HESPERUS News
 |
Scott Reiss
We are saddened to announce to you that Scott
Reiss, co-founder of Hesperus died Dec. 14. Scott leaves behind
his wife of 25 years, Tina Chancey, his parents, his sister,
a wealth of friends, recordings, and fond memories of a masterful
musician and loving human being.
more info... |
09-17-2005
Scott and Tina perform
in an Emmy-nominated soundtrack for a Hallmark Channel film
on St. Patrick
Tina and Scott have been
collaborating for the past three years with another husband
and wife team in New York. Pamela Mason Wagner is a movie
producer and her husband Thomas Wagner is a composer. Pamela
and Thom have created a series of movies for the Hallmark
Channel on the lives of saints--St. Francis, St. Patrick,
and Joan of Arc, and we’ve had the honor of working
with them.
Thom had the
inspired notion to incorporate period music into
these film scores and to employ professional early musicians
to play it. St. Francis was easy: French medieval music
is abundant, and HESPERUS (including lutenist Grant Herreid
and Nell Snaidas, our soprano from the Robin Hood Project)
added the appropriate early music panache to Thom’s
electronic score. Joan of Arc was similarly straightforward.
But St. Patrick
presented a problem—there is no music extant from
5th-century Ireland, so Thom created it. Although more “movie
music” than “historically informed”, Thom’s
score set the right tone. Scott, Tina, Nell and a didgeridoo
player were the live musicians in the score, and you do
hear a lot of Scott & Tina in the final soundtrack.
DVDs of the three films are available from www.faithandvalues.tv
.
Scott plays the 4th Brandenburg
on the Great Wall of China
For 2 weeks this March,
Scott toured China with the Choate Rosemary Hall Orchestra,
as recorder soloist for Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto
#4. The orchestra played a total of five joint concerts
with orchestras in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. The
first concert was actually on a part of the Great Wall outside
Beijing that opens out into a wide plaza, with the long,
narrow stairs typical of most of the Wall winding up into
the mountains, relieved every quarter mile or so by small
pavillions provided for rest or shelter.
Before performing
the orchestra had a chance to walk up the wall into the
mountains for spectacular views. David Langstaff, Scott’s
student and 2nd recorder player for the Brandenburg, owns
a space technology company, which has put him in contact
with many people in the space program. On a whim, David
took out his Blackberry and emailed Sally Ride and Neil
Armstrong to ask them if one could actually see the Great
Wall from space. Before the orchestra performed, Sally had
written back, saying “Yes, David, you can see the
Great Wall from space.” By that evening Armstrong
had also written David back with similar confirmation!
Tina plays
castle tour in Germany with Blackmore’s Night
This is Tina’s second
season playing in the Renaissance/rock band Blackmore’s
Night headed by Ritchie Blackmore, former lead guitarist
with the bands Deep Purple and Rainbow. BN’s combination
of early music and rock is wildly popular in Europe and
Japan; fans swarm the concerts, many dressed in garb (costume).
Tina plays violin, recorders and rauschpfeife (a capped
reed instrument like a krumhorn) for a combination of rock
oldies like Smoke on the Water, and pieces based
on Renaissance dance tunes re-fitted with new lyrics by
the band’s lead singer, Candice Night. For a schedule,
please check the Band’s webpage, and while you’re
there, look for the bio of a certain string player named
Tudor Rose…
HESPERUS completes
a 40-minute promotional DVD for
The Robin Hood Project
Since 1997, Tina has worked
as a recording producer; many of her projects have been
released on major labels such as Dorian or Koch, (the Concord
Ensemble’s debut album won an award from Goldberg
Magazine).
This spring
she decided to extend her area of expertise to DVD production,
a process she has described as having “a vertical
learning curve, but an excellent final result.” Her
first project has been a combination promotional and educational
DVD for HESPERUS’ Robin Hood Project (see
our concert schedule.) In this popular program, HESPERUS
performs a soundtrack of early music from Robin Hood’s
time as an accompaniment to the eponymous Douglas Fairbanks
1922 silent film. The DVD includes two 12-minute scenes
from the film with HESPERUS’ new/old soundtrack, and
four narrated slideshows— on early film; outlaws and
superheroes; how HESPERUS created its soundtrack; and an
intro to the 14 medieval and renaissance instruments used
to accompany the film.
