Miller Theatre opens Early Music series with France`s Le Poème

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRESS CONTACTS
September 24, 2014
Tickets & Information: 212/854-7799
www.millertheatre.com
Aleba Gartner, 212/206-1450
aleba@alebaco.com
Charlotte Levitt, 212/854-2380
cl2867@columbia.edu
“People listened attentively, laughed out loud during raucous songs, and cheered the excellent
performers… After the program concluded…the audience broke into a sustained ovation.”
— The New York Times
Miller Theatre at Columbia University
School of the Arts
opens the 2014-15 Early Music series with
THE DARK HOURS
featuring
Le Poème Harmonique
Vincent Dumestre, artistic director
Thursday, October 25, 2014, 8:00 p.m.
Church of St. Mary the Virgin (145 West 46th Street)
Tickets: $35-$50 • Students with valid ID: $21-$30
From Miller Theatre Executive Director Melissa Smey:
“Le Poème Harmonique have become a beloved mainstay of our Early Music series,
and each year I eagerly await their performance. They approach early music with
superb artistry and passion, and the result is that their concerts truly transport us
through time and place.”
EARLY MUSIC
Miller Theatre's “essential” (The New Yorker) Early Music series has been
lauded as a leader in New York’s burgeoning historical performance scene.
This season, we’ll hear intricate vocal works from England, Italy, and Spain;
a French Baroque setting of the myth of Ulysses; and a dark, dramatic
lament, performed by candlelight. Most performances in this series are held
offsite at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, where listeners can experience
this glorious music in a setting much like the cathedrals where Tallis, Byrd,
Monteverdi, and others would have originally performed it.
Early Music
Saturday, October 25, 2014, 8:00 p.m.
The Dark Hours
Church of St. Mary the Virgin (145 W. 46th Street)
Miller Theatre's favorite French early-music band returns with another evocative, candlelit
performance. Lalande was the leading French composer of sacred music during the 18th
century, and he wrote with an emphasis on the female voice that was unusual for his time—
perhaps inspired by the vocal talents of his wife and daughters. Morroccan soprano Hasnaa
Bennani makes her Miller debut, lending her "beautiful, golden" soprano to these Leçons
de ténèbres, or “Lessons of Darkness,” based on the Lamentations of Jeremiah after the
destruction of Jerusalem.
PROGRAM:
Anonymous: Psalm In te Domine Speravi in faux bourdon
Michel-Richard de Lalande: Troisième leçon de Ténèbres du Jeudi (for solo voice)
Marc-Antoine Charpentier: Septième méditation – neuvième méditation
Michel-Richard de Lalande: Miserere mei Deus
ARTISTS:
Le Poème Harmonique
Hasnaa Bennani, soprano
Bruno Le Levreur, countertenor
Serge Goubioud, tenor
Florian Götz, bass
Lucas Peres, bass viol
Marouan Mankar Bennis, organ & harpsichord
Vincent Dumestre, theorbo & direction
Le Poème Harmonique: Venezia, dalle calli ai palazzi
Le Poème Harmonique
www.lepoemeharmonique.fr
Formed in 1998, Le Poème Harmonique is a group of soloists, gathered around its
artistic director Vincent Dumestre. Its artistic activity, centered on vocal and instrumental
music of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, is regularly enriched by interaction
with other disciplines. This, together with real teamwork – working together as a company
– is Le Poème Harmonique’s hallmark in Baroque performance today.
Actors, dancers, circus artists and puppeteers join its singers and musicians in programs of
chamber works – Le Ballet des Fées, Il Fasolo – and, since 2004, in large-scale stage
productions, such as Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (a comédie-ballet by Molière and Lully;
stage director Benjamin Lazar) and Baroque Carnival (directed by Cécile Roussat). For
operatic performances, such as Lully’s Cadmus et Hermione and Cavalli’s Egisto (both
staged by Benjamin Lazar), Le Poème Harmonique studies in depth the correspondences
between ‘period’ aesthetics – use of candles for lighting, authentic gestures and painted
sets and machinery – and the aesthetics of modern stage productions. The ensemble also
gets back to the sources of early French and Italian music by exploring its relationships
with traditional or folk music. The recording entitled Aux Marches du Palais, for instance,
is devoted to French songs of oral tradition.
