Photo of Sonnambula with Davóne Tines at The Frick Collection (above) © Lawrence Sumulong
"Highbrow and brilliant" — New York Magazine
"Ingenious" — The Wall Street Journal
"Expressive and stylish" — The Financial Times
2025–2026 Season
We open the 2025-26 season as ensemble-in-residence at The Frick Collection.
Sonnambula live at The Frick Collection. Photo by Jeremy Ney.
Join us as we present three concerts that explore the rich interplay of music, visual arts, and cultural history in early modern Europe.
Our newest recording is now available.
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Passing Fancy: Beauty in a Moment of Chaos AVIE Records, UK, 2025 Produced and Engineered by Marlan Barry 
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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.
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 Sonnambula, The National Gallery of Art, and The Juilliard School.
Image © The New Yorker. Illustration by Cristiana Couceiro.
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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." |
Photos of Sonnambula at The Cloisters are by Paula Lobo for The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665–1729): Musician in Paris |
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Divertimento in D Maj; K 136
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Joseph Haydn: Symphony No. 49 in F Minor; Hob 1:49
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Live at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Audience looks on at The Hispanic Society of America, New York City
