SONNAMBULA

Ensemble photography by Tatiana Daubek (above), Paula Lobo, and Teju Cole

Tuesday, April 29, 7–9PM

These Distracted Times
Music During the English Civil Wars

Columbia University
St. Paul's Chapel
1160 Amsterdam Ave., New York, NY 10027
Free admission

How to Attend:
Registration Required for in-person attendance
(by 11am on Mon 4/28)

Also free to stream on YouTube
(no registration required)

Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Henrietta Maria de Bourbon, Queen of England (1609-1669) c. 1636 to 1638, San Diego Museum of Art

Women in Art and Music:

An Early Modern Global

Conference and Concert

Three days of talks, performances, and lecture recitals across two institutions in a historic partnership between The National Gallery of Art and The Juilliard School. Join us!

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Highlights from our Tenth Anniversary Season

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and her Maidservant, 1625, Detroit Institute of Arts

VIEW THE SEASON

Sonnambula's first CD, "Leonora Duarte (1610–1678): The Complete Works," was released on JUNE 7 (2019; Centaur Records). The first complete recording of Duarte's seven Sinfonias (rec. 2016), and the first record for us, it's a tremendous honor to bring the works to life. The disc features a spoken essay by Teju Cole and is artfully mastered by Marlan Barry. Here is a preview track:

BUY A CD

Image © The New Yorker. Illustration by Cristiana Couceiro.

Alex Ross's beautiful meditation on our Duarte concert with Teju Cole at The Cloisters — from the February 18/25, 2019 issue of The New Yorker:

"The absence of historical celebrities hardly hurt attendance... It’s tempting to describe the Sinfonias as jewel-like in construction. You could also compare them to Vermeer’s paintings, small in scale and infinite in depth... For a remarkable hour on a cold February night, their world came alive again."

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RECENT HIGHLIGHTS

2018–2019 Ensemble-in-Residence at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

View the Met Season.

Photos of Sonnambula at The Cloisters are by Paula Lobo for The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sonnambula performs rare old music written for the viola da gamba (viol) and similar instruments.

Those of us who grew up playing music are likely more familiar with what music historians call "violin family" instruments—violins, violas, and cellos—in a modern setup, with innovations that have evolved over the last two hundred years to fill modern concert halls with sound: steel strings, end pins, chin rests, and modern bows.

Viols possess none of these artifacts of industrialization. Their delicate bodies are made with thin slabs of wood, strung with gut strings and frets, and are played da gamba, or 'on the leg'. In short, these instruments are meant for the court, for the domestic interior, and for the cultivation of a quiet beauty, the sort of which is difficult to come by in today's loud and fast-paced world.