Twenty-five per cent of Le Poème Harmonique’s activity takes place in the Haute
Normandie Region. But since it was founded the ensemble has made many concert tours in
Europe and has appeared in most of the continent’s capitals. Outstanding events of the past
seasons include Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Baroque Carnival and Cadmus et Hermione,
all of which have been exceptionally successful, with almost 130 performances. The
ensemble’s recent stage projects have included the first performances of Pagliardi’s
Caligula, in September 2011 at the International Puppet Festival in Charleville-Mézières,
and of Cavalli’s Egisto, in February 2012 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, then at the Opéra
de Rouen Haute- Normandie. Also, in 2013-2014, as part of its residency there, Le Poème
Harmonique will be presenting Purcell’s Dido and Æneas at Rouen Opéra. The ensemble’s
recordings for the Alpha label have met with rare public success: Grand Prix de l’Académie
Charles Cros, the Diapason d’Or, recommendations from Opéra International, Classica, Le
Monde de la Musique, a Prelude Classical Award in 2003, the Antonio Vivaldi
International Award (Cini Foundation, Venice), the Caecilia Press Prize, and more.
Vincent Dumestre
Vincent Dumestre (b. 1968) is the founder and artistic director of Le Poème
Harmonique, with which he explores the vocal and instrumental repertoire of the
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. With this faithful team of artists he also seeks
to revive the performing arts of the Baroque period, thereby favoring in many of his
projects interaction with other artistic disciplines.
After studying art history at the École du Louvre and classical guitar at the École Normale
de Musique in Paris, Dumestre (b. May 1968) turned to the lute, Baroque guitar, and
theorbo, which he studied with Hopkinson Smith and Eugène Ferré, with Rolf Lislevand at
the Toulouse Conservatoire, and in the continuo class at the Boulogne Conservatoire,
where he was unanimously awarded the advanced diploma. Since then he has taken part in
many concerts, in particular with the Ricercar Consort, La Simphonie du Marais, Le
Concert des Nations, La Grande Écurie et la Chambre du Roy, Akademia, and the
ensembles of the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles. He has taken part in more than
thirty recordings with those ensembles.
In 1998 Dumestre formed Le Poème Harmonique – a chamber ensemble and orchestra
specializing in the Baroque repertoire – of which he is the artistic director. From the very
first the ensemble’s productions won both critical acclaim and popularity. In 1999 the
French music magazine Diapason voted Dumestre “Young Talent of the Year” for his work
with Le Poème Harmonique.
Dumestre’s artistic career is essentially bound up with that of his ensemble. It is interesting
furthermore to note his unusual position on the international Baroque scene, as the only
musician to lead a company that is directly involved in the production of large-scale stage
productions, thus contributing to a new perception of the relationships between music and
theatre. His approach has proved immensely popular, acclaimed by the critics and by the
public. The same spirit of innovation characterizes the chamber programs, in which
Dumestre continues to participate as an instrumentalist with his singers and musicians.
This aspect of his work is still of fundamental importance to him, despite the fact that the
ensemble’s evolution means that he often has the role of conductor.
Over the past four years the repute of Dumestre and Le Poème Harmonique has grown
spectacularly and the ensemble’s stage productions and concerts are now presented at
many prestigious venues in France and abroad.
Upcoming concerts in
Miller Theatre’s Early Music series
Single tickets: $30-$55
Season tickets: $136-$176 for five concerts
All concerts begin at 8:00 PM
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Celebrations from the Mediterranean
New York Polyphony
Saturday, December 13, 2014
Sacred Muses
The Tallis Scholars
Peter Phillips, director
Saturday, February 28, 2015
From The Imperial Court
Stile Antico
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Myths and Allegories
Les Délices
Columbia University’s Miller Theatre is located north of the Main Campus Gate
at 116th St. & Broadway on the ground floor of Dodge Hall.
Directions and information is available online at www.millertheatre.com
or via the Miller Theatre Box Office, at 212.854.7799.
For photos, please contact Charlotte Levitt at 212/854-2380 or CL2867@columbia.edu.
For further information, press tickets, photos, and to arrange interviews,
please contact Aleba & Co. at 212/206-1450 or aleba@alebaco.com.
Copyright © 2014 Aleba & Co., All rights reserved.
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