Welcome to our June Newsletter!
We hope you are all enjoying a good summer so far! We are winding down after the completion of our special 25th Anniversary Season, which featured music by Schubert, Haydn, Beethoven, French Baroque masters, Bolivian Mission Baroque, J.S. Bach and 17th-century composers who imported a wonderfully free, improvised style to their instrumental music. We are already looking forward to welcoming you to our next season ~ Voyages in Music ~ with our opening concerts taking place the weekend of September 20-22, 2024. It’s not too late to subscribe and save!
UP NEXT:
Composer Highlight for Next Season:
Ali Ufki Bey
Who was the mysterious 17th-century dragoman, Ali Ufki Bey (ca.1610-ca.1675)? Born Wojciech Bobowski, this extraordinary Polish musician was captured as a prisoner of war as an 18-year-old, and carted off to Istanbul (then Constantinople). Because of his musical talents, he was sold to the court of Sultan Murat IV where he received a formal education in the Enderun, the palace school. His talents as a linguist (he spoke at least 17 languages, including among others Turkish, Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, German, Greek, Spanish, Italian, French and Latin, as well as Polish) and as a man of numbers saw him become a trusted member of the sultan’s inner circle. He also introduced Ottoman classical music to the Occident by meticulously copying out in Western notation the music he encountered under the Sultan. Thanks to two manuscript anthologies, we are able to realise and relive this music from the Near East, which without a doubt made an impact of Western Baroque composers, and beyond.
outreach During Summer 2024:
Despite a lot of red tape, Sarasa is delighted to have been able to schedule our very first visit and outreach presentation at an adult prison in Shirley, MA on June 21st. We have no idea what to expect, but we are looking forward to this experience. We will also visit a facility for incarcerated youth in Worcester on the same day. It will be very interesting to see how this goes. And thanks to our first federal grant, Challenge America from the National Endowment for the Arts, we will be giving three teenage residencies in late July and August. A residency takes place over a week, with three visits of two hours each with Sarasa musicians (two singers, cello and keyboard), playing and collaborating on music with the teens. We then make an audio recording of a new composition taken from their rap and poetry at the end of the week. We will upload this new material onto our website.
Some Classic film ideas for summer:
After a recent 3-week trip to São Paolo for a chamber music festival, Co-Artistic Director Jennifer Morsches still has sights and sounds of Brazil in her head. The musicians she met there were absolutely fantastic— generous, warm, and full of incredible rhythm. Every day felt like a street party in São Paolo, a city of over 19 million! And despite the constant noise, the sheer number of high-rises and very few green spaces, as well as the exceptionally crazy driving, the people are so kind and mostly always have a smile on their faces — and are ready to dance! The rhythms of their music permeate the street markets, and reminded Jennifer of the beautiful Brazilian film, Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro), which takes place in Rio de Janeiro during Carnival. Following the Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, the movie's iconic sound track features music of Brazilian greats Antônio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfá.
from Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro, directed by Marcel Camus 1959)
