2014-15 Season Retrospective

Piffaro, the Renaissance Band
2014-2015 Season
July 2014 – Madison Early Music Festival
Members of Piffaro taught a variety of workshops and
classes, and Grant Herreid directed the All-Festival
concert.
Shannon & Alan wined & dined (well, beered &
bratwursted) Piffaro’s far-flung supporters from Seattle &
New York.
October 4, 2014 – Bryn Mawr Co"ege
Shakespeare Celebration
Bryn Mawr College invited Piffaro to join actors & dancers in a grand Shakespeare extravaganza that
kicked off the College’s 2014-15 performance season.
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October 17-19, 2014 – Hidden Treasure:
The Lerma Codex
Philadelphia Inquirer
“Philadelphia didn't necessarily harbor intense
cultural longing for a musical artifact of 16thcentury Spain, but it got one anyway, thanks to
Piffaro, the Renaissance Band. And now who
would want to be without it?
...Particularly alluring was a set of madrigals
played by a full recorder consort, effectively
massing this family of soft-sounding instruments,
and creating the impression of the most luxurious
musical pillow imaginable. Throughout much
of the music, liturgical chant,
stately processionals, and
even dance echoed in the
polyphonic pieces.
But, true to form, Piffaro
saved earthier stuff for the
last - a series of true-blue
dances incongruously included in this manuscript
of sacred music - creating an occasion for a
classic Piffaro bagpipe blowout.”
October 25, 2014 – On Tour:
We"esley Co"ege, MA
Piffaro performed at Wellesley College, where
Tom Zajac is the Director of the Early Music
Ensemble.
October 26, 2014 – On Tour:
First United Methodist of Schenectady, NY
Piffaro rounded out its trip to New England with
a concert in Schenectady, where they played to a
full house and enthusiastic audience.
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November 22, 2014 – On Tour:
Pomona Co"ege
Joan returned to her alma mater with Piffaro to
perform Fortune My Foe, a program created with
repertoire from the 2013-14 season’s The Band and
the Bard and Prisoners & Penitents concerts. The
concert drew fans from as far away as L.A.
November 23, 2014 – On Tour:
San Diego Early Music Society
One of the country’s major early music
presenters, SDEMS, featured Piffaro on its
international series in La Jolla, CA, where the
Fortune My Foe program was enthusiastically
received.
December 7, 2014 – On Tour:
St James Episcopal, Lancaster PA
Piffaro performed Nowe"’s Delight on St James’
longstanding early music series in a stunningly
beautiful church in downtown Lancaster, PA.
December 11, 2014 – Free Library
Year of Shakespeare Grand Finale
The Free Library of Philadelphia
invited Piffaro to provide music
for the final event of its year-long
celebration of the Bard. The
musicians opened with an
informal performance in the
lobby; a full concert in the
lecture hall followed. Flyers were
distributed to attendees with a
special discount offer to Piffaro’s holiday concerts.
These concerts demonstrate yet another reason why Piffaro’s Delaware Va"ey subscription concerts
are the! heart of its artistic life: they are the crucible in which touring programs are developed.
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December 19-21, 2014 – Mediterranean
Holiday
Broad Street Review
“Piffaro’s annual Christmas concert has been one of
my Christmas traditions for 30 years, and it’s touched
a different set of nerves every year. This year, it
mostly emphasized the warmth and mystery of the
season. If the concert had been a Christmas card, it
would have been the type that pictures a starry night
or a mother and child rather than jolly wassailers
singing as they feast.
...Any concert that includes a cornetto should be
considered a special event. Its revival is one of the
best gifts the period instrument movement has given
us. When Tollaksen played it during vocal pieces,
there were times when it sounded like another singer
had joined the group.
The other guest, soprano Laura Heimes, has been a
Christmas regular ever since Piffaro recruited her
about 20 years ago, when she was still a student at
Temple. She once again proved that this music sounds
best when it’s sung by a vocalist who understands
Renaissance performance practice and commands the
resources of a classically trained voice.
Grant Herreid once again contributed his expressive
tenor to the pieces that required a male voice. His
wife, Priscilla Herreid, added body to pieces that
gained from an extra soprano... she’s developing into a
major talent.
Piffaro’s programs always rotate between the serious
and the lively with a good sense of showmanship.
Their longtime fans treasure memories of big
climaxes, with bagpipes, reeds, and percussion
blasting out peasant dances. In this concert, they
created the lively moments with tempo and rhythm
rather than volume. The overall effect was a haunting
sojourn with the softer moods associated with our
end of the year festival.”
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January 24, 2015 – On Tour:
Northwestern University
Piffaro and Kile Smith traveled to Northwestern
University to perform the Vespers with Donald Nally’s
Contemporary/Early Choral Ensemble.
