Event

Cantata Profana at Roulette, Wednesday May 22

On Wednesday May 22nd, we'll be bringing our hugely successful first concert to Roulette, in Brooklyn!

The program centers around Peter Maxwell Davies' Eight Songs for a Mad King--a half-hour monodrama for Baritone and six players about the mad ravings of King George III. The piece is highly dramatic, and brilliantly theatrical, one of the most profound explorations of madness in all of art. The program will begin with Seven Renaissance Scottish Dances, also by Maxwell Davies, followed by two baroque pieces performed in period style: first a madrigal from Monteverdi's Madrigals of Love and War for five voices, two violins and continuo; then a trio sonata by George III's favorite composer, Handel.

(Cantata Profana was founded in 2013 with students from the Yale School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music. Born like all great ideas in a diner in New York, Cantata Profana exists as a new approach to the creation of an ensemble. Rather than confining the group to any particular parameters, the ensemble emerges out of the artists' desires to work together and the common goal of exploring new and classic repertoire. With a dedicated group of players making up its core, the ensemble is flexible in its arrangement, able to combine everything from piano/vocal music to baroque trio sonatas to chamber operas, all in the same evening. More info at www.cantataprofana.com)