Saturday, Feb. 9: Medieval Music workshop with Cristi Catt

Get ready to sing and ride the waves of Vigo, Spain!

Acclaimed early music specialist Cristi Catt will share her work connecting medieval Galician-Portuguese cantigas de amigo to women’s traditional music in this special workshop on Saturday, February 9 from 9:30 am-12:15. The workshop is sponsored by Recorders/Early Music MetroWest and takes place at Trinity Episcopal Church, 81 Elm Street in Concord MA.

The cantigas de amigo are a genre of medieval lyric poetry, rooted in a song tradition native to the northwest Iberian Peninsula. The cantigas de amigo focus on female-voiced communication. The earliest surviving examples date from the first quarter of the 13th-century; nearly all 500 of these songs were composed before 1300. Cantigas d'amigo are found mainly in cancioneiro collections in Lisbon's Biblioteca Nacional.

In these cantigas the speaker is nearly always a girl, her mother, the girl's girl friend, or the girl's boyfriend. The cantigas are simple strophic forms, with repetition, variation, and parallels, marked by the use of a refrain in most of the texts. They constitute the largest body of female-voiced love lyric that has survived from ancient or medieval Europe. The poems represent 88 authors of the time — all male — including King Dinis of Portugal, Johan Airas de Santiago, Johan Garcia de Guilhade, Juião Bolseiro, Johan Baveca and Martin Codax.

Soprano Cristi Catt is a soloist and chamber musician who mixes contemporary, world, folk and medieval music. She has performed throughout the US, Europe, and South America, and is a founding member of the internationally renowned vocal ensemble Tapestry. Her interest in the meeting points between medieval and world traditions has led to research grants to Portugal and southern France, and performances with French folk band, Le Bon Vent, Balmus and HourGlass, and early music performances with Ensemble PAN, Revels, La Donne Musicale and Boston Camerata. A frequent performer of modern music, she performed Steve Reich’s Tehillim several times.

Listen to Cristi sing Mandad’ey comigo.

As a teacher, Cristi takes a kinesthetic approach, combining singing with imagery and physical work based on yoga to open the voice, ground the breath, and improve body alignment. Her students sing in a wide array of styles including original music, early music, world, folk, musical comedy, jazz, contemporary, and art song. Cristi also coaches chamber and a cappella ensembles. She has served on the faculties of The New England Conservatory of Music, the Longy School of
Music of Bard College, and now at Berklee College of Music. She has presented lectures, workshops and master classes at Harvard University, Stonybrook, Williams College, and
numerous other colleges throughout the United States.

This workshop is open to singers and instrumentalists. Participants will learn Cristi Catt's warm-up series (based on her book The Kinesthetic Singer) and apply her method to create vibrant vocal lines for these captivating melodies. In addition to working with original notation, participants will also learn songs by ear. The workshop fee is $18. To register, please e-mail sheilabb@verizon.net.