MY LORD CHAMBERLAIN'S CONSORT

MLCC News

Our fall concert at St. Luke's is set for Saturday, September 26 at 8pm, with a pre-concert lecture by author Erik Ryding. Featured composers will be Alfonso Ferrabosco the Younger, a distinguished musician at the court of James I, music master to the popular young Prince Henry, and the man who set Ben Jonson's theatre lyrics to music. The uniquely expressive melodies of Ferrabosco will be set off by contrast with part songs selected from the 1609 lute song book of Robert Jones, inspired, according to the composer, by a dream.

At holiday time, MLCC is delighted to be invited back to two of our favorite New York concert series: St. Andrew's Music Society at Madison Avenue Presbyterian, and Midtown Concerts at St. Bartholomew's Chapel. Our program will emphasize late medieval and renaissance carols, noels, and instrumentals.

In the fall of 2008, Michael Cavendish was our chosen composer. With assistance from guest artists Ruth Cunningham and Biraj Barkakhaty, we sampled the four and five-part madrigals as well as solo songs and instrumentals. Cavendish was an early entry in the lute-song field. His first book came out in 1598, just a year after Dowland's.

Autumn of 2007 marked our tenth season together as an ensemble, and My Lord Chamberlain's Consort helped inaugurate Gotham Early Music Scene's new Early Music/Early Season series at the Times Center on October 7 with a program called Behold a Wonder Here: The World of John Dowland. For more information about this wonderful new resource for New York's early music community, visit www.GEMSNY.org/.

Our Tenth Anniversary Concert took place on Saturday, October 27, 2007, at our home church, St. Luke in the Fields. "My Lord Chamberlain's Consort: Ten Years Together" featured treasures of the 17th century English repertoire selected from ten years of fall concerts at St. Luke's.

On October 15, members of MLCC stepped in on short notice to fill a spot on the "Concerts at One" series at historic St. Paul's Chapel on lower Manhattan. The Consort was invited back for Thursday, March 13, 2008 at the series's larger venue, Trinity Church Wall Street, where we were pleased to reprise our 10th-anniversary program. This concert may be viewed on-line from the Trinity Church concert archive:
http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/calendar/index.php?event_id=41543.

At holiday time MLCC traveled to Providence to perform on the delightful Museum Concerts of Rhode Island series at St. Martin's Church on Orchard Avenue. And on December 26, the ensemble made a return appearance on New York's own Midtown Concerts series, now enjoying a successful season in its new Park Avenue location, the Church of St. Bartholomew.

Watch this space as plans take shape for 2010!

My Lord Chamberlain's Consort is a participant in the STAR (Salute The ARts) Initiative of WNYC, New York Public Radio. For more information, please visit www.wnyc.org/events.

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MY LORD CHAMBERLAIN'S CONSORT ON CD

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"This group of singers and instrumentalists had the courage to treat Dowland as a vital, passionate composer, and to present his music as an exciting, living experience."

--The San Diego Reader

"Uplifting in every sense. . . .This septet of musicians put together a tight, engrossing program and performed it compellingly. The performers were uniformly expert. . . . their solos engaged, their ensembles pleased."

--The Los Angeles Times

"The songs deserve to be more widely heard: besides having spectacularly beautiful melodies and harmonizations, they discourse on the pains of love in ways one only hears from Elizabethan writers."

--The New York Times

"The Consort's crack musicians . . . performed the pieces in a variety of forms, from complex four-voice a cappella counterpoint, to solo baritone, countertenor, or soprano accompanied by lute or viol, to instrumentals, to the full ensemble. . . . It was a feast for Dowland fans."

--Arizona Daily Star

Our most requested program, "Awake Sweet Love: John Dowland's First Book of Songs (1597),"
is now available on disc.
To order your copy, send a check for $18 ($15 CD, $3 postage and handling) to:

Andy Rutherford
136 Waverly Place, #12-B
New York NY 10014

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ABOUT MLCC

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MY LORD CHAMBERLAIN'S CONSORT was formed in 1997 to present a complete performance of John Dowland's landmark First Book of Songs or Ayres in its 400th anniversary year. The New York Times called the Consort "a whimsically named new grouping of distinguished early music practitioners. . . . excellent . . . thrilling . . . noble and expressive." Dowland's First Book carries a dedication to Sir George Carey, the Queen's Lord Chamberlain, from whom MLCC takes its name. Carey also was a patron of William Shakespeare's acting troupe, The Lord Chamberlain's Men.

Our members have appeared with many of the world's leading early music ensembles, including Les Arts Florissants, Hesperus, Sequentia, Pomerium, ARTEK, New York's Ensemble for Early Music, and the Folger, Newberry, and Waverley Consorts. MLCC has won acclaim for its refined approach to ensemble singing, its entertaining approach to the Elizabethan repertoire, and the variety and originality of its vocal and instrumental arrangements.

