Booking and details
Dates Fri, Apr 12 – Sun, Apr 14, 2024
Duration 1 hour 45 minutes, with intermission
Please note: Children under the age of 4 are not permitted.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, an inspiration to composers over the centuries, is the basis for incandescent cantatas by Jean-Philippe Rameau, including his retelling of the epic of Orpheus and Eurydice.
A genre unique to the Baroque, a cantata resembles a mini-opera for one or two voices, complete with recitatives and arias.
We turn to this marvelous music of 18th-century France to close our 2023-24 season. This is music that encompasses graceful and simple vocal melodies with virtuosic embellishments and inventive harmonies in a wonderful dramatic style.
Joining a featured soprano will be a quartet of violin, traverso, viola da gamba, and harpsichord, performing works by Marais and Leclair, and featuring one of Telemann’s masterful Paris Quartets.
Artists
Soprano
Amy Nicole Broadbent
Amy Nicole Broadbent
Amy Nicole Broadbent (Soprano)“With consummate poise, limpid clarity, and faultless intonation” (Washington Classical Review), soprano Amy Nicole Broadbent has garnered recognition as a vibrant and versatile musical force. Acclaimed for dynamic and engaging performances of oratorio, art song, opera, and chamber music, Amy is a sought-after interpreter of a wide range of vocal music, from the music of Bach & Handel through newly-composed works. Amy has performed as a soloist for the Oregon Bach Festival, Staunton Music Festival, Bach Choir of Bethlehem, Washington National Cathedral, Washington Bach Consort, The Thirteen, Folger Consort, Reading Choral Society, Washington Master Chorale, and New Dominion Chorale, and as a recitalist for Dumbarton Concerts (upcoming), Music on the Lake, and the Chautauqua Institution. She created the role of Sebastian in Scott Ordway’s opera, The Outer Edge of Youth, her recording of which was acclaimed by Opera News (Critic’s Choice), Gramophone, and BBC Music Magazine. Other stage roles include Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), Bastienne (Bastien und Bastienne), Papagena (Die Zauberflöte), Johanna (Sweeney Todd), La Statue Animée (Pygmalion), Josephine (H.M.S. Pinafore), Elsie (The Yeoman of the Guard), and Ms. Jessel (The Turn of the Screw). Amy won first-place in the Audrey Rooney Bach Competition (Kentucky Bach Choir) and the National Society of Arts and Letters’ Winston Voice Competition, and was a prizewinner for the Lyndon Woodside Oratorio-Solo Competition (New York Oratorio Society) at Carnegie Hall, the Annapolis Opera Competition, the Bach Vocal Competition for American Singers (Bach Choir of Bethlehem), and the Franco-American Grand Concours Vocal Competition.
Violin
Tatiana Chulochnikova
Tatiana Chulochnikova
Tatiana Chulochnikova (Violin) Praised for her “thrilling technique” and “dark plush romantic violin sound”, Tatiana Chulochnikova has been enjoying a diverse international performing career as a violin soloist, recitalist, guest concertmaster, chamber musician and recording artist. Born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Tatiana began playing violin at the age of seven and made her professional debut at fourteen performing Bruch’s Violin concerto No.1 with the Kharkiv Philharmonic. Tatiana received her professional training at the Juilliard School, the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory and the Oberlin Conservatory.
Viola da Gamba
Robert Eisenstein
Robert Eisenstein
Robert Eisenstein (Artistic Director, violin, treble viol, and recorders) 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.
Flute
Rodrigo Tarraza
Rodrigo Tarraza
Rodrigo Tarraza (Flute) studied baroque flute with Barthold Kuijken at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, The Netherlands. He has toured widely as a soloist and chamber musician in Europe and both North and South America. He has also recorded and toured with La Petite Bande and Ensemble Les Inegales. His recording with Les Inegales of selected suites by Jaques M. Hottetere (Carpe Diem, Germany 1998) won the Diapason d’or prize. Currently he is a member of Ensemble Les Inegales (Boston, MA) and the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra (NCBO). He also performs frequently with the Crescendo Orchestra, Hartford CT and the Washington Bach Consort.
Harpsichord
Webb Wiggins
Webb Wiggins
Webb Wiggins (Harpsichord) performs with the Dryden Ensemble, Chatham Baroque, Hesperus, Bach Parley, Smithsonian Chamber Players, and the Florida Orchestra. Recently retired from the Peabody and the Oberlin Conservatories of Music, he also taught for many years at the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute and the Amherst Early Music Festival. He has taught and performed across the globe: China, Taiwan, New Zealand, Ecuador, Europe, as well as on three trans-Atlantic voyages. Recordings can be heard on the Smithsonian, Dorian, EMI, Bard, and PGM labels.
Artistic Directors
Robert Eisenstein
Robert Eisenstein
Robert Eisenstein (Artistic Director, violin, treble viol, and recorders) 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 (Artistic Director) 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.
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, April 12
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, April 12 performance.
Free entry with concert ticket.