Booking and details
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Dates Fri, May 2 – Sun, May 4, 2025
Venue Folger Theatre
Tickets $20 – $45
Please note: Children under the age of 4 are not permitted.
The music from the court of King James I reflects the political and religious upheavals in early seventeenth century England. The Folger Consort will perform political ballads of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot, along with instrumental music from both James’ and Charles I’s courts and swaggering and silly political songs from Thomas D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy.
Artistic directors
Robert Eisenstein
Robert Eisenstein
Robert Eisenstein has led over 200 productions and performances with Folger Consort over the past 40 years include Measure + Dido at the Kennedy Center and Napa Valley Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice at Strathmore, The Fairy Queen, and Hildegard Von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum at the Washington National Cathedral. Director of the Five College Early Music Program; Music Director for the Five College Opera Project production of Francesca Caccini’s La Liberazione di Ruggiero; former faculty member of Mount Holyoke College, where he taught music history and performed the viola de gamba, violin, and medieval fiddle. He is an active participant in the Five College Medieval Studies. Recipient of Early Music America’s Thomas Binkley Award for outstanding achievement in performance and scholarship by the director of a college early music ensemble.
Christopher Kendall
Christopher Kendall
Christopher Kendall is founder of the Folger Consort. He is dean emeritus of the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance after serving two terms as the school’s dean, where he was responsible for establishing the University of Michigan Gershwin Initiative, for re-instituting international touring, for the funding and design of a $30M expansion/renovation of the music building, and for launching the interdisciplinary enterprise ArtEngine and its national initiative a2ru (Alliance for the Arts at Research Universities). In Washington, in addition to his work with Folger Consort, since 1975 he has been Artistic Director and conductor of the 21st Century Consort, the new music ensemble-in-residence at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Mr. Kendall served as Director of the University of Maryland School of Music from 1996 to 2005 during a period of rapid development and its move to the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. Associate Conductor of the Seattle Symphony from 1987 to 1992 and Director of the Music Division and Tanglewood Institute of the Boston University School for the Arts from 1993 to 1996, Mr. Kendall has guest conducted many orchestras and ensembles in repertoire from the 18th to the 21st centuries. His recordings can be heard on the Bard, Delos, Nonesuch, Centaur, ASV, Arabesque, Innova, Bridge, and Smithsonian Collection labels.
Artists
Violin
Risa Browder
Risa Browder
Risa Browder (Violin and Viola), whose playing The Washington Post has called “flavorful and expressive”, grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. Asked at age three if she would like to learn the violin, she answered her parents with an emphatic, “Yes!” She’s been playing ever since, nowadays focusing on historically informed performance on violin, viola, viola d’amore, and occasionally treble and tenor viols. She trained at Oberlin Conservatory, the Royal College of Music (London, UK), and the Schola Cantorum (Basel, Switzerland), studying with some of the great pioneers of the HP movement: Marilyn McDonald, Catherine Mackintosh, and Jaap Schroeder. Having completed her studies, she began her musical career in Europe playing and recording with groups like the Academy of Ancient Music, the English Concert, and Les Musiciens du Louvre, among others. Now living in the Washington, DC area, she co-directs Modern Musick, in residence at Georgetown University, with whom she has performed a wide range of repertoire from the early Baroque to the Classical, including music of Corelli, Handel, Vivaldi, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. She appears regularly as soloist and concertmaster with the Folger Consort, as principal viola with the Washington Bach Consort, with the National Cathedral Baroque Orchestra, and as a guest artist with REBEL. At the Peabody Conservatory Risa teaches baroque violin and viola, and with her husband cellist John Moran co-directs the Baltimore Baroque Band, Peabody’s acclaimed baroque orchestra. Their work with this group garnered them Early Music America’s Thomas Binkley Award in 2018. Many of her Peabody students have gone on to become respected performers in the world of Early Music, both in this country and abroad. In addition to her busy performing schedule and conservatory teaching, Risa directs the middle and high school orchestras at the H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program in Arlington, Virginia.
Cittern
Mark Cudek
Mark Cudek
Mark Cudek (Cittern) is a Professor at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University and the former Chair of Peabody’s Historical Performance Department. He is also Artistic Director of the Indianapolis Early Music Festival and a founding member of the Baltimore Consort. In recognition of his work as Founder/Director of the Peabody Renaissance Ensemble and the High School Early Music Program at the Interlochen Arts Camp, Mark received from Early Music America the 2001 Thomas Binkley Award and the 2005 Award for Outstanding Contribution to Early Music Education. Mark is the 2014 recipient of the Johns Hopkins University Alumni Association’s Global Achievement Award. He has performed with Apollo’s Fire (Cleveland Baroque Orchestra), Catacoustic Consort, Folger Consort, and Hesperus, and in his youth, worked as a café guitarist in the Virgin Islands. Mark is also director of the Peabody Consort, an ensemble consisting of alumni from Peabody’s Early Music program, which has toured Rome, Taiwan, Japan, and the Dominican Republic. Selected festival appearances are the Boston Early Music Festival, Glasgow International Early Music Festival, Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival, and Tage Alter Musik/ Regensburg, with appearances at the Kennedy Center, Metropolitan Museum, National Theatre of Panama, and Vienna Konzerthaus. Mark has recorded on the Dorian, Eclectra, Koch International, Linn, and Windham Hill labels.
