What does the word "baroque" mean, anyway?

‍Tickets go on sale for our Winter Baroque (12/21 @3pm)
on November 1st!

This concert is generously sponsored by the Webster Family Foundation.

***Did anyone like Brussels sprouts as a kid?***

We’ve all heard about the artist who was ahead of his time and not understood blah blah blah. Like a food you found gross as a kid but now eat with gusto, sometimes one can still “get” why some art or music seemed radical back in its day, even as it has now become mainstream: Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” isn’t causing riots anymore but its savage rhythms haven’t lost their edge; late Beethoven quartets that made contemporaries think the maestro had lost his marbles can still leave today’s listener confused and confounded.

*Oskar Kokoschka said to Schoenberg*
“*Your cradle* was *Beethoven's Grosse Fuge*.”

Even baroque music, universally considered pleasing today, had its detractors in the 17^th Century. The term "baroque" was meant as an insult, deriving from the Portuguese word "barroco" for misshapen pearl - something shiny but ugly. I suppose critics found the new instrument-focused music gaudy compared to the “pure” sounds of vocal renaissance music, especially when it unlocked a new world of virtuosity and improvisation. But who doesn’t like a little bit of show-off every once in a while?

Which brings us to our annual holiday concert. This year we’ve got firebrand violinist Amelia Sie from Chicago backed by the tight continuo team of Eliana Razzino Yang on cello and Nicola Canzano on harpsichord (and composer) and Alessandra Yang from Vienna with her 14-stringed viola d’amore slung across her back. Tickets go on sale in a few days (November 1^st). The concert sold out last year.

Please note that this year the concert will be at Immaculate Conception. I’ve taken extra care to ensure it will finish by 4:15 pm as I know some of you have dinners to attend.

***Alessandra with viola and viola d’amore***

There is a mix of music from across the continent including Italy, Bohemia, Austria, Germany, and…Michigan: Harpsichord player Nicola Canzano has written another world premiere for us in the baroque style. (I didn’t specify which continent.) We also have stormy Italian music by Matteis and Corelli; a Biber sonata where each movement represents a different animal (nightingale, frog, chicken, etc.), and some Bach.

***Stift Göttweig monastery, Lower Austria***

A highlight of the concert will be a 17^th Century work written by an anonymous monk in Austria that showcases the utterly unique, silvery sound of the viola d'amore (literally: “viola of love”). The piece was discovered in 2000 by a scholar amongst the stacks in the imposing mountaintop Stift Göttweig monastery in Austria.

We finish with Nicola’s new work before sending you out into the warm embrace of friends and family.

‍David Yang, Artistic Director