This DVD is
available to presenters and educators without charge. Unfortunately,
under the terms of our agreement with the company that owns
the rights to the DVD, it’s not commercially available,
though we’re fundraising to support the creation of
a commercial DVD of the whole movie.
HESPERUS receives
grant to start its next silent movie project:
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
HESPERUS is lucky to be in
its fifth year as one of the ensembles-in-residence in Arlington
County, VA under the Cultural Affairs Division of the Department
of Parks and Recreation, funded by the Arlington Commission
of the Arts. This fall, the County has awarded HESPERUS
a grant to develop its 2nd early music/silent movie collaboration,
a soundtrack of French medieval music for the 1923 Lon Chaney
film The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
As in May 2003,
HESPERUS will premier the new work in Arlington, and will
collaborate with the Arlington Central Library in a Medieval
Fair, complete with jousters, jugglers, student actors and
musicians, to precede the showing of the film.
HESPERUS receives its fifth Washington Area Music Award
For the fifth time since 1988
HESPERUS has won the Washington Area Music Award for ‘Best
Classical Chamber Ensemble’. The award, bestowed by
the Washington Area Music Association (WAMA), is the local
equivalent of the national Grammys. HESPERUS has won in
the past for specific recordings (For No Good Reason at
All, and American Roots) as well as in the category of “best
classical chamber ensemble.” This year award ceremonies
were held at the newly-completed, Strathmore Hall Arts Center.
HESPERUS’ new Colonial America
CD, a sequel to Early American Roots
on the Maggie’s Music label, features spirited sounds
from across the sea to the shores of the new land: lively
country dances, fiddle tunes, 18th century divisions, elegant
French cotillions, evocative shape-note hymns, and a special
chamber version of the Federal Overture. A few particular
gems:
• Tina’s rendition of Death and Life,
a pair of poignant lyra-viol pieces (where the viol plays
both melody and accompanying chords) that close the CD.
• Grant’s lute solo, simply called A Scots
Tune, from the Rowallan manuscript, whose antique melody
is echoed by distant rolling thunder.
• Scott’s haunting version of Carolan’s
Farewell to Music on bass recorder
This season HESPERUS is performing new programs and popular
touring programs throughout the metropolitan area. These
appearances include:
• ,
HESPERUS’ ground-breaking cross-cultural exploration
of the musical encounter between the Spanish and Native
Americans, with our guests, the popular South American
ensemble Andes Manta.
We perform a frothy mixture of South American waynos,
cumbias, and x plus renaissance party songs, devotional
villancicos, and Alabados on October 1 at the Reston Community
Center
• , Scott’s
first solo CD since 1990, features medieval solos in Irish
style and Irish jigs, reels, and slow airs on an assortment
of recorders and Irish whistles that create a colorful
palate of wind instrument sounds. Scott’s dynamite
band includes legendary frame drummer Glen
Velez, the ubiquitous and irrepressible
Celtic guitar and bouzouki player Zan
McLeod, and HESPERUS’ own brilliant
player of exotic string instruments Tina
Chancey. It’s worth the price of
admission just to hear these players improvise together!
November 22 at Alden Theater in McLean. (disc
info)
• . The Library of Congress
has invited HESPERUS to perform a holiday concert this
year at Coolidge Auditorium. But not just any holiday
program—they wanted to include everything HESPERUS
does! So the audience will be treated to a sampling from
all the musical universes HESPERUS inhabits: Early American,
American folk, indigenous and Spanish Latin American,
Celtic, medieval and renaissance. HESPERUS’ five
group members, Tina, Scott, Grant,
Bruce, and Rosa, will
be joined by Scottish fiddler Elke
Baker, old-time fiddler Pete
Sutherland, and a trio of cloggers from
Footworks.
December 12 at the Library of Congress.
• :
Scott’s work as soloist for the last 25 years with
HESPERUS and the Folger Consort will be featured in The
Medieval and Renaissance Virtuoso, as
well as more recent additions to his repertoire. Tina
and Grant will join him for this concert on January 9
at Strathmore Hall.
• . A celebration of the animal
world in music and mime, from asp to unicorn, with hilarious
text drawn from a renaissance Beastiary. A concert for
the whole family, featuring WETA’s Robert Aubry
Davis as narrator, and mimed by Washington’s renowned
protégé of Marcel Marceau, Mark
Jaster. February 21 on the Herndon Cultural
Arts Series.
