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Fretwork viol consort at CMA: “Music from the Age of Michelangelo” (Oct. 23)

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by Nicholas Stevens

Spare a thought for Fretwork: a recent tour of North America hit a snag when an airline cracked one of their violas da gamba. Instruments of this family constitute the entire toolbox of the group, a viol consort that presents the fraternal twin to the violin as though it had never lost its cachet. For many Northeast Ohioans, warm feelings for the group remain fresh after a late-October concert, part of a tour that pitted them against all too modern perils. In a careless, rushing world, their meticulous musicianship and willingness to let music unfold feel less like dusty artifacts than like emblems of a future worth fighting for. [Read more…]

Cleveland Museum of Art:
Fretwork and Michelangelo

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by Jarrett Hoffman

Fretwork, the famous England-based viol consort, will return to Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art next week for a program inspired by the Museum’s current exhibit “Michelangelo: Mind of the Master.”

On Wednesday, October 23 at 7:30 pm, Fretwork will play “Music from the Age of Michelangelo,” a program based on musical developments that occurred during that artist’s life. One was the emergence of the violas da gamba, and the trend of homogeneous ensembles.

Another was a book of music published in 1501 by Ottaviano Petrucci that represented a major technological breakthrough in the field of printing. The Harmonice Musices Odhecaton (“One Hundred Harmonic Pieces of Music”) was the first music book to be printed using movable type, and contained works for three to six parts — mostly vocal pieces, but without text — by major composers of the time.

[Read more…]

Fretwork at the Cleveland Museum of Art (October 12)

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by Nicholas Jones

fretworkMusic for the instrument that the English called the viol and the Italians the viola da gamba flourished during the tumultuous changes in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. The contemplative, intimate sound of a consort of viols must have been a welcome relief from fires, plagues, religious wars, revolutions, and other sudden and unpredictable catastrophes. Viol consorts implied the opposite of Fortune’s wheel: the steady companionship of friends, both players and listeners, coming together in the appreciation of a quiet artistry. [Read more…]

British viol consort Fretwork to play old & new music at CMA Oct. 12

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by Daniel Hathaway

fretworkYou could say with some accuracy that Fretwork, the British viol consort, was an idea formed in Hell. Its early members Richard Boothby, Bill Hunt, and Richard Campbell first played together in the underworld scene in Monteverdi’s Orfeo, a production semi-staged in Barcelona in 1985 by Andrew Parrott’s Taverner Players. Those three minutes led to further performances, and now Fretwork is considered among the premier viol ensembles in the world.

Most viol consorts stick to old music composed before the viola da gamba became extinct in England in the latter part of the 17th century. Fretwork is unusual in its equal embrace of contemporary music: on its website the group lists two dozen composers who have written works for them.

Fretwork’s current five members, Asako Morikawa, Reiko Ichise, Sam Stadien, Emily Ashton, and Boothby (far right in the photo) will appear on the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Performing Arts series in Gartner Auditorium on Wednesday, October 12 at 7:30 pm. [Read more…]

Cleveland Museum of Art announces 2016-2017 Performing Arts schedule

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by Daniel Hathaway

onete-donnaThe new performing arts season at the Cleveland Museum of Art begins on Wednesday, September 21 at 7:30 pm in Gartner Auditorium with a concert by Dona Onete, the septuagenarian singer-composer from the state of Pará in the Amazon, who merges indigenous rhythm and dance with African, European and Caribbean traditions in a style called carimbó chamegado*. [Read more…]

Cleveland Museum of Art announces 2016-2017 Performing Arts schedule

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by Daniel Hathaway

onete-donnaThe new performing arts season at the Cleveland Museum of Art begins on Wednesday, September 21 at 7:30 pm in Gartner Auditorium with a concert by Dona Onete, the septuagenarian singer-composer from the state of Pará in the Amazon, who merges indigenous rhythm and dance with African, European and Caribbean traditions in a style called carimbó chamegado*. [Read more…]

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