Ensemble
Soleil
presents
“Arts of the Gentry
in the
Shakespeare Years”
A
Performance Art Event including live music of the
Renaissance
and Baroque, multiple images
on large
screens, and narration
March
1999
at
Sawyer Arts Center
Colby-Sawyer
College
with
additional performances at the
Unitarian
Church, Montpelier, VT
and
Contois
Auditorium, Burlington, VT
A project
of
Ensemble
Soleil with Colby-Sawyer College,
New Hampshire Humanities Council,
and New
Hampshire State Council on the Arts
Music: Playford
The Shaking of the Sheets
Screen: Fete at
Bermondsey
Quote: “All
the world’s a stage…” As
You Like It
Music: Morley It was a Lover and His Lass
Quote: “Come,
more; another stanzo: call you ‘em stanzos?” As
You Like It
Music: Dowland Can
She Excuse / Earl of Essex (for
lute)
Earl of
Essex Measure / Byrd, Queen’s Alman
First Narration: The
Elizabethan era – a short introduction.
Music: Henry
VIII If Love Now Reigned
Screen: Portrait
of the Earl of Essex
Music: short
reprise Earl of Essex lute
Act 1, Scene 2 Sensuality
Music: Byrd Passamezzo Pavanne harpsichord,
dancers
Second Narration:
Elizabeth I in her youth
Screen: Elizabeth
I Before Parliament
Queen
Elizabeth being carried in Procession
Quote: “If
music be the food of love ….” Twelfth
Night
Music: Lupo Viol Fantasia
Screen: Couple
dancing the galliard
Quote: “What
is thy excellence in a galliard, knight….” Twelfth
Night
Music: Dowland
Frog
Galliard dance
Screen: Engraving
of Robert Dudley by Robert Vaughn (ca.1625)
Courtier
and his lady
Costumes
from the times of James I (playing cards, eating dinner)
Music: anon Robin is to the Greenwood Gone
Cornysh
Ah Robin, Gentle Robin
Thomas
Simpson Bonny Sweet Robin
Screen: Play in a courtyard
Jeremiah
Clarke Cibell comic,
three legged dance
Screen: Elizabeth
I playing the lute (miniature) and lute
reprise
Screen: Elizabeth
I (1588) Armada portrait
Armada
print by Pine
Third Narration:
Politics of the Elizabethan era relative to France and Spain
Music: Byrd The
Marche before the Battell harpsichord
Tye Crie
Screen: Sir
Henry Unton’s Funeral
Music: Dowland Sir
Henry Unton’s Funeral
Fourth Narration:
Elizabethans, melancholy and Shakespeare on death
Quote: (Desdemona) “oh willow…” Othello
Music: J. Cutts (ed) Willow
song
Greensleeves violin
solo
Screen: Musicians
and actors outdoors (Dutch)
An
outdoor play with musicians (Italian)
Music: Greene Sleeves and Packington’s pound
Quotes: “Love
looks not with the eyes, but with the mind….”
“Come now; what masques, what
dances shall we have…
Midsummer Night’s Dream
Screen: woodcut
of Will Kemp
Cottswold
Games
Music: Playford Kemp’s
Jig canario
Screen: Period
engravings, Globe Theatre, Visscher’s London
Bust
of Shakespeare, Frontispiece engraving
Music: Playford Jog
On
Fifth Narration: Shakespeare’s
plays, Globe Theater, London at 1600
Music Ravenscroft New
Oysters
Byrd La Volta dance
Screen: Visscher’s
map of London (1616)
Music: Dowland Fine
Knacks for Ladies
Curtain Calls
Credits:
from The Triumph of Maximilian by
Hans Burgkmair and others
Biographies of Key Project
Personnel
Peter Tourin, Project
Director
Peter Tourin has a career
that spans many areas of music and technology.
He has a B.S. from the University of Michigan, and did graduate work at
Yale University in History of Music. He
studied harpsichord making with the international expert Frank Hubbard, and
lute and viola da gamba making with the outstanding American builder J. Donald
Warnock.
