Farallon & Parthenia | June 16

Join us for a celebratory Festival finale as the Farallon Recorder Quartet and Parthenia Viol Consort explore works old and new—a program that could only come together at a Festival like this! Revel in the revolutionary shifts of Western music around 1600, as well as indulge in contemporary works for viol and recorder that showcase the bright future of early music and historically informed performance.

Miyo Aoki, Letitia Berlin, Frances Blaker, Vicki Boeckman, recorders
Beverly Au, Lawrence Lipnik, Rosamund Morley, Lisa Terry, viols

Farallon Recorder Quartet is a Bay Area and Seattle-based early music group that brings the music of the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and modern eras to today’s audiences with professional polish, verve, and precision. The Quartet was founded in 1996 to explore the vast and varied repertoire for four recorders employing a fascinating range of recorder sizes and period styles, ranging from six inches to six feet tall. Their most recent CD recording, “From Albion’s Shores,” has been described by Early Music America as “the sound one would get if one could turn honey into wood or stand underneath a caramel fountain.”

The viola da gamba quartet Parthenia brings early music into the present with a ravishing sound and a remarkable sense of ensemble, animating both ancient and fresh-commissioned repertoire to critical acclaim. These “local early-music stars,” hailed by The New Yorker and music critics throughout the world, are “one of the brightest lights in New York’s early-music scene.” The ensemble appears regularly in concerts across America, and produces its own series in New York City, collaborating with the world’s foremost early music specialists. Parthenia’s performances range from its popular touring program, “When Music & Sweet Poetry Agree,” a celebration of Elizabethan poetry and music with actor Paul Hecht, to the complete viol fantasies of Henry Purcell, to “Al Naharot Bavel” which features works by Jewish Renaissance composers.