Event Details

Simon's Rock Faculty Recital Series
presents
Baroque Chamber Music for Viola da Gamba
featuring Anne Legêne, bass and treble viols

and guest artists-
Pamela Dellal, voice,
Karen Burciaga, treble viol and baroque violin
Jane Hershey, Tobi Szüts, viola da gamba
Larry Wallach and Mariken Palmboom, organ and harpsichord

Music by Bassano, Lawes, Marais, Rameau, Buxtehude and Bach.

Anne Legêne studied cello with Jean Decroos, principal cellist of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands, her native country. She performs a wide range of chamber music, with many of the region's fine musicians, and often with her husband, pianist and harpsichordist Larry Wallach. She is currently finishing a Graduate Performer's Diploma in Early Music at the Longy School in Cambridge, MA, studying viola da gamba with Jane Hershey and baroque cello with Phoebe Carrai. She was a member of the baroque orchestra "Foundling" in Providence, RI, and has played with ensembles "The Italian Connection" and "Les Inégales," the viol consort "Long and Away", The Harvard Choir and Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra, and the Berkshire Bach Society. In the summer she teaches at the Early Music Week at World Fellowship Center near Conway, NH.

Anne teaches cello and conducts the chamber orchestra at Bard College at Simon's Rock. She teaches cello in her home studio, and for many years was a cello teacher and orchestra conductor at area Waldorf schools.

Karen Burciaga discovered early music while an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University. She later earned an MM in Early Music Performance from the Longy School of Music, studying violin with Dana Maiben and viol with Jane Hershey. She has performed with the King's Noyse, Newport Baroque, Exsultemus, the Arcadia Players, La Follia Austin, and other period ensembles, including appearances at the Boston, Bloomington, and Amherst Early Music Festivals. She is a founding member of Long & Away, a viol consort, and a founding member of Seven Times Salt, a broken consort specializing in music of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Karen has coached violin band and masque performances on the string faculty of the Texas TOOT in Austin. Her other musical interests include traditional Scottish music, Italian Renaissance dance, and learning the tango.

Pamela Dellal is an acclaimed soloist and recitalist whose singing has been praised for her "exquisite vocal color," "musical sensitivity," and "eloquent phrasing." Recent appearances include the premiere of a new John Harbison work, The Seven Ages, which she performed in New York, San Francisco, Boston and London. Ms. Dellal made her Kennedy Center debut under Julian Wachner in the B-minor Mass, and her Lincoln Center debut under renowned conductor William Christie in Messiah. She has also performed with Seiji Ozawa, Christopher Hogwood, Paul McCreesh, Bernard Labadie and Roger Norrington. Operatic appearances include leading roles in the operas Alcina, Albert Herring, Dido and Aeneas, La Clemenza di Tito, Così Fan Tutte, Vanessa, The Rape of Lucretia, and A Winter's Tale. She has performed with the Boston Early Music Festival, Tokyo Oratorio Society, National Chamber Orchestra, the Washington Chorus, the Baltimore Choral Arts Society, and the Dallas Bach Society, and has appeared throughout the U.S. in concerts and recitals. With Sequentia, Ms. Dellal has made numerous recordings of the music of Hildegard von Bingen, and has toured the U.S., Europe, and Australia. Passionate about chamber music, early music, and contemporary music, she performs frequently with Boston Musica Viva, Ensemble Chaconne, Blue Heron Renaissance Choir, and the Musicians of the Old Post Road. She has been a regular soloist in the Emmanuel Music Bach Cantata series for twenty-five years, having performed almost all 200 of Bach's sacred cantatas. She has over twenty-five recordings to her credit, on the Artona, BMG, CRI, Dorian, Meridian, and KOCH labels, among others.