Mr. Tourin has an
international reputation as a musical instrument maker and as a researcher in
the acoustics and history of the viola da gamba. As a member of the Tourin Musica, a family business in Duxbury
and Jericho Center, Vermont, he made over 100 viols from 1972 to 1990. He published "A Comprehensive
Catalogue of Historical Viole da Gamba in Public and Private Collections"
in 1979, which he researched with the help of a grant from the National
Endowment for the Arts. Mr. Tourin is a
well-known performer on the viol, and has been a member of the Boston Viol
consort and the Oberlin Consort of viols, with whom he can be heard on CD. He is a founding member and co-director of
Ensemble Soleil. He also performs in
the folk and popular genres.
On the technology side, Mr.
Tourin has worked with computers since the early ‘60’s. He is a computer software designer and
programmer, working on such diverse projects as a laptop-based sheet metal
estimation system, a data logging system for hydroelectric sites, and an
inventory control system for ROTC schools.
In the area of music, Mr.
Tourin developed a $42,000 recording project for the Viola da Gamba Society of
America for which he directed the recording and production of a 3-CD series of
viol music. He has also had experience
in sound reinforcement. He has
developed several slide shows for musical instrument exhibitions.
Jean Sawyer Twombly,
Artistic Director
Jean Sawyer Twombly, a Master’s graduate in Early Music Performance from the Longy School of Music, Cambridge, Massachusetts, specializes in Baroque violin and treble viol. She is a founding member and co-director of Ensemble Soleil. She led the ensemble on their 1996 and 1997 appearances on WGBH radio’s “Classical Performances” and 1997 appearance on "Morning Pro Musica" with Robert J. Lurtsema. She performs regularly on period and modern instruments with several New England chamber orchestras.
An active free-lance
violinist and member of Boston Musicians’ Association,
Ms. Twombly has performed
with oratorio societies and community theater groups in Massachusetts, New
Hampshire, and Vermont. She has led
performances of large choral works such as Handel's Messiah and Haydn's
"Lord Nelson" Mass, as well as played principal violin for many stage
shows.
Ms. Twombly is a member of
the Fine and Performing Arts faculty of Colby-Sawyer College, New London, New
Hampshire, where she has taught violin and viola since 1985 and in recent semesters,
a music survey elective. A member of
American String Teachers, Early Music America, and the Viola da Gamba Society
of America, she is presently a board member of the Boston area early music
concert organization, the Society for Historically Informed Performance.
Ms. Twombly has lived in New
London and maintained a private teaching studio there since 1983. She is a past president of the board of
Summer Music Associates, New London’s community concert series.
Donald A. Beecher, PhD.,
Advisor on Humanities, Narrator
Donald Beecher has had a lifelong passion for
Renaissance studies. He is a professor
of English at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, where he has taught since
1967. He has received many
professional honours including fellowships
for study in Birmingham, England and Montpellier, France. He was past President of the Canadian
society for Renaissance Studies and is present Director of the Barnabe Riche
Society.
Professor Beecher is the
editor of 11 books on a variety of Renaissance topics. As publisher of Dovehouse Editions,
he produced 55 performing editions of Renaissance & Baroque music for viola
da gamba, which are highly regarded in the early music field. He has had many editorial responsibilities,
and has edited numerous scholarly critical editions.
He has organized and
directed more than a dozen conferences, many of them international, such as Parallel
Lives: Spanish and English National Drama, 1580-1680 at the University of
Calgary and Eros and Anteros: Eroticism and the Medical Traditions of Love
in the Renaissance at Carleton University.
He is a performing musician on viola da gamba and has participated in
several recordings. He has been the organizer and director of many music
concerts and workshops and is the recipient of over 50 research grants.
Professor Beecher has been involved in iconographical research and slide
preparation in the development of several programs for public television.
Professor Beecher’s current
research interests are Elizabethan prose fiction and scholarly editing, the
literary origins of the texts of Handel’s English oratorios, and Renaissance
Aesthetics. As our humanist advisor, he
has researched and written the
narrative portions of tonight’s program.
Maris Wolff (dancer) received her
training in New York City at the School of American Ballet, American Ballet
Theatre School and Harkness House for Ballet Arts. Maris has studied many modern dance techniques as well as
composition, improvisation and jazz, tap, and folk dance and has pursued
special studies in Renaissance and Baroque dance. Her professional credits include solos with Milwaukee Ballet and
Ballet Repertory, and she has performed as an independent artist throughout
North America, Europe, England and Africa.