• :
our series as ensemble-in-residence in Arlington
County under the auspices of the Arlington County
Commission on the Arts and the Cultural Affairs Division.
Hold March 13, April 10 and May 1—program
schedule to be confirmed.
o Mark Jaster
will also be joining HESPERUS for Fauvel:
Ass or Empire Builder? Fauvel,
a 14th-c political satire with music about an ass who
becomes king and challenges Dame Fortune herself, should
resonate in the coming election year. This is the first
time it’s performed in mime.
o DEBUT CONCERT:
An as yet unnamed recorder quartet featuring Scott Reiss
and Tom Zajac.
o GUEST ARTIST:
The dynamic vielle duo of Tina Chancey and Shira Kamen
• Watch for HESPERUS repeat appearances
with Bowen McCauley Dance
and Choral Cantigas in the
spring.
This August 3-9 marks HESPERUS’ third consecutive SoundCatcher
workshop at beautiful Hilltop House Hotel in Harpers Ferry,
WV. Scott and Tina taught 14 students the skill of playing
music by ear. This year they augmented their usual repertoire
of medieval, old-time American folk, and Irish and Scottish
tunes with an Andean tune from Andes Manta and a Sephardic
tune from Flory Jagoda (see the Concert schedule for Tina
and Scott’s appearances with both Andes Manta and Flory.)
Special treats: classes by Robbie Caruthers, a great old-time
fiddler, and Madeline MacNeil, who gave an introductory class
in Appalachian lap dulcimer. We went tubing on the Shenandoah
on our afternoon off.
In June, Grant Herreid, HESPERUS’ lutenist, married
his long-time companion, Christa Patton, in the Camera Rosso
(Red Room) of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy. Christa
has been enrolled in an early harp degree program in Milan
for three years, so they decided to invite a few dozen friends
and family to cavort for a week in an agritourismo (working
farm that takes guests) in the hills outside the city. The
group went on a wine tasting tour, visited the secret rooms
of the Medici, watched a performance by Grant’s ensemble
Ex Umbris at New York University’s villa, and spent
many hours at the hotels’ spring-fed pool. The couple’s
formal ceremony was followed the next day by an informal
one on a terrace at the agritourismo, with music by a cheerful
combination of Hesperus and Ex Umbris members.
THE ROBIN HOOD PROJECT:
HESPERUS CELEBRATES THE GALLANT ROGUE WITH A RENAISSANCE
FAIRE & THE PREMIERE OF A NEW / OLD SCORE FOR A VINTAGE
1922 SILENT FILM
more info...
- Scott Reiss' CD "The Banshee's
Wail" featured on national radio.
Scott will be interviewed by Robert Aubry Davis on the early
music program The Millennium of Music the week of St Patricks
Day. Davis is dedicating the entire show to "The Banshee's
Wail", Scott's new CD of Irish and medieval music (see
our recordings page). Millennium of Music is broadcast on
124 FM stations nationwide as well as XM, the new satellite
radio technology. Check your local NPR station to see if
and when it broadcasts in your area; it will be on the show
sometime between March 10 & 16, depending on your local
station's schedule.
-HESPERUS with Andes Manta at the
Rosslyn Spectrum.
We will be previewing our new CD "Ancestors: New World
Encounters" in a program on our DC-area series at the
Rosslyn Spectrum on March 30 at 3pm. It will feature music
from the New World after Columbus' voyage, but unlike HESPERUS'
first CD of this music,"Spain in the New World",
this program is entirely dedicated to music with Native
American and African influences. This includes music wriitten'
by the Spanish in Native American languages to attract them
to the Catholic Church, music written by Native American
composers trained by the Spanish in European music, and
'negrillos' ,pieces
written by Spaniards in the rhythms and dialects of the
black slave population.
Joining HESPERUS will by the group Andes Manta,
four brothers from Ecuador who live currently in upstate
New York, and who play the older styles of music from all
the Andean cultures. The two groups will play separate sets,
then join forces in the second half of the concert for a
true cross-cultural experience.
Tickets are $18/$12 for students and seniors.
The Spectrum is at the end
of Wilson Blvd in Rosslyn (Arlington). FREE PARKING IN THE
BUILDING. Call
703-525-7550 to order tickets or get directions. (see our
concert schedule
page)
-HESPERUS featured on Hallmark Cable
Channel movie
Tina, Scott and Grant went to New York in December to record
the music for a film called "The Reluctant Saint: the
life of St Francis of Assisi" to be broadcast on the
Hallmark Cable TV Channel sometime in April. Check your
local TV guide for broadcast times.
