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Emi Ferguson: Hello, I'm Emi Ferguson, and tonight we're featuring live performances from the 2023 Early Music America Summit, here on this edition of the McGraw Family's Young Artist Showcase.
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Emi Ferguson: Now in its 47th year, the Young Artist Showcase is generously underwritten by the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Family Foundation. Over the next two weeks, we'll be hearing performances live from the Early Music America Summit, which took place last year in Boston, Massachusetts. Since 1985, Early Music America has been working to develop, strengthen, and celebrate early music throughout the Americas in many ways. They support wait for it, professional performers, students, educators, scholars, ensembles, presenters, instrument makers, amateur musicians, and of course music lovers.
Each year, EMA for short holds a three-day summit, which also plays host to a young performers festival for collegiate and pre-college ensembles, and an emerging artist showcase for soloists and ensembles on the rise. Whew. It is a wonderful and slightly tiring three days, and I was lucky enough to be there last October and see the Emerging Artists Showcase live.
Starting us off this evening is young early music quintet The Fooles, spelled F-O-O-L-E-S, and they specialize in playing music from 17th-century Italy. While their excellent Italian style might fool you into thinking that they are from Italy the ensemble actually met while they were all students in Juilliard's historical performance program here in New York City. They are Alyssa Campbell and Ryan Cheng on the Baroque violin, Andrew Koutroubas on baroque cello, John Stajduhar on violone, and Nicola Canzano on chamber organ. Here are The Fooles playing Dario Castello's Sonata Duodecima a 3 and Giovanni Bassano's Ricercata Quarta.
[MUSIC - Castello: Sonata Duodecima a 3 - The Fooles] [applause]
[MUSIC - Bassano: Ricercata Quarta - The Fooles]
Emi Ferguson: Early music quintet, The Fooles. That's with an E-S, playing Dario Castello's Sonata Duodecima a 3, and Giovanni Bassano's Ricercata Quarta. We'll hear some more from composer Dario Castello and The Fooles later in the show. First, we'll hear one of my favorite pieces from the Baroque period for solo violin by the original Biber. Yes, not Justin Bieber, but Heinrich Biber. Even though Heinrich Biber's epic set of violin pieces, the Mystery Sonatas was written in 1676, it wasn't published for over 200 years. Since their rediscovery in 1905, they have become a favorite of the violin repertoire.
Tonight, you'll hear an incredible live performance by Baroque violinist Marie Nadeau-Tremblay. Marie really makes this piece her own, infusing it with incredible color and imagination, which keeps it fresh even though it's almost 350 years old. Here's violinist Marie Nadeau-Tremblay performing Heinrich Biber's Passacaglia.
[MUSIC - Biber: Passacaglia - Marie Nadeau-Tremblay, violin] [MUSIC - Biber: Passacaglia - Marie Nadeau-Tremblay, violin]]
[applause]
Emi Ferguson: Heinrich Biber's Passacaglia performed live by Canadian violinist, Marie Nadeau-Tremblay. Marie is one of three artists featured at the Early Music America's Emerging Artist Showcase alongside Early Music Quintet The Fooles. When we come back, we'll hear more from The Fooles, as well as an Oboe Concerto from the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra here on the McGraw Family's Young Artist Showcase.
I'm Emi Ferguson and you are listening to The Young Artist Showcase. Tonight we're listening to live performances from Early Music America's Annual Summit, which brings together the early music community for three days of thought-provoking presentations, performances, workshops, and networking. One of the highlights of the summit is its Young Performers Festival, which features collegiate and pre-college ensembles in addition to the Emerging Artists Showcase for soloists and ensembles on the rise.
Our next performance features both a fantastic rising Baroque oboist, Gaia Saetermoe-Howard, alongside the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra, which is directed by cellist Phoebe Carrai and violinist, Sarah Darling. Here they are performing Georg Philipp Telemann's Concerto Number 4 for Oboe in E Minor from his big set of music, Tafelmusik.
[MUSIC - Telemann: Concerto no. 4 for Oboe in E Minor from “Tafelmusik” TWV 51:E1 - Gaia Saetermoe-Howard, oboe; Harvard Baroque Orchestra] [applause]
Emi Ferguson: Telemann's Oboe Concerto Number 4, performed by the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra, and featuring oboist Gaia Saetermoe-Howard. Gaia is currently working on her PhD at Harvard. In addition to her spectacular oboe playing, she's also an archeologist, and not just a musical archeologist like so many of our early music performers tonight, but as an undergrad, she split her studies between music at the Eastman School and archeology at the University of Rochester.
Like Gaia, the musicians that were in featured emerging ensemble, The Fooles, are always thinking about history. Through studying pictures and writings from the 16th and 17th centuries, they've decided that in their performances today, they were going to change the way they hold their instruments to try and get as close to the sound of the past as they can. Instead of holding the violin between their neck and shoulder, like you'll see violinists do today, Alyssa and Ryan, instead, hold their instruments on their chest with the neck of the instrument resting on the left wrist and the chin completely free.
This looks pretty different and requires retraining many aspects of their traditional violin playing, but like so often in early music, it can feel like learning an entirely new instrument, which at times can be frustrating but also exhilarating as one opens up new sounds and ways of playing. Talk about exhilarating, we'll hear two more works by one of my favorite composers, Dario Castello, who sadly died from the plague when he was only 29 which makes him a really, really old young artist. Here are The Fooles, performing Two of Castello's Fantastic Sonatas.
[MUSIC - Castello: Sonata Decimaterza a 4 & Sonata Decimaquarta a 4 - The Fooles] [applause]
Emmy Ferguson: Dario Castello, Sonata Decimaterza and Sonata Decimaquarta. Performed by the Early Music Quintet, The Fooles. With Alyssa Campbell and Ryan Cheng on the baroque violin, Andrew Koutroubas on the baroque cello, John Stajduhar on violone, and Nicola Canzano, on the chamber organ. All of our performances tonight were recorded live at the 2023 Early Music America Summit which featured showcases of young emerging soloists, ensembles, and collegiate early music groups.
We'll be featuring more of these incredible performances next week here on WQXR's McGraw Family Young Artist Showcase. This year's summit takes place in Cleveland, Ohio on the campus of Case Western Reserve University. October 20th to 22nd. You'll hear incredible young artists, just like you heard tonight. The Young Artist Showcase is generously underwritten on WQXR by the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Family Foundation. Here's Terry McGraw with more.
Terry McGraw: Good evening, everyone. It's great to be with you, and it's always great being with The Young Artist Showcase and to hear these really wonderful and inspiring musicians as they continue to share their incredible gifts with us every week. I can't wait to hear the fabulous talent coming up on the showcase. I am so pleased to be able to support the series all through its well over four decades on WQXR, and there's so much more to come.
Emmy Ferguson: Thank you, Terry. Many thanks to our WQXR production team, Laura Boyman and Max Fine. Our generous program underwriter is the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Family Foundation. I'm Emmy Ferguson. Goodnight.
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