La Fiocco Young Artists to Perform

La Fiocco, the Bucks County-based period instrument ensemble, opens its 2014-2015 season featuring four young artists on Saturday, October 25, 2014, 7:30 PM at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 7809 Old York Rd. Elkins Park, PA and on Sunday, October 26, 2014, 3:00 PM at Trinity Episcopal Church, 6587 Upper York Road, Solebury (New Hope), PA.

The program focuses on music for recorder consort, 3, 4, and 5, recorders, dating from the Renaissance, Baroque, and contemporary periods. Artistic director Lewis R. Baratz, himself a recorder player and harpsichordist, has selected works by Henry VIII—yes, Henry VIII of six wives fame—and his contemporaries to open the program. “Henry was already an impressive composer while in his teens and early 20s,” says Baratz, “writing for instruments and voices in the style of the Franco-Flemish composers active around 1500-1520. The king owned at least 49 recorders, many of which were made of ivory,” and hired his personal recorder players from Venice.

The Elizabethan era segment of the program comprises music by John Dowland, Thomas Morley, and Antony Holborne. Also on the program are works by Italian composers writing around the years 1600-1620, French and English music of the late 17th-century, a concerto for 4 recorders, and two pieces by contemporary composer Glen Shannon, an award-winning composer active in the San Francisco Bay area.

La Fiocco will be featuring several virtuoso young artists on this program. Andrew Broadwater is a recorder player, composer, and arranger, who studied recorder at the Peabody Conservatory and at age 27 is now an adjunct professor of music at colleges in Maryland and Lancaster, PA. His compositions have been heard on the CW network, PBS, and NBC. Aik Shin Tan is a 24-year-old recorder virtuoso currently studying at the Peabody Conservatory and who has recorded with Tempesta di Mare Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra on the Chandos Label. Martin Bernstein is a 17-year-old virtuoso recorder player who won the Piffaro Recorder Competition two years ago and most recently was the first American to win the International Mieke van Weddingen Recorder Competition, held in Leuven, Belgium.

Also performing with La Fiocco are Ann Bies, a Philadelphia-based recorder player, John Armato, who will play lute, theorbo, and cittern, a banjo-like instrument popular from c. 1590 to 1690, John Orluk on baroque guitar, Lynn Fergusson performing on viola da gamba and baroque cello, harpsichordist Benjamin Berman, and artistic director Lewis R. Baratz also performing on recorder.

Tickets at the door. $25 general admission, $10 students; Senior and unemployment courtesy discounts available for concert at St. Paul’s, Elkins Park.

For more information visit www.lafiocco.org or contact info@lafiocco.org.