January 25, 2015 – On Tour:
St James Cathedral, Chicago IL
Piffaro and the Contemporary/Early Choral Ensemble
repeated their performance of Vespers in Chicago as
part of the Evelyn Dunbar Early Music Festival.
--Kile Smith blogged about the performances:
“Back from Chicago & Evanston, and gorgeously
revealing performances of Vespers by
Northwestern University’s Bienen Contemporary/
Early Vocal Ensemble (BCE) and Piffaro, The
Renaissance Band. Donald Nally led brilliantly,
Piffaro played like gangbusters, and the singers
simply knocked me out.
Above, from a rehearsal—must be the Magnificat—
tenors & altos, Priscilla Herreid working the tenor
dulcian, Bob Wiemken hidden behind the earthmoving octavebass dulcian, oh yeah.
So many thanks to Northwestern University’s
Institute for New Music, the Evelyn Dunbar Early
Music Festival, Millar Chapel, St. James Cathedral in
Chicago, and the astounding musicians of BCE. I can
hardly believe the work they did for this. None of
this would have been possible without Donald
Nally, whose leadership, vision, and creativity inspire
all of us, and Piffaro, without whom Vespers
would not exist.”
February 21, 2015 – Indiana University
!
Bob & Joan shared tips with students in IU School of
Music’s “Project Jumpstart” class about making a
career in music.
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February 27, 2015 – On Tour:
Strathmore Music Center
With the Folger Consort,
Sir Derek Jacobi, Richard Clifford,
Samantha Bond
Piffaro world HQ received a last minute call from the
Folger Consort, asking if our musicians could be
rallied on short notice to fill in for London’s Gabrieli
Consort, who had visa problems. The program was a
staging by Richard Clifford of The Merchant of Venice,
starring Sir Derek Jacobi. Musicians and actors shared
the stage in the beautiful, acoustically excellent Music
Center at Strathmore, just outside of Baltimore and
Washington, DC.
Washington Post
...The instrumental contributions were equally
strong, especially because the five musicians of
Piffaro, the Renaissance Band, were filling in
for members of the Gabrieli Consort... Priscilla
Herreid and Joan Kimball had a rustic turn on dueling
bagpipes...Givoanni Gabrieli’s “Canzon Septimi Toni,”
for opposing choirs of instruments, beautifully
represented the quintessential Venetian sound from
the turn of the 17th century.
Baltimore Sun
There was no shortage of sheer aural pleasure
during the Folger Consort’s program the other day, an
imaginative blend of music and text focusing on “The
Merchant of Venice.”
The indelible force of Shakespeare’s language
certainly made its mark, sounding, in these
circumstances, all the more musical. And what
fascinating music there was... To all the selections,
the Folger Consort and its guests, Piffaro, the
Renaissance Band, offered admirable technical
poise and expressive phrasing. In addition to the
superb instrumentalists (a couple of bagpipes
made a delicious appearance along the way),
Peabody trained soprano Emily Noel offered deftly
sculpted singing.
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A classy enterprise all the way.
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February 28, 2015 – Recorder Festival
Piffaro’s Recorder Festival was a wonderful
community event packed with former competition
winners, young students, their parents, and local
Piffaro fans.
April 21-24, 2015 – Indiana Early
Double Reed Workshop
The annual spring double reed workshop is presented
by Early Music in Motion each year at the Waycross
Conference Center in Morgantown, IN.
The week-long event is designed by Bob, Joan, and
founder Juan Carlos Arango and is a one-of-a-kind
offering for serious players who wish to improve their
technique, learn reed-making skills, try new
instruments, and play. It attracts Piffaro donors &
fans from around the country.
Joan and Bob also attend the workshop each October.
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March 13-15, 2015 –
At the Court of Ferrara
Philadelphia Inquirer
...Over the weekend, the versatile musicians of
Philadelphia's own celebrated Renaissance wind band,
Piffaro, performed a stimulating program built around
that manuscript [Casanatense 2856]. Alternating
between the typical Renaissance alta cappella (loud
ensemble, meant for large rooms and the outdoors)
and bassa cappella (soft ensemble, for chambers and
chapels), the players - as heard Saturday at the
Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill - led us through
the places and situations in which the Duke would
have used his band.
Mind you, the alta cappella - shawms, the raucous
ancestors of modern oboes, and sackbuts, early
trombones - really is loud, making cultivated love
songs and sophisticated sacred music sound intense
and even boisterous. It's not easy to shape phrases
musically on these rambunctious horns, but
Piffaro does it better than just about anyone.
The suites using the bassa capella - here, recorders
with lute and harp - offered a welcome contrast. The
recorders sounded surprisingly full with the church's
acoustics, and Piffaro's musicians coordinated
with one another wonderfully, keeping the
complex part-writing clearly audible. A
particular treat was the way Christa Patton's
tangy Renaissance harp blended graciously
with Grant Herreid's elegant lute playing in De
tous biens plaine, one of the century's most-admired
courtly chansons.
