News from the Lute Society

1. LUTE AND BAROQUE MUSIC AT ST JOHN’S SMITH SQUARE, MONDAY 18TH MAY
The well known Hungarian lutenist, Istvan Konya, will be performing for one night only on Monday 18th May at St John's Smith Square at 7.30 pm with colleaques from the Budapest Chamber Opera. tickets £15 and £20 from 020 7222 1061

Thank you

Anne Simor
2. CONCERT ON 28TH MAY

Jakob Lindberg is giving a recital on his Sixtus Rauwolf Lute made in around 1590 – the same years as the Spanish Armarda on Thursday May 28th, at 7.30

Program includes Weiss, Bach, Kellner, Reusner, and music from the Balcarres book. £10 a ticket to include a glass of wine and nibbles Tickets from 07962 430450

Any problems with tickets get in touch with Nick Gravestock, blutiles@leicester.anglican.org

3. CONCERT, SATURDAY 13th JUNE
Dear Frolick Friends and Fans,

We will be playing The Frolick with Calliope in South West London at the All Saints Concert series, on Saturday 13 June at 7.30pm. An evening of 18th-century popular song from Handel's London, including music by Handel, Geminiani, Lampe, Carey, O'Carolan, Ramsay, Holcombe and Corelli, with traditional scots and irish music thrown in, just as it would have been in an informal evening of music-making at home in the 1740s. It should be a lively evening with strawberries, Pimms and a licensed bar! Full details below.

We very much hope to see you there.

all the best

Emma and Andrew

P.S. If you haven't already checked out the new website, please do at http://www.thefrolick.com/. We have a new picture gallery with photos from our live shows and a Video gallery including our new promo video (EPK) and individual songs from The Frolick with Calliope. www.thefrolick.com/Gallery.html and www.thefrolick.com/Video.html

4. SUMMER SCHOOL IN PARIS. JULY 13-20
Dear all, I am writing to let you know about a Lute summer course in Paris (July 13-20) that I'll be teaching together with the lutenist Miguel Serdoura. Miguel Serdoura (http://www.miguelserdoura.com/) will teach the solo lessons and I'll teach Continuo and Chamber Music. Both solo and Continuo lesson will be 8 hours a day. The Continuo and Chamber Music lesson I'll teach will be organized like this: Continuo: Theory and Practise (2 hours/day)Duets and Trios (2 hours/day)Lute Songs (2 hours/day)Chamber Music with other instruments (violin, recorder, Cello, voice, etc...) (2 hours/day) The registration for the course is already in progress. For more information about the course you can visit http://www.musique-colombes.net/ where you can download the aplication brochure. You can also contact me for any other information you may need. Looking forward to seeing you in Paris.

Best wishes Manuel Minguillon Nieto

http://www.manuelminguillon.cominfo@manuelminguillon.cominfo@manuelminguillon.com

5. CONCERT, LONDON 5th JUNE

A Many Coloured Coat Songs of love and devotion centring on the idea of Jerusalem as a cultural and religious crossroads

Anthony Rooley (lute) Evelyn Tubb (soprano) Friday 5 June 2009 at 6pm

The Art Workers Guild, 6 Queen Square, London WC1

A John Coffin Memorial Fund Recital in association with the Warburg Institute Free of charge, but booking essential. Please email music@sas.ac.uk to reserve a place.

The Lute SocietyA Many Coloured CoatA Tale of how the Cloth was CutIn January 1999 Evelyn Tubb and Anthony Rooley were to make their annual visit to Jerusalem – a combined programme of teaching and concert-giving. The reader may recall that this precise time was a low point in Jewish/Arab relations, with the confrontation having descended to pantomimic levels of vulgar posturing and base politics. Fundamentalism on both sides claimed the higher moral ground and deceit was rife.

Nothing new, of course, for the city of Jerusalem – the Holy City for three fractious religions – which has known very few years of real peace over its three millenia of existence. A symbol of Heaven on Earth? Black humour indeed!

So what are two visiting itinerant musicians, specialists in renaissance and baroque music, going to do or say anything more than bringing pretty, effete music to act as a salve for the more liberated and enlightened members of that angst-ridden community?

Yes, these dear friends of ours love their music, and particularly seem to love our individual brand, which is quite enough reason to return to perform. But with such horrendous deeds being perpetrated daily, we really wanted to say something through our medium that made a more apposite comment, somehow to show that Art may have relevance even in the midst of strife (as many members of this particular community know only too well!).

We knew that extremists would not be present – we only play to liberals – the others are too busy with matters of consequence – so we didn’t expect mass conversions to a movement that thought Art held all the answers. But we did feel that Jerusalem as an emblem of love and devotion was not too far-fetched an idea to form the central theme of our programme. These fractious elements have so much more in common: a deep love of poetry, divine and passionate, and a deep love of the music from the several traditions which set that poetry. There is, too, an almost erotic quality to much of the material – a kind of weaving of the sensual and spiritual which really belongs to the Middle East, and which we in colder northern climes can only dream about.

To the Jewish, Islamic and Christian religions we added a fourth, not exactly a religion, and passing under many names at different times and places in western culture – the neo-Platonic, or ‘mystery’ religion (close to sufism in some respects, or to kabbalah, and yet again, catharism, hermeticism) – a form of exotic ethical beliefs which have often been condemned by orthodoxy of every hue. Suppression of the ‘mystical’ has been a tendency throughout the last 2000 years, but art, poetry and music have continually acted as a channel for inspired outpourings, much to the annoyance of the power-houses of constrained orthodoxy. Jerusalem emanates mystery as though on an important earth ley-line, as is claimed by some.

All of the poetry and music in this programme was created further west and north – it is a European view of the four religions, by artists inspired by the exotic contemplation of the Middle East. Some of it is from Spain, a place where for a short while, under Alfonso the Wise, all four religions co-habited peacefully and inspired each other, some from Germany and the dour Rhine, and some from damp, melancholy England. Italy comes a little closer to the source of inspiration, and to the warmth of mediterranean dreamings. Much of the poetry is drawn form the Old Testament, a cobbled collection of texts which has mutually inspired each of the factions and which each claim to be holy. There is so much they have in common, surely there is the wisdom to see unity rather than disparity? Jacob and his famous coat provides an appropriate symbol, a veritable mantle, for uniting this diversity. The music ranges widely, not only in place but also in time. Hildegard from the 12th century rubs shoulders with Henry Purcell from the late 17th. My normal tendency in programme planning is to take a very specific brief period of time and ‘go in deep’, but this theme seemed to want a different solution. The end result is as you see, or rather, hear. I was anxious about a possible time-travel sickness ensuing, but quite the contrary, I find the ear enjoying unusual juxtapositions and drawing fresh insight from that. The universality of devotional love poetry weaves the weft of this many coloured coat in an intriguing way.