French Songs I: Les peres de joyeuseté

Songs by Gilles Binchois, Guillaume Du Fay & others, c. 1420-50.

Saturday, October 17, 2020 at 7:30 PM
Live pre-concert lecture at 6:30 PM by Fabrice Fitch (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, author of Renaissance Polyphony)

Tickets: $50 / $35 / $10

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Voices
Kim Leeds
Jason McStoots
Reginald Mobley
Margot Rood
Aaron Sheehan
Sonja DuToit Tengblad
Sumner Thompson
Teresa Wakim

Instrumentalists
Laura Jeppesen, rebec & fiddle
Scott Metcalfe, fiddle & harp
Charles Weaver, lute

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Je loe Amours et ma dame mercye Binchois (c. 1400–1460)

Teresa Wakim, soprano
Scott Metcalfe, harp
Charles Weaver, lute

Video by Kathy Wittman | Ball Square Films
Audio by Joel Gordon

Blue Heron is delighted to welcome the composer and musicologist Fabrice Fitch – live from Glasgow, Scotland – as the pre-concert speaker for the first program in our 2020-2021 season. Dr. Fitch is the author of the only English-language monograph on the music of Johannes Ockeghem, Johannes Ockeghem: Masses and Models (Paris, 1997). His new book, Renaissance Polyphony, just published by Cambridge University Press, is a lucid and engaging introduction to the subject aimed at a general audience. (A video presentation of the book may be viewed here.) Fitch has also published extensively on Obrecht, Agricola, other composers of their generation, and the Eton Choirbook, and his compositions have been performed and broadcast internationally. He has written for the magazine Gramophone for over 25 years and is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. In his spare time, Dr. Fitch amuses himself by composing poetry in 15th-century French; the sharp-eyed among us may recognize him as the author of replacements for two missing strophes for Ockeghem’s song Se vostre cuer elongne moy a tort, recorded on Johannes Ockeghem: Complete Songs, vol. 1, and he has contributed a strophe to the current program as well.

All concert dates, programs and personnel are subject to change without notice.