Jane Hershey studied with Wieland Kuijken at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands, and at the Longy School of Music with Gian Silbiger. Early in her career, she toured in the US and Europe with the Boston Camerata, recording on Erato, Nonesuch and Harmonia Mundi. As both a viol and violone player, she has performed with Arcadia Players since its founding in the 1980's. With Laura Jeppesen, she performed at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts for many years, and can be heard on "Music for Viola da Gamba" on the Centaur label. As a member of the Carthage Consort, she performed in the American Repertory Theater's production of Marlowe's 'Dido, Queen of Carthage.' She has performed at the Aston Magna Festival, with Musicians of the Old Post Road, the Santa Fe Baroque Orchestra, and Monadnock Music. She can be heard on a recent Centaur recording of music of Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre with Frances Fitch and friends. Ms Hershey teaches at the Longy School of Music, the Powers Music School and directs the Tufts Early Music Ensemble. She also serves on the Board of the Viola da Gamba Society of America.

Mariken Palmboom did her original harpsichord and baroque ensemble studies at the Royal Conservatories in The Hague, Netherlands, and Antwerp, Belgium, where her main teachers were Bob van Asperen and Jos van Immerseel. She obtained a Masters degree in Solo Performance and the First Prize with Greatest Distinction. She received a Special Award in the International Harpsichord Competition in Bruges, Belgium in 1986. She has performed many concerts in Europe and the United States, in major early Music festivals (Utrecht, Bruges and Berkeley, CA) as a soloist and continuo player with such artists as Jos van Immerseel, Frans Bruggen, Jaap Schroder, Marion Verbruggen, the Kuijken brothers, Jane Hershey and Rodrigo Tarraza. She performed at the Festival of Flanders with the Ensemble del Anima Eterna all the Bach harpsichord concertos, which were broadcasted on the Belgium radio. She also has been active in teaching, both privately and for chamber music workshops (Society of House Music in Holland, San Francisco Early Music Society and Stanford University amongst others). She currently lives and works in the Berkshires.

Tobi Szüts comes from Boston and its thriving early music scene, where he helped found the viol consorts Long & Away and quaver. He studied with Jane Hershey at the Longy School of Music and has played with Les Bostonades, Seven Times Salt, and the Harvard Early Music Society: memorable shows include performing Clérambault’s French cantatas in Versailles, France, playing lirone in Cavalli’s opera L’Ormindo, and performing for the Viola da Gamba Society of America summer Conclave. Tobi had led the Mather Viols, an undergraduate consort, at Harvard University. He wishes that the chordal style of playing the viol, called "lyra viol", was better known. When not playing music, he studies neuroscience.

Larry Wallach is a keyboard player, composer, and musicologist who holds the Livingston Hall Chair in Music at Bard College at Simon's Rock. He also teaches composition at Bard College. He was trained at Columbia University where he studied music history with Paul Henry Lang, performance practices with Denis Stevens, and composition with Otto Luening, Jack Beeson, and Charles Wuorinen. He earned a doctorate in musicology in 1973 with a dissertation about Charles Ives. In 1977, he was awarded a grant to become part of a year-long National Endowment for the Humanities seminar at the University of North Carolina directed by William S. Newman, focusing on performance practices in earlier piano music. He went on to participate in the Aston Magna Summer Academy in 1980, where he studied fortepiano with Malcolm Bilson, both privately and in master classes. He has studied harpsichord with Arthur Haas in summer workshops at the University of Indiana and at the Longy School. Larry Wallach has been an active performer of chamber music with harpsichord and piano, and of twentieth century music. He appeared with Kenneth Cooper in The Well-Tempered Clavier, part I, as accompanist to recorder virtuoso Bernard Krainis, and as keyboard player for the Berkshire Bach Society’s choral programs. He has collaborated with violinist Nancy Bracken of the Boston Symphony, with violinist/violist Ronald Gorevic, with gambist Lucy Bardo, baroque oboist Stephen Hammer, and with his wife, cellist Anne Legêne, performing on both modern and baroque instruments. He has appeared with the Avanti Quintet, the New York Consort of Viols, and is a regular performer on the “Octoberzest” series in Great Barrington. In 2009 he organized a Harpsichord Festival involving music for from one to four harpsichords which has been performed in Norfolk Connecticut, Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Albany, New York, and is scheduled for performance next Fall at Hunter Mountain. His music criticism appears on-line at “The Berkshire Review” web-site.