World & Early Music at Saint James

La Bernardinia
Baroque Ensemble
and erhu virtuoso, Qin Qian

Sunday, September 24 | 4 PM

East and West: Folk and Baroque Music from China

Originally scheduled to be at Saint James in March of 2020, La Bernardinia returns to Saint James on Sunday, September 24th to open our 2023 – 2024 season with East and West: Folk and Baroque Music from China. The program features guest erhu virtuoso, Qian Qin in a program that explores the intersection of East and West through the work of Europeans living and working in China during the eighteenth-century and the cross-cultural bridges they helped to establish.

Concert goers will hear Italian music played on the erhu—a two-stringed bowed instrument whose timbre blends beautifully with the ensemble, and Chinese melodies played by all as the ensemble combines folk and baroque for a very enjoyable program.

Available in person and via livestream

Tickets:

Adult: $25
Student: $10

Cash, check or charge at the door

    Purchase Tickets

    All concerts are being recorded and will be available to ticket holders after the concert.

    About World & Early Music at Saint James

    Originally created as Early Music at Saint James, this concert series was the vision of founder and Director Emerita Kathleen Spencer. Now, years after its first performance in February of 2011, World & Early Music at Saint James is a sought-after venue in the historic performance genre. Each season, concerts of music composed before 1800 are presented in the acoustically rich sanctuary of Saint James Church. The performances of primarily Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and Classical music are played on faithful reproductions of period instruments. The series offers a venue for small and/or emerging ensembles as well as established artists, presenting a rich repertoire of music not generally available to the Lancaster community. For the 2022 – 2023 Season, programming has expanded to include world music as well.

    World & Early Music is a self sustaining concert series that relies on ticket sales, tax-exempt gifts, grants and sponsorships. If you’d like to help support World & Early Music, click here and select Early & World Music from the drop-down menu. You may also include a note in the optional memo field.

    Jasson Priset (lutes, baroque guitar), Margo Andrea (mezzo soprano, vielle), Carlo Valte (Arabic lute), Rex Benincasa, (frame drums darbouka, riq, hurdy-gurdy, voice)

    Sunday, September 25, 4 PM | Available online and in person

    ALBA CONSORT

    Dancing Over the Caucasus to the Sea – A fabulous journey through early music from Persia to Armenia, Cyprus, Greece, North Africa, Italy and Iberia.

    Bridging the ancient to the present with songs, compelling dances and virtuosic improvisations, ALBA illuminates melodies, dynamic rhythms, improvisation traditions and the poetry of the Mediterranean with four acclaimed performers: Margo Andrea, mezzo-soprano & vielle; Carlo Valte, oud & baroque guitar; Jason Priset, lutes, theorbo & guitars; and Rex Benincasa, percussion, voice and psaltery.

    Friday, November 18, 2022; 7:30 PM | Available online and in person

    Iestyn Davies, countertenor &
    Thomas Dunford, lute

    A Musicall Banquet

    Son of the more famous John Dowland, Robert (c.1591-1641), an equally renowned lutenist, published in 1610 A Musicall Banquet furnished with varietie of delicious ayres, collected out of the best authors in English, French, Spanish and Italian – a treasure of its period realized by two of today’s leading exponents of the lute song.

    Sarah Mead, Wendy Gillespie, Julie Jeffrey, Joanna Blendulf, Emily Walhout

    Sunday March 19, 2023; 4 PM | Available online and in person

    Nota Bene, Viol Consort

    Continental Drifters

    In the 16th century, as trade routes opened across the European continent and pushed over mountains and across oceans into Asia and the Americas, the printing press helped to accelerate the dissemination of music. Singers and players traveled with their patrons, taking their native music to distant lands.

    Nota Bene explores these journeys with a range of musical voyages: across the Continent, across the Channel, across the Alps, and further afield, including music that traveled from Portugal to Japanese missions, from France to indigenous villages in Guatemala, from Spain to the great churches of Mexico, and from England to the colonial settlements of North America. Nota Bene performs on a matched set of viols that closely replicate Italian instruments of the 1580’s, with a rich and mellow sound full of detail and sonority.

    Purchase Tickets for Nota Bene