Viol
Amy Domigues
Amy Domigues
Amy Domingues (Instrumentalist) is an ardent performer, whether it be on the cello, viola da gamba, baryton or vielle. Her early career honed her ensemble skills as a session cellist, recording and touring with rock and experimental bands in the USA, Europe, and Japan. Later, armed with a relentless interest in music history, Amy turned her focus to the viola da gamba and baroque cello. She holds a master’s degree in Historical Performance (Viola da Gamba) from the Peabody Institute and has performed in masterclasses for Wieland Kuijken, Paolo Pandolfo, and Philippe Pierlot. She appears with groups as varied as The Folger Consort, Musica Spira, Hesperus, The Washington Bach Consort, and the Valencia Baryton Project. Amy is a founding member of Sonnambula (Ensemble in Residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art 2018-2019). She is an avid educator, maintaining a private studio of cello and gamba students, and has served as faculty at the Madison Early Music Festival, Amherst Early Music, and the Viola da Gamba Society of America Conclave, as well as workshops abroad. Amy appears on over 70 albums in multiple genres, most recently Sonnambula’s world premiere of Leonora Duarte’s Sinfonias (Centaur Records). She is a multiple recipient of the District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellowship Grant as well as grants from the Viola da Gamba Society of America for teaching and performance.
Multi-instrumentalist
Dan Meyers
Dan Meyers
A versatile multi-instrumentalist, Dan Meyers is a flexible and engaging performer of both classical and folk music; his credits range from premieres of contemporary chamber music, to headlining a concert series in honor of Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival, to playing Renaissance instruments on Broadway for Shakespeare’s Globe. He is a founding member of the early music/folk crossover group Seven Times Salt, and in recent seasons he has performed with the Newberry Consort, Hesperus, the Henry Purcell Society of Boston, Early Music New York, Amherst Early Music, 21st Century Consort, In Stile Moderno, and the Cambridge Revels, making concert and theatrical appearances in New York City, Washington, DC, Chicago, Minneapolis, Memphis, Santa Fe, at the Yellow Barn Summer Festival in Vermont, and at the “La Luna e i Calanchi” festival in Basilicata (Italy).
Soprano
Emily Noël
Emily Noël
Emily Noël (Soprano) performs a wide variety of repertory expanding from the Medieval to the contemporary. Favorite Folger performances include: Gloria!, Davenant’s Macbeth, Second Shepherds’ Play, An English Garden, Play of Love, Measure + Dido, The Merchant of Venice, Christmas in New Spain, and Map of the World. She has also appeared as a soloist with the Washington Bach Consort, Washington National Cathedral, LyricFest, Ente Concerti Città di Iglesias, Amsterdam Grachtenfestival, American Opera Theater, Mountainside Baroque, Seven Times Salt, Early Interval, and Santa Fe Desert Chorale. A passionate educator, Emily has served on the faculties of Franklin & Marshall College, Notre Dame of Maryland University, and The Community College of Rhode Island. She currently teaches voice at Denison University and directs the Cardinal Singers at Otterbein University.
Baritone
Peter Walker
Peter Walker
Described as a “commanding” singer by the Boston Globe, Peter Walker has performed with the Handel + Haydn Society, Chapter House, GRAMMY-nominated Skylark Ensemble, Kuhmo Kamarimusiiki, Staunton Music Festival, Early Music Access Project, Three Notch’d Road, Blue Heron, Pomerium, and GRAMMY-nominated Clarion Society Choir. Peter is a member of the United States Army Chorus, has presented lectures on early music at Vassar College and Case Western, and serves as cantor at the National Shrine of St. Alphonsus Liguori. He won the Overseas Class in the Lowland and Border Pipers’ Society Competition in 2016, and is active as a researcher, transcriber, and arranger of music ranging from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century. Peter holds degrees from Vassar College and McGill University, where he studied with Drew Minter and Sanford Sylvan.
Folger Consort Sponsors
Premier Season Sponsor
Dr. Bill and Evelyn Braithwaite
Andrea “Andi” Kasarsky
Production Sponsor
Gail Orgelfinger and Charles Hanna
Contributing Sponsor
Mr. Leslie Taylor
Associate Sponsor
Robert J. and Tina M. Tallaksen
Artist Sponsor
Karl K. and Carrol Benner Kindel
Pre-concert discussion
Friday, May 2
Join Christopher Kendall and Robert Eisenstein, co-Artistic Directors of the Folger Consort, for a lively discussion with guest artists from 7:00pm-7:30pm before the Friday, May 2 performance.
Free entry with concert ticket.