My Lord Chamberlain's Consort presents a new program each fall at its home venue in New York, the Church of St. Luke in the Fields. In the spring of 2001 the Consort made a successful tour of the American Southwest, with concerts in Phoenix, Tucson, Los Angeles, and San Diego. MLCC has since made a number of appearances at The Cloisters and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as the Renaissance and Baroque Society of Pittsburgh; Columbus Early Music Society; St. Andrew's Music Society at Madison Avenue Presbyterian, New York; and the George Bishop Lane Series in Burlington, Vermont. The Consort has also been heard live over Vermont Public Radio and New York Public Radio, WNYC.

BOOKING INFORMATION: mylordcc@earthlink.net

Or call (212) 262-0337

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ARTIST BIOS

Tenor Philip Anderson has been a featured soloist with Mark Morris Dance Group, Masterworks Chorus and Orchestra, The New York Collegium, Orchestra of St. Lukes, and The Waterbury Symphony. Much in demand among early music ensembles, Mr. Anderson has appeared with Artek, Chatham Baroque, The Clarion Music Society, Lionheart, New York’s Ensemble for Early Music, New York State Baroque, Piffaro, The Queens Chamber Band, and The Virgin Consort. When not singing, he grows organic vegetables and raises chickens.

Originally a trumpet player from Portland, OR, Grant Herreid is now a versatile musician/director/teacher on the early music scene. As a multi-instrumentalist and singer he performs frequently on winds, strings and voice with Hesperus and Piffaro, and he plays theorbo and lute with The New York City Opera and the baroque ensemble Artek. He teaches at Mannes College of Music and directs the New York Continuo Collective.

Among the world's foremost countertenors, Drew Minter has appeared in leading roles in the opera houses of Brussels, Toulouse, Boston, Washington, Santa Fe, BAM, Wolf Trap, Glimmerglass, Nice, Marseilles, and at the Halle, Karlsruhe, Maryland, and Göttingen Handel Festivals, among others. He has sung with many of the world's leading early music ensembles, is a founding member of the Newberry Consort and Trefoil, and sings regularly with the Folger Consort and ARTEK. A frequent guest at festivals such as the BAM Next Wave, Boston Early Music, Edinburgh, and Spoleto, he is represented by more than 50 recordings. An accomplished author, stage director, and teacher, Minter teaches on the faculty of Vassar College.

On viol, vielle and violone, Rosamund Morley has appeared with many ensembles including Sequentia, Concert Royal, Four Nations Ensemble and Ensemble for Early Music. She has toured worldwide as a long-time member of the Waverly Consort, appeared with Les Arts Florissants at BAM in its production of Charpentier’s Orphée, and is a member of the New York Consort of Viols and Parthenia. Ms. Morley has recorded for EMI, Columbia Masterworks, Lyrichord and Musical Heritage Society, and also teaches viol at Columbia University.

Lutenist Pat O'Brien has taught and played all sorts of fretted instruments in his native New York for many years. He has recorded with the Andrew Lawrence King's Harp Consort and David Douglass' King's Noyse. With lutenist Paul O'Dette, he is writing a method for 16th-century lute technique. He also regularly teaches early music courses around the around the world.

Andy Rutherford began studying the lute in connection with his interest in 17th-century art, especially the works of Caravaggio and Vermeer, which often feature the instrument. He performs regularly with soprano Marcia Young as half of Duo Marchand. In recent seasons Mr. Rutherford has appeared at Tanglewood and Lincoln Center with the Mark Morris Dance Group; at the Bloomington Early Music Festival; and with Parthenia, Musica Antiqua New York, the New York Consort of Viols, Voices of Ascension, and the Big Apple Baroque Band. Internationally recognized as a builder of lute-family instruments, Mr. Rutherford taught and lectured on the history of lute design and construction at the Lute Society of America Convention and Seminar in 2000.

Soprano Marcia Young sings and plays medieval, renaissance, and baroque harps with My Lord Chamberlain's Consort; the medieval trio Trefoil, and Duo Marchand with lutenist Andy Rutherford. In recent years she has appeared with Parthenia, Piffaro, the Folger and Newberry Consorts, and in recital at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Center for Jewish History, and the Ars Antiqua series in Chappaqua NY. She has taught vocal and instrumental classes at the San Francisco Early Music Society Renaissance and Baroque Workshop. During the academic year, she is Director of Performance Studies at Stern College, Yeshiva University, Manhattan. Also a music journalist, she writes frequently for Playbill, Opera News, and Chamber Music America. She has been a radio host for WNYC New York and the classical channels of Sirius-XM.

SITE PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREW STRAWCUTTER