- Geoffrey Burgon
- Lorraine Hunt
- William Crotch
- Benjamin Luxon
- Istituto Musicale Pacini
- Taylor Swift
- Carey Mulligan
- Sephardic Jews
Emotional Highs
Forthcoming performances in the USA and UK
The Winchendon Music Festival, led by Founder and distinguished American musician Andrew Arceci, who performs on colascione, viola da gamba and double bass, returns this year for seven concerts from 16 to 27 August 2023. Featuring performances by international artists from a variety of genres including classical, folk, jazz, historical performance and world music, this festival will showcase Renaissance lutenists Hideki Yamaya and William Simms, the Arcadia Players, John Arcaro & Band, pianist George Lykogiannis, the folk collective Floyds Row, the Worcester Jazz Orchestra and Andrew Arceci himself. Andrew Arceci made an important contribution to Classical Music Daily's recent discussion, The Creative Spark.
Full program details are as follows:
Hideki Yamaya & William Simms, Renaissance lutes
Wednesday, 16 August, 7pm
Murdock-Whitney House (151 Front St, Winchendon, MA 01475, USA)
Yamaya and Simms have selected several popular sixteenth century lute duets by John Johnson (c1545-1594), Thomas Robinson (c1560-c1610), John Dowland (c1563-1626) and John Danyel (1564-c1626).
Andrew Arceci & WMF Artists
Friday 16 August 2023, 6pm
Winchendon Amphitheater, 85 Ingleside Dr, Winchendon, MA 01475, USA
This program features various contemporary classical pieces, including works by the iconoclast John Cage (1912-1992), the minimalist Terry Riley (born 1935) and others.
Arcadia Players
Sunday 20 August 2023, 7pm
Beals Memorial Library, 50 Pleasant St, Winchendon, MA 01475, USA
This program will feature Italianate vocal and instrumental renditions of British folk tunes, performed by soprano Hailey Fuqua and a string ensemble led by Artistic Director Andrew Arceci. The material is culled from works by two late seventeenth/early eighteenth century musicians from Lucca, Italy - Francesco Geminiani (1687– 1762) and Francesco Barsanti 1690–1775) who, as was popular among Italian composers of the time, moved to London. In 1742, Barsanti published A Collection of Old Scots Tunes and in 1749, Geminiani produced A Treatise of Good Taste in the Art of Musick.
John Arcaro & Band
Monday 21 August 2023, 7pm
Beals Memorial Library, 50 Pleasant St, Winchendon, MA 01475, USA
Berklee College of Music professor, John Arcaro, leads a program of works from the 'Great American Songbook', complemented by contemporary jazz compositions.
George Lykogiannis, piano
Friday 25 August 2023, 7pm
Murdock-Whitney House, 151 Front St, Winchendon, MA 01475, USA
Noted Greek-American pianist and accordionist George Lykogiannis will perform works by his compatriot Manos Hatzidakis (1925-1994), the great twentieth century Catalan composer Federico Mompou (1893-1987) and beloved Spanish composer/pianist Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909). Lykogiannis will also play a composition of his own.
Floyds Row
Saturday 26 August 2023, 7pm
Murdock-Whitney House, 151 Front St, Winchendon, MA 01475, USA
Folk collective Floyds Row explores the connections among early, classical, folk, newgrass and world genres. The ensemble has performed throughout the UK and the US. Recent venues have included Club Passim (Cambridge, MA), the American Folk Art Museum (New York, NY), Rockwood Music Hall (New York, NY) and Gaithersburg Arts Barn (Gaithersburg, MD).
Worcester Jazz Orchestra
Sunday 27 August 2023, 2pm
Winchendon Amphitheater, 85 Ingleside Dr, Winchendon, MA 01475, USA
Ever popular, the Big Band plays works by Glenn Miller (1904-c1944), Buddy Rich (1917-1987) and others.
Called a 'thoughtful interpreter of historically informed early music' by Stephen Brookes in The Washington Post, Andrew Arceci has performed throughout North America, Europe and Asia. In addition to serving as Arcadia Players' Artistic Director, he is the Founding Director of the Winchendon Music Festival. During the 2019-2020 academic year, he was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He has taught at several institutions, including Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, Wellesley College (Director, Collegium Musicum), and Worcester State University. Additionally, he has given lectures, masterclasses, and/or workshops at Illinois Wesleyan University, the International Baroque Institute at Longy (Bard College), the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, the Narnia Arts Academy (Italy), Institutum Romanum Finlandiae (Italy), Taipei National University of the Arts (Taiwan) and Burapha University (Thailand).
Andrew Arceci
Andrew Arceci studied double bass, viola da gamba and art history at Peabody and went on to study early music at The Juilliard School and at Magdalen College, Oxford.
Founded in 2016, the Winchendon Music Festival, dubbed 'a world-class event in the small north Worcester County town' by Richard Duckett in the Telegram & Gazette, is dedicated to the memory of Andrew Arceci's father, Robert J Arceci, a pediatric oncologist with a passion for the arts.
Bampton Classical Opera 2023
Bampton Classical Opera continues its thirtieth anniversary celebrations with a performance of Franz Joseph Haydn's delightful comic opera The Apothecary on 9 September 2023 at The Barn at Old Walland, Wadhurst, East Sussex, UK.
