Johannes Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance, c. 1664, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Welcome to our 2022–2023 Season
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Tuesday, September 27, 2022, 7PM Jude Ziliak Plays Johann Paul von Westhoff The Six Solo Violin Sonatas (pub. Dresden, 1694) St. Paul's Chapel, Columbia University 1160 Amsterdam Ave New York, NY 10027 Join Jude Ziliak for an evening of music for solo violin from German-speaking lands in the 17th century. The program opens with experimental music from the 1610s (the earliest days of the violin's life as a solo instrument) with repertoire preserved in a manuscript found in Wroclaw (formerly Breslau), Breslau ms. 114. This manuscript of mostly anonymous music from the first decades of the 17th century is an amazing record of a largely unwritten improvisational practice of polyphonic violin playing in Germany, decades before Biber and a century before Bach. Looking ahead to the end of the century, we will turn to the ambitious suites of Johann Paul von Westhoff. The program will conclude with Biber's meditative Passacaglia from the Mystery Sonatas. Join either in person or via YouTube livestream. |
photo by Tatiana Daubek
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Monday, October 24, 2022, 6:30PM American premiere: Alessandro Melani's L'empio punito (1669) Casa Italiana, NYU 22 West 12th Street New York, NY 10011 Don Giovanni Before Don Giovanni: Alessandro Melani's L'Empio Punito (1669) A lecture by Luca Della Libera, Conservatorio di Musica 'Licinio Refice' Respondents: Elizabeth Weinfield, The Juilliard School Giuseppe Gerbino, Columbia University Followed by selections from Melani's opera L'empio punito Performed by musicians from Sonnambula |
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Wednesday, October 26, 2022, 6PM Threads of Power: Lace and Music An evening of music designed by Elizabeth Weinfield and Elena Araoz, 2022–2023 Artists-in-Residence, Bard Graduate Center Bard Graduate Center Gallery 18 West 86th Street New York, NY 10024 Performer and musicologist Elizabeth Weinfield (Juilliard/Sonnambula) and celebrated opera director Elena Araoz (Princeton University) collaborate on an evening of music and performance that takes place throughout the Threads of Power exhibition, with selections that explore the mathematic and aesthetic dimensions of lace through the lens of history, gender, and labor. |
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Sunday, November 13, 2022, 1 & 3PM A Portrait in Music: Sounding the Dutch Baroque The National Gallery of Art West Building, Main Floor-West Garden Court 6th Street and Constitution Ave NW Washington, DC 20565 Join us for our debut at the National Gallery of Art as we explore the exceptional music of the Low Countries in the long seventeenth century. Using Dutch and Flemish paintings as our inspiration, in particular those of Vermeer, we will present five sonic portraits of musical life. |
Johannes Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance, c. 1664, The National Gallery of Art, DC
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Wednesday, November 30, 2022, 7PM Highest and Curious Musicke: The Tudors Saint Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church 552 West End Ave New York, NY 10024 "Your Viols were invented for these kind of Musickes, which may bee compared with the highest and curious musicke in the world." So wrote English composer Tobias Hume in his preface to the "Poeticall Musicke," a collection of 16th-century works for mixed consort, to extoll the virtues of instrumental composition in lieu of the voice, still a relatively new phenomenon in Elizabethan England. This program features some of the more experimental works of the period written with instruments in mind, alongside some of our favorites from the repertory. A program in honor of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition, The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England. Further details to come. |
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Wednesday, March 29, 2023, 6 PM Settings and Sounds: Early modern dining with food historian Ivan Day Bard Graduate Center Lecture Hall 38 West 86th Street New York, NY When is asparagus not asparagus? When it is ice cream, of course! In this three-course foodless dinner party, Ivan Day explores culinary slapstick, the changing role of dining utensils, and other subjects from early modern dining. These mini-lectures are interwoven with interludes of music played on period instruments by Sonnambula. |
© Ivan Day
Fork and knife, Germany, 17th century. Steel, brass, horn, and bone. Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian National Design Museum, New York, The Robert L. Metzenberg Collection, Gift of Eleanor L. Metzenberg, 1985.103.10; 1985.103.11.
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