-HESPERUS leaves Baylin Artist Management
We've parted ways with our agent of 8 years, Marc Baylin.
Those years were good for all concerned, but Baylin and
HESPERUS have started to go in different directions, so
a mutual parting seemed the best thing to do. HESPERUS is
focusing more on our "Cultural Portraits" (see
above about 'Ancestors'), and our crossover programs "Unicorn"
(see the CD on our recordings page), "Classical Blues"
(no CD yet), and Scott's "The Banshee's Wail"
(see the St Patrick's day feature above), as well as our
early music
programs featuring improvsation: "Luminous Spirit,
chants of Hildegard von Bingen", "Neo-Medieval",
and "Food of Love" (CDs on recordings page).
For the moment, Scott and Tina are doing all
HESPERUS' bookings, so those presenters who have sponsored
the group in the past and would like to see HESPERUS back
can do it now at a 20% discount!
HESPERUS
Scott Reiss & Tina Chancey, co-directors
Grant Herreid, Bruce Hutton, Rosa Lamoreaux
HESPERUS will tour
Bolivia
for the third time this November. Our first two visits (in
1998 and again last May) were by invitation from
the Festival Internacional de musica renacentista y barroca
Americana
Misiones de Chiquitos. Polish musicologist Pietr Narwot,
founded the festival eight years ago to highlight the music
of Colonial Latin America.
The highlight
of our first visit was our performance in a beautifully-restored
17th century mission in the town of San
Javier. It is a 5-hour bus trip from
Santa Cruz on
dirt roads in the jungle, where there are a string of missions
first established by Spanish Jesuits. It was both exciting
and daunting to perform our versions of the songs of the
Canichana Indians, printed in 1790 for the Bourbon governors,
in the very region where they were first heard. The next
day we visited Concepcion, the next town over, whose mission
houses a small music archive. The Archivist proudly showed
us his 17th and 18th century manuscripts.
When he pointed out a special sheaf of songs composed by
the Canichanas Indians from that area, we pulled out a copy
of our Spain in the New World CD, which featured
those very songs! He was quite impressed.
On our second
visit, we performed an informal concert in the American
Ambassador’s residence in La Paz,
as well one in the Cathedral in Santa
Cruz. This time we also played in
Concepcion,
just after Mass so the mission church was filled to capacity.
The audience consisted of a mix of local people (mestizos,
or people of mixed Euro and native heritage, and indigenous
people), and city people who came out for the Festival.
We played some new material from our new CD, Ancestors
(see below), including two pieces Scott has transcribed
from field recordings made in the Peruvian Andes. Just before
playing them he put on a chaleco, a vest worn by
Quechua-speaking people in the area. The audience applauded
as soon as he stood up! Then the warm and crowded space
quieted, and as the haunting sounds of the solo flute echoed
in the 500-year-old sanctuary, you could hear a pin drop.
The concert ended with a standing ovation, and performers
joined spectators in an impromptu folk dance in front of
the mission.
Just a few weeks
after returning, the American embassy in Bolivia,
our Festival sponsors, invited all five HESPERUS members
to perform together for the first time in November! We’ll
do a program of British Colonial and American Folk music
in La Paz, Santa
Cruz, and Cochabamba
under the sole auspices of the embassy. We call the program
American Roots and Colonial Traditions.
Just weeks before
our May Bolivia trip, HESPERUS recorded a second CD of music
from Colonial Latin America. In an Early Music America
article, Craig Zeichner praised HESPERUS’s pioneering 1988
recording, Spain in the New World (Koch 3-7451 2H1).
Planning our second CD, we wondered
what we could add to the present plethora of recordings.
In our Smithsonian Institution residency during the 1990s,
we had continued to research and perform music from Colonial
Latin America, particularly some in Native American languages,
written by Spaniards hoping to assimilate the Indians as
well as by the indigenos themselves. We realized our contribution
would be to do a CD consisting entirely of African- and
Native American-influenced music!
The African
influence appears in negrillos and negritos, written
by the Spanish in imitation of the dialects and rhythms
of the Africans in Spain
(and the New World). Then we have
pieces written by both Spanish and Native American composers
in native dialects such as Quechua, Nahuatl, and Chilidugu.
