January 2025 Newsletter

Welcome to our January Newsletter!

Sarasa kicked off the New Year in 2025 with a wonderful program of chamber music by Haydn, Vranicky and Boccherini. At each of our four live concerts, it was fun to hear the audience members’ reactions, especially how they enthused about which composer they enjoyed hearing the most. It seemed to be a close toss-up between the rarely-performed, Moravian-born, Viennese-based Vranicky and the Italian-born cellist Boccherini, who spent a good deal of his career in Spain, far from the more famous European metropolises!

There will be another opportunity to watch and listen to this fascinating program for free on our website and YouTube channel starting Thursday, January 23rd at 7:30pm for a limited time. Please share with your family members, friends, and colleagues!

Sarasa in action at the Friends Meeting House in Cambridge (Photo credit @Chung Cheng)

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news from Music unlocked:

Sarasa played excerpts of our January program for teens at the Kennedy School, a youth detention center in Middleton, MA. We spent an hour with 11 male participants and 8 staff members, introducing our music, getting their reactions to the moods they felt from the various pieces, talking about our instruments, and taking questions, such as: “Do you compose your own music? Do you ever get bored playing the same stuff?!”

We also encouraged them to stand up and conduct the Sarasa musicians, which always gets the energy levels pulsating, once they realise they can direct the speed or the manner in which we play. We also put down a "beat" for a young Brazilian, who rapped in Portuguese for us. His friend translated absolutely everything that went on in the session, as he spoke very little English. The overall atmosphere of this facility was one of great warmth, support and positivity.

Here is some feedback we received:

From teens:

From a staff member:

extra!

Sarasa is delighted to announce that we have been successful for the second year in a row in receiving grant funding from the National Endowment for the Arts for our ‘Music Unlocked' programming with incarcerated teens. This Challenge America Grant will enable us to continue this vital work, an integral part of Sarasa’s mission.

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Winter Blues?

Shall we dance?

Waltz from Le Magazine pittoresque, August 1840 by J. J. Grandville

Or brighten up with ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky”?

Fun fact: Did you know Sarasa’s founding director, Tim Merton, was asked to play cello in this iconic British band back in the 1970’s? 

Or how about celebrating Mozart’s and Schubert’s birthdays?

Some very special composers have their birthdays in January — most notably Mozart on January 27th and Schubert on January 31st! Our next concert-set in March will include Mozart’s evocative String Quartet, K. 421 in d minor. The second of his set of six string quartets lovingly dedicated to “Papa” Haydn in 1785, the choice of tonality for this work gives it an intensity that is both singular (being the only one from this set in a minor key) and potent in its thematic make-up. One can imagine a cast of characters unfolding across the work, showcasing Mozart’s deep understanding of human nature (perhaps nowhere more apparent than in his operas). Or perhaps it simply conveys sounds he heard in his near vicinity during its creation: apparently, a substantial amount of the quartet was composed while Mozart’s wife, Constanze, was giving birth to their first -born son, Raimund Leopold, who tragically died 2 months later.

Or maybe some time on skis will help?

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Now, back to hibernation!

Mr. Blue Sky-yyyy!

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