 Apr, 7.45pm Gwylim Simcock & Klaus Gesing Sheffield Jazz Crucible Studio Wed 18 Apr Ensemble 360 & Anna Olejnicki Warm Up for the Olympics English Institute of Sport Thu 19 Apr, 5.45pm Ensemble 360 Ravel, Bizet, Schein, Glass, Caplet, Janáček, Montague (world concert premiere) City Hall Ballroom Friday 11 – Saturday 19 May May Festival 2012: Les Nations
Priory Place, Doncaster
Wed 9 May, 7.30pm Kuljit Bhamra, Jacqueline Shave & John Parricelli Parampara: a unique collaboration of classical, jazz and Indian music And more concerts in South Yorkshire and on tour around the country, as well as a variety of talks and Q&As.
Issue No.57
We’re delighted to announce this year’s May Festival, Frida y 11 – Saturday 19 May… Les Nations - The Extraordinary Musical Life of Paris, c.164 3-1968
Friends Newsletter ’
January 2012
Meet Stile Antico Tell us a bit about Stile Antico We’re a vocal ensemble with twelve members and we’ve been going for ten years. We started at university so it still feels like early days for us! We mainly perform unaccompanied Renaissance music. How did you form? A lot of us sung together at university and chapel choirs, and quite a few us lived in Oxford, although a lot of us were at university in Cambridge, so we decided to meet in the holidays. We wanted to meet up and put on concerts and it grew from there. Three of you are sisters in the group, how is it working with family? We’re all very used to working with each other. We’ve all known each other for quite a long time so it feels like we’re all family! Two of the members are married as well. Could you tell us a bit about the programme you’re touring with MitR, and how you chose it? This programme is a little bit different to what we normally do; we normally perform music in churches and music that was written for church performance. But this music was actually written for performance in the home, so it’s great for chamber music venues. Although it’s all sacred music it was written to be sung at home as entertainment as well as being religious – domestic devotion. So it has quite a different character to a lot of the music we’ve performed before. It’s about 200 years’ worth of music: It starts in the early Tudor times and goes right up to just before the civil war, so there’s quite a variety of styles. There are a few things
Contents...
page one Mee t Stile Antico page two M aking Frien ds | Folk in the S pring Time | Keeping Fit for Heart & S oul page three G etting to Kn ow Paul Rissmann | Friends’ Eve nt page four M ay Festival | Just a Note | A Look Ah ead
in Latin, from the hidden Catholic communities, and a lot of stuff in English. It gives you a flavour of the poetry and the religion through those 200 years. We recorded a CD of the programme last year, and it’s coming out this month, so just in time for the tour! Do you often present the music in its historical context, and do you think it helps the audience to engage with the music? We always try and find a theme for the repertoire because it can sound a bit obscure if you’re not used to it, so it’s nice to have something that leads people through. We’ve split the programme into groups chronologically to get a flavour of each, so for example we have Catholic music and an introduction on what it was like being a Catholic at the time, and how that music reflects that. There’s a section with pieces that were written to commemorate Prince Henry’s death - that is, Charles I’s older brother who died very young and was apparently going to be a very good king, so there was big mourning throughout the land. And then we ended up with Charles I, and we all know where that headed! These pieces have a lot of layers of meaning; they’re nominally sacred texts but there’s hidden meaning about things that were happening at the time, and they are also just something people sang at home for fun! You’re giving a workshop for adult choral singers in Sheffield, is this something you’ve done before? We’ve done a fair amount of that kind of thing. Every year we go down to Dartington Summer School and do a week of masterclasses and
various different vocal chamber music workshops. It’s something we really enjoy and it’s really nice to be able to pass on what we love doing and to give tips to, and hopefully enthuse, other people! The people we work with often sing in choral societies so may not be used to working without a conductor, so we spend quite a lot of time on how it is to work as a chamber musician, rehearsing as a group in which you’re self-directed and how to perform as a group without a conductor.
Stile Antico is touring to Scarborough, Milton Keynes, Sheffield, Oakham and Wiltshire from February until May. You can listen to their podcast by visiting www.musicintheround.co.uk and clicking on the Podcasts & Videos button.