She is currently Professor of Dance at Johnson State College, Johnson,
Vermont, where she has received several faculty development grants as well as
Distinguished Faculty of the Year award in 1988.
Bruce Roberts (dancer) began studying
Renaissance and Baroque dance some 20 years ago. He performs with the Cambridge Court Dancers, a Boston-based
group devoted to the reconstruction of 15th and 16th
century court dance as well as with Les Menu Plaisirs, an 18th
century dance company, and with the widely-known Ken Pierce Baroque Dance
Company of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He
has studied early dance with Margaret Daniels, Wendy Hilton, Charles Garth,
Ingrid Brainard, and Ken Pierce. Bruce
has performed throughout the United States and in Canada, Germany, Denmark and
the Netherlands.
Guest Artists
Peter Lehman (lute) received a Bachelor's degree from Ithaca College
School of Music and a Master of Music from New England Conservatory, later
studying at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland with Hopkinson Smith and
Eugen Dombois. He has performed with
Castle Hill Festival, Tafelmusik Choir, Baroque Music Beside the Grange, Ayers,
and recorded on the EBS label. Peter
performs regularly with Ensemble Soleil on plucked instruments and has been
featured in such diverse repertoire as the guitar music of Mauro Giuliani, the
lute solos of Francesco da Milano and French and Italian music for ensemble
with theorbo.
Lawrence Lipnik (countertenor and viol) is
well known to audiences world-wide through his regular appearances as soloist
with the Waverly Consort. His love of
chamber music has brought him numerous engagements with many ensembles
including Anonymous 4, The New York Consort of Viols, ARTEK, S.E.M. Ensemble,
Ex Umbris, and Parthenia. He is a
founding member of the vocal ensemble Lionheart, as well as Crystal Radio, a
contemporary music trio; and is a frequent collaborator with video artist
William Wegman. Adept in many styles,
he recently sang the New York premier of Arvo Part’s Stabat Mater with the
Virgin Consort and the world premier of Ricky Ian Gordon’s The Angel Voices of
Men. He has recorded on EMI/Angel,
Musical Heritage Society, Classic Masters, Sony, Newport Classics, Lyrichord,
and Discobi.
Kevin Bushee, (violin) a well-known Vermont violinist performing with
period and modern instrument ensembles, was a founding member and artistic
director of The Governor’s Musick ensemble in residence at Colonial
Williamsburg. He has been heard on NPR
and on APR’s “Performance Today” and has recorded for the Colonial Williamsburg
Foundation and Gasparo labels.
Currently a free-lance artist living in Montpelier, he studied at
Bennington College, Boston University, New England Conservatory, the Tanglewood
Institute, and Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute. Kevin has worked with leading violinists,
including Jaap Schroeder, Marilyn MacDonald, Jerome Rosen, and Lilo Glick.
Lynnette Combs (harpsichord) performs with a number of diverse Vermont
ensembles, theater groups and
choruses. She is accompanist for Onion
River Chorus, VSO Chorus, Barre Choraleers, Northeast Kingdom Chorus, Unadilla
Theatre and Adamant Music School. As a
member of the Bayley-Hazen singers and Anima, she regularly performs Early
Music, and as a post-graduate student, she performed with the Center for Old
Music in the New World. She received
her music degree in organ performance from Swathmore College.
Jill Levis (soprano) is among the best known of Vermont’s vocalists and has
appeared in local festivals for over 20 years.
She has appeared as soloist and on recordings with the Vermont Mozart
Festival, Musica Propria, The Oriana Singers, and the Vermont Symphony
Orchestra. She is a core member of the
Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble. In
1993 she was awarded a Musical Artists Fellowship from the Vermont Council on
the Arts and in 1994 released a recording of her favorite music by women
composers called Music of Her Own. Jill
maintains a teaching studio in Burlington, Vermont and has helped launch
numerous singers on their careers.
A special
note of thanks to Don Coonley whose encouragement and sound advice helped us
launch this project; to Diane Parsons, Ted Jerome and Skip Tannen for their
technical expertise and support; to Assistant Curator Emmy Norris of Harvard's
Busch-Reisinger Museum for art research assistance; to John Denny and Norman
Leger for advice on staging, and to Patricia Denny and Steve Zind for their
excellent public announcements.