Welcome to our September Newsletter!
Austral Pygmy-Owl, Chile; photo by Francisco Vera Núnezau
Canon “When Jesus Wept,” William Billings, 1770
Sarasa enjoyed a wonderful start to our 2025-26 Concert Season recently over the weekend of September 12-14. Audiences at each of the three venues in Brattleboro, Watertown and Lexington joined in without hesitation for a community sing of our program opener, William Billings’ canon, “When Jesus Wept.” It really demonstrated how sharing music builds our social cohesion and inevitably explores our common connections with one another, even if we are strangers. Sarasa performed a diverse selection of works by 18th-century composers who were intrinsic to a growing trend of music societies and concert series designed for communal enjoyment. We also read aloud quotes from famous thinkers and poets of the Revolutionary Era, quotes that still ring true and are perhaps even more necessary to be heard and repeated today.
streaming premiere this thursday, 9/25:
@1775: Boston, London, Paris & Vienna starts streaming today for free for a limited time! Enjoy the chance to revisit this special concert program. And don’t forget to share it with friends, family, colleagues and neighbors!
Works that would have been heard in 1775 across four capital cities. Composers include Billings, Arne, JC Bach, Barsanti, Cervetto, Monza, Baltzar, Lanzetti, Haydn, & Mozart.
With Carley DeFranco, soprano; Susanna Ogata, violin; Thomas barth, Jennifer Morsches, cellos; Andrus Madsen, fortepiano
‘music unlocked’ news
Sarasa was busy this past summer with four residencies, sharing classical music and encouraging incarcerated youth to create and perform their own rap, songs and poetry. Tenor Fausto Miro was new to Sarasa’s team of outreach musicians. With his Puerto Rican background, he was able to really connect with those teens with Latino roots. They loved hearing him play the flute as well as following his example in how to project one’s voice like a pro! At the fourth and final “Music Unlocked’ Residency of the summer, which took place at Leahy Detention in Worcester, Sarasa Director Timothy Merton asked the residents what their dreams were.
Here are some of their answers:
- to be rich!
- go to trade school, and become an electrician
- become a priest
- a plumber
- construction worker, lawyer, and rich
- mechanic
- get out of Leahy!
- own busisness
- be free, and EMT driver
- drive a truck across the country
“I feel cleansed.” These were the words from one male teen at Sarasa's ‘Music Unlocked’ Presentation at Butler Center in Westborough, MA after hearing an excerpt from the recent September program. These visits with young offenders are the highlight of our concert weeks!
Listening corner:
A beautiful song that reflects on our "dream" theme.
You never know what you might find if you dare to dream!
Post-It from Aron Wiesenfeld’s Playtime, 2025
Next up: Sweet Sleep — 1st Annual Concert in Memory of Barbara Kapp
Coinciding with Nature’s annual moment of repose, our next concert-set on the weekend of November 14-16, will explore sleep and its many different states in an array of musical analogies. Some of us sleep deeply, some of us lightly, some of us need night-time tea to help us fall asleep, some a book or a podcast or listening to music! Some of us have recurring dreams, some of us unwanted nightmares, and a lot of us need something repetitive to help ease us to slumber, such as a lullaby, or perhaps counting sheep, or the lulling of water or waves on a beach. And then, for all of us, there is the inevitability of eternal rest. Our November program includes Georg Muffat’s gorgeous Concerto grosso No. 4 in G minor, Dulce somnium, which inspired the title of our program!
Friday, November 14, 2025 at 7pm at Brattleboro Music Center, Brattleboro, VT (tickets at bmcvt.org)
Saturday, November 15, 2025 at 7pm at Church of the Good Shepherd, Watertown, MA (off of Mt. Auburn St.)
Sunday, November 16, 2025 at 3:30pm at Follen Community Church, Lexington, MA
Music inspired by the many states of sleep. Works for soprano, strings, lute, and organ by Dowland, Arne, Bembo, Muffat, JB Bach & JS Bach.
