Event

A Musical Banquet

Big Mouth Society and Musica Maestrale present:

A Musical Banquet: A musical tale told in four languages

Emily Lau, voice
Hideki Yamaya, Renaissance lute

'A Musical Banquet' is a multi-disciplinary performance piece featuring vocal music from A Musical Banquet, a collection of twenty lute songs published in 1610 in London. The book is remarkable in that it comprises songs of exceptional quality in four languages: English, French, Italian, and Spanish.

The songs in A Musical Banquet, which is over 400 years old, deal with subject matter that we can relate to today: life, death, love, and loss. This performance will juxtapose the early music pieces with four tableaus set in different eras of American history, each featuring a different female character, an immigrant whose mother tongue is a language represented in A Musical Banquet. The story of each character is told through the songs and through newly written dialogue and narration by Lau.

This project is funded in part by a Project Grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council.

Please note that the May 31 show is at First Christian Church in downtown Portland, and the June 1 show is at Elliot Chapel in Reed College.