Insalata I Fagiolini

Friday, February 17th, 8:00 PM
THE VETS, One Avenue of the Arts, Providence, RI 02903
www.thevetsri.com

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The Vets Box Office is located at PPAC, 220 Weybosset St., Providence RI 02903

An a cappella salad of music from the High Renaissance with 20th century works they inspired. In the first half, Monteverdi’s most powerful miniatures for the virtuoso court at Mantua, followed by Poulenc’s sensual ‘Sept Chansons’ which he wrote after working on music of the Italian master. An actual ‘ensalada’, a staged and Monty Pythonesque drama from the court of Valencia, leads to Berio’s take on 16th century street cries written for The Kings Singers and some lighter works to close. I Fagiolini is a 2011 Gramophone Award Winner in Early Music and the only early music ensemble ever to be awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Ensemble Prize.

Photo: Eric Richmond

About I Fagiolini
The name I Fagiolini has been misspelt and mispronounced throughout the world. Grounded in the classics of Renaissance and twentieth-century vocal repertoire, the group is renowned for its innovative staged productions of Renaissance and Baroque music theatre works. Recognition for this came in 2005 with the prestigious award of the Ensemble Prize from the Royal Philharmonic Society. It has staged Handel with masks, Purcell with puppets, madrigal comedies with more masks and in 2004, premiered The Full Monteverdi, a dramatised account of the composer’s Fourth Book of Madrigals (1603) by John La Bouchardière, which has since been turned into a highly successful film, shown all over the world. The Birds followed in 2005, a new opera for vocal ensemble and speaker by Ed Hughes. In 2006 I Fagiolini toured its 1990s South African collaboration Simunye and in 2009 launched Tallis in Wonderland, a new way of hearing polyphony utilising both live and recorded vocals and lighting. In 2011 the ensemble premiered a new commission from Orlando Gough The Spell, and a new semi-staged collaboration with the English Concert for Purcell’s King Arthur.
 
2011 also saw the group’s 25^th anniversary, celebrated with a European tour, and the hugely successful release on Decca of a lavish world première recording of Striggio’s 40-part mass (until recently lost).  The recording stayed at the top of the specialist classical chart for nearly four months and the live version will tour European festivals in 2012. A similar ambitious recording will be released on Decca in 2012 as well as performances for BBC Radio 3, Wigmore Hall and the Perth Festival, Australia.  In Perth I Fagiolini will collaborate with Australian circus company Circa, bringing the production to the UK as part of the cultural olympiad.
 
I Fagiolini has recorded 18 CDs and two DVDs and given live performances around the world, from BBC Proms and the Lincoln Center Festival to the Far East and Africa.  For more about I Fagiolini, visit their website, http://www.ifagiolini.com/, or view these YouTube clips:
I FAGIOLINI : Senfl / Das Gläut zu Speyer
Thomas Tallis: The lamentations of Jeremiah

Robert Hollingworth

Photo: Eric Richmond

I Fagiolini’s concerts are presented by director Robert Hollingworth, who also writes and presents programmes for BBC Radio 3. Robert’s style is informative but relaxed and has become a feature of I Fagiolini’s work.
 
Robert received his earliest musical education from his mother and as a chorister at Hereford Cathedral. He also studied violin and keyboard, going on to read music at New College, Oxford University, recording and touring extensively with the choir, receiving much encouragement from Edward Higginbottom and John Milsom. He founded I Fagiolini there in 1986. He then spent a year at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, finding continuo studies with David Roblou particularly illuminating.
 
Directing I Fagiolini has taken up most of his time since but he has directed other ensembles at home and abroad, most recently the BBC Singers, Nederlands Kamerkoor, NDR Chor, The Academy of Ancient Music, St James Baroque and the BBC Concert Orchestra. In 2004 Robert directed the Nederlands Kamerkoor in a ground-breaking new music-theatre project (Faust) acclaimed by the Dutch press and set in startling venues such as a Amsterdam vast ship-building yard, a disused station and Bremen Cathedral. Robert directed Opera Zuid’s underground production of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo with Rufus Müller in the title role.
 
He founded the spectacular if short-lived Islington Winter Music Festival, writes and presents programmes for BBC Radio including Discovering Music and The Early Music Show and has worked on a number of films including Quills where he tried and failed to make Joaquim Phoenix look like a real conductor. He was appointed an artistic advisor to the York Early Music Festival (2006-10) and in 2009 to the Trigonale Festival, Austria. He claims Monteverdi and Monty Python as equal influences on his life and work.

 

 

Last revised May 01, 2012