Rosa Lamoreaux, a master of difficult and exotic foreign
languages, is the featured soloist. We also have flute pieces
transcribed by Scott from Peruvian field recordings, as
well as some traditional Peruvian songs in an obscure Quechua
dialect sung by Nell Snaidas, who copied the exact timbre
and vocal style of the Peruvian villagers.
Our special
guest on the recording was the Andean traditional group
Andes Manta, four brothers
from Ecuador
who play an inspiring variety of flutes, drums, and guitars.
HESPERUS collaborated on four pieces with the group, quite
an experience.
The title of
the CD, Ancestors, comes from one of Andes Manta’s pieces,
Ancestros, scored for a pre-Columbian combination
of large panpipes, quenas (notch-flutes), bomba (large drum),
and rattles. Before the Spanish arrival in the 15th
century, there were no string instruments in America.
The CD will be released next summer or fall.
Besides its international
popularity, HESPERUS has made a real impact on its local
community. The group’s recording of ‘My Thing is my Own’
recently won a WAMMIE Award (its 4th)
from the Washington Area Music Association. HESPERUS was
also awarded the Star Award for Managerial Excellence
from the Arlington Commission for the Arts.
With a busy fall schedule, we
will begin our series at the Rosslyn Spectrum with a Christmas
program on December 21 & 22, featuring Pete Sutherland,
extraordinary fiddler from Vermont,
with Bruce, Scott and Tina.
Our March 30th
concert will preview our new Ancestors recording
with Andes Manta. They
will present a special family show at the Arlington Central
Library on Saturday, March 29.th
We end the
season with The Robin Hood Project, a celebration of that
fictional king of the forest whose name is a household word.
On Sunday, May 4 we present the 1924 silent movie with Douglas
Fairbanks, Jr, with period music by HESPERUS.
Popcorn is free! On May 3, the Arlington Central Library
will sponsor Robin Hood Day, complete with stories, songs
and costumes.
The Wild
Kingdom
at the Alden Theater in McLean,
VA
We will be performing our Wild
Kingdom: A Medieval Book of Beasts at the Alden Theater
in McLean, VA
on November 17. An irreverent exploration of the animal
kingdom, the program features mime Mark Jaster (student
of Marcel Marceau) and narrator Robert Aubry Davis (host
of PRI’s Millennium of Music), with the HESPERUS instrumental
trio. The mysterious cat, slithering panther, mythical
phoenix and majestic lion live in medieval & renaissance
texts and music, and Mark’s hilarious antics.
Tina and Scott join the dance
group for a piece choreographed by Director Lucy Bowen
McCauley. Using selections from HESPERUS’ Neo-Medieval
CD, Lucy created a work in 6 parts called Terpsichorus.
Its Kennedy Center
premiere will take place at the Terrace Theater on October
15.
Tina, Scott,
and Rosa Perform Luminous Spirit: Chants of Hildegard
von Bingen at the new Black Rock Arts Center in Germantown,
MD
Germantown,
MD has a beautiful new
theater. Black Rock was inspired by the great Elizabethan
stages and has four spaces well-suited to theater, music,
and dance. Scott, Tina, and Rosa will perform Luminous
Spirit, a concert of the music of 12th-century
abbess, poet, mystic, and composer Hildegard von Bingen,
on the main stage on November 23. When Tina and Scott’s
improvisations on vielle, rebec, kamenj, tenor recorder,
and hammered dulcimer accompany Rosa’s
incredible voice on these soaring and passionate chants,
the effect is absolutely transporting.
*** See our website for
details
Our SoundCatcher
workshops, teaching people how to play music by ear, are
continuing to gain momentum. Last summer we held a second
annual week-long workshop at Hilltop House in Harper’s
Ferry, WV. The participants, mostly recorder players from
all over the country, particularly enjoyed Bruce’s wry wit.
Scott will continue his SoundCatcher classes on selected
Sunday afternoons this fall.
We hope you’re
enjoying HESPERUS’s new website (www.hesperus.org),
designed by Chris Sampson
of Octagonal Madness, in HoustonTX.
Chris has designed sites for other musicians we know like
Malcolm Dalglish and Glen
Velez. He has a great sense of color and
layout. We think the new site represents HESPERUS well and
the navigation is clear and easy. Do you agree?
|