Yet the most impressive achievement of the evening
may have been on pieces that didn't come from the
Duke's manuscript: balli, dance tunes notated as only
a single melody over which his musicians would have
improvised additional parts.
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Piffaro didn't improvise on the spot - they worked out
the extra parts in advance - but they understand
thoroughly the rules and principles their
Renaissance forbears would have used, and the
renditions offered on Saturday were
captivating.
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May 6-10, 2015 – On Tour: Florida
Kile Smith’s Vespers
with Seraphic Fire
Knight Arts Foundation Blog
...An essential contribution to the evening’s
resounding success was the presence
of Piffaro, the Renaissance
Band...Together with Piffaro’s seven
versatile musicians, who divided and
multiplied themselves in the playing
of sackbuts, recorders, crumhorns,
dulcians, lutes, theorbo, and other
predecessors of woodwinds, Seraphic Fire delivered a
concert of uncommon quality.
South Florida Classical Review
The average concertgoer—or even the above-average
one—probably couldn’t name the instruments on the
small stage Wednesday evening at St. Sophia
Cathedral in Miami.
Ancient predecessors of trombones, bassoons and
oboes, obscure plucked instruments, various types of
recorders—some carried names such as sackbut and
quartbass, bass dulcian and alto shawm. They were
played with exceptional skill and sensitivity by the
Renaissance wind ensemble Piffaro, and helped
achieve the unique tone of the Vespers by American
composer Kile Smith.
Palm Beach Arts Paper
...This was an unusual and very rewarding concert,
one that introduced South Florida audiences to a
prominent early music group and a fine American
composer...The instrumental parts were just as
inventive standing alone as the combinations were.
The most endearing one was the setting for seven
recorders of “O süsser Herre Jesus Christ,” which
after the intensity of the Psalm 113 that preceded it
sounded like nothing so much as a stream of cool
water.
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May 15-17, 2015 – Celebrating Cipriano de Rore
with The Laughing Bird
Broad Street Review
...Cipriano de Rore isn’t one of those composers
specialists admire merely because he pioneered a new
approach. De Rore created some of the most
attractive music Piffaro has played. Piffaro presented
this concert with an early music vocal quartet, the
Laughing Bird, and you could hear the same colorful
harmonies you hear in Monteverdi’s songs.
Piffaro enhanced the coloring by following its
customary practice and partnering the songs with
different groups of instruments. Some songs were
played on quieter instruments like the harp and the
recorder; others on combinations that included the
somber tones of the Renaissance trombone or
penetrating reed instruments like the Renaissance
predecessors of the oboe and bassoon. Three sets of
purely instrumental works added more variety and
included dances and other works by composers
influenced by de Rore’s innovations.
This was primarily an ensemble event but it included
two solos that deserve special mention. Priscilla
Herreid played a set of variations on the soprano
recorder, accompanied by Grant Herreid’s lute and
Christa Patton’s harp, and produced a series of
virtuoso displays that flowed from note to note with
an unbroken, almost liquid, continuity. That’s a hard
trick to pull off on the recorder and it creates a
mesmerizing effect when it succeeds.
For a love song that was just as mesmerizing, soprano
Leslie Johnson combined a richly expressive style with
the ornaments, such as long trills, that play a critical
role in Renaissance and Baroque music. The
ornaments emphasize emotion and add the drama of
technical display. Johnson used the ornaments, and
her natural expressiveness, with a restraint that
created a touching vision of a lover praising the
“gentle spirit” who makes the singer happy....
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June 12, 2015
Piffaro receives Distinguished Achievement Award )om American Recorder Society
From the Spring 2015 American Recorder Magazine
The ARS has announced that it will honor an entire group with its 2015 Distinguished
Achievement Award (DAA); Piffaro, The Renaissance Band will receive the award for
outstanding contributions to the study of recorder and music in general.
“Sometimes a gruop of fellow musicians cone together just to explore teh possibilities of
recorders, shawms, and other early winds, not sure at all of what the future will hold: such
was the fate or formula that started Piffaro, once known aw The Philadelphia Renaissance
Wind Band. Celebrating almost 30 ears of exemplary historical musical performances and of
brining to life the virtuosity of the Renaissance wind band musician, Piffaro is synonymous
with elegance, style, inspiration and a passion for excellence,” commented ARS president
Laura Kuhlman. “Piffaro has raised the performance standard and educated audiences
around the world with historically-crafted concerts and eloquent musicality. It is an honor
for the ARS to award Piffaro the 2015 DAA.”
ARS first bestowed its Distinguished Achievement Award on Friedrich von Huene in 1987.
This is the first time an entire ensemble has been honored.
Many thanks to Bi" DiCecca for use of his beautiful photography!
A" photos ©Bi" DiCecca
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