In Lo speziale (The Apothecary), librettist Goldoni demonstrates his belief that 'comedy was created to correct vice and ridicule bad behaviour'. Haydn exploits the satire with characteristic wit and colour, and feasts on the comic potential of the four entangled characters. Sempronio, a work-shy apothecary, spends his time with the newspapers, attempting to sift reality from fake news, but is readily distracted by the charms of his pretty ward Grilletta. But her fluttering eyes are cast on his shy assistant, Mengone, a youth with little understanding of chemistry who somehow concocts a powerful laxative, to be praised in one of Haydn's jauntiest arias. Meanwhile Grilletta is also wooed by the foppish Volpino, whose mastery of disguise leads to a finale of delightful silliness.
Bampton Classical Opera - Haydn: 'The Apothecary'
Bampton Classical Opera has taken a lead in presenting Haydn's neglected operas to new audiences and has staged six with great success, including last season's much-praised production of Il mondo della luna (Fool Moon). Read 'A Giggle from Start to Finish', Roderic Dunnett's review.
The Apothecary is one of his earliest surviving performable operas. With its simple but witty plot, the opera demonstrates the composer's delight in exploring bizarre situations and creating affectionately humorous music.
The cast includes soprano Iúnó Connolly (Grilletta), soprano Madeline Robinson (Volpino), tenor Guy Beynon (Sempronio) and tenor Henry Ross (Mengone). The conductor is Mark Austin, and the production is directed by Jeremy Gray.
Haydn: Lo speziale (The Apothecary) – Saturday 9 September 2023, 7pm
The Barn at Old Walland, Wadhurst, East Sussex TN5 6LU, UK
Tickets cost £75, including a donation to Sussex Heart Charity.
Earlier in the summer the company presented a Haydn double-bill of The Diva / The Apothecary at this year's Northern Aldborough Festival. Performances continue of Antonio Salieri's La fiera di Venezia (At the Venice Fair), marking the opera's UK premiere.
Bampton Classical Opera stages productions in rural venues in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire as well as regularly in London at St John's Smith Square. Other significant venues and festivals have included Wigmore Hall and Purcell Room, Buxton Festival, Cheltenham Festival and Theatre Royal Bath. Eschewing familiar repertoire, Bampton concentrates instead on rarities from the late eighteenth century, sung in lively new English translations, and has given many enterprising performances of forgotten operas. Amongst these have been first UK productions of Bertoni's Orfeo, Marcos Portugal's The Marriage of Figaro, Paer's Leonora, Benda's Romeo and Juliet, Gluck's Il Parnaso confuso, Philémon et Baucis and Salieri's Falstaff.
Bampton Classical Opera was a finalist in the Rediscovered Opera category of the 2020 International Opera Awards.
Further information: bamptonopera.org
Warwick Arts Centre Orchestral Series 2023-2024
Cinematic marches, revolutionary epics, international heavyweights and returning favourites are all featured in Warwick Arts Centre's Orchestral Series 2023-2024.
The popular classical concert series begins on Thursday 26 October 2023 with the return of Chineke! Orchestra, who travel back to pre- and post-revolutionary Paris for a programme that includes works by Haydn, Beethoven and, significantly, Joseph Bologne - the French/Caribbean violinist, fencer and composer whose life story was recently explored in the Hollywood biopic, Chevalier.
Making their debut on Wednesday 29 November 2023 is the Symphony Orchestra Of India, conducted by Richard Farnes (of Opera North fame). India's first, and only, professional orchestra presents Richard Wagner's Parsifal Suite and Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 3 in C minor alongside John Williams' stirring and iconic Imperial March - first heard in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and now synonymous with the whole Star Wars franchise.
On Saturday 6 January 2024, Mark Elder conducts the truly dazzling National Youth Orchestra Of Great Britain. Playing Strauss and Debussy compositions inspired by the natural world, the skilled young musicians also present new work for brass and percussion.
Trailblazing South Korean conductor Shiyeon Sung steers the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) on Friday 23 February 2024. Expect big emotions and great melodies with RPO Artist-in-Residence Zlatomir Fung (cello) and a programme featuring Beethoven, Haydn and Dvořák.
Miloš Karadaglić, named one of the six best classical guitarists of the last hundred years by BBC Music Magazine, makes a welcome return on Saturday 9 March 2024. Montenegro-born Karadaglić promises an uplifting night of Vivaldi, Bach, Marcello, Alberti and more.
The series concludes on Friday 10 May 2024 with a second appearance by Mark Elder - this time conducting The Hallé Orchestra. As his tenure with the northern powerhouse comes to a close, he's joined - as he was in his first season as the orchestra's Musical Director - by the internationally renowned pianist Stephen Hough.
Mark Elder conducting the Hallé Orchestra. Photo © Bill Lam
Doreen Foster, Warwick Arts Centre's Director, said:
Expect plenty of genuine surprises for our 2023-2024 orchestral season, as the series boasts truly iconic works alongside lesser-known masterpieces, and all performed by some of the most accomplished musicians in the world.
From Chineke! Orchestra highlighting the remarkable Joseph Bologne, to the reunion of Sir Mark Elder and Sir Stephen Hough, to the stunning Miloš Karadaglić, it's a series filled with emotional highs.
Further information: warwickartscentre.co.uk
Posted 9 August 2023 by Keith Bramich