MY LORD CHAMBERLAIN'S CONSORT

A MUSICALL BANQUET (1610)
A program selected from Robert Dowland's historic international publication
in its 400th anniversary year.
Sunday, September 12, 2010, 2:00 pm
Pre-Concert Lecture by author Erik Ryding, 1:30pm
Church of St. Luke in the Fields
487 Hudson Street, New York
Tickets: $20/$15 at the door

A Renaissance Christmas
Sunday, December 5, 2010, 3:00 p.m.
Music on Madison
Presented by the Saint Andrew Music Society
Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church
921 Madison Avenue (at 73rd St.), New York
Suggested donation $15/$10

A Renaissance Christmas
Wednesday, December 29, 2010, 1:15 p.m.
Midtown Concerts/Music for the Spirit
Immanuel Church
122 East 88th St., New York
Admission: Free

A Renaissance Christmas
Wednesday, December 30, 2009, 1:15 p.m.
Midtown Concerts/Music for the Spirit
Church of St. Bartholomew
Park Avenue at 50th St., New York

A Renaissance Christmas
Sunday, December 6, 2009, 3:00 p.m.
Music on Madison
Presented by the Saint Andrew Music Society
Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church
921 Madison Avenue (at 73rd St.), New York

A Musicall Dreame: Songs of Ferrabosco and Jones
Saturday, September 26, 2009, 8:00 p.m.
Pre-Concert Lecture by author Erik Ryding, 7:30 p.m.
Church of St. Luke in the Fields
487 Hudson Street (at Christopher/Grove), New York

Love is not blind! -- Songs of Michael Cavendish
Thursday, September 18, 2008, 8:00 p.m.
Pre-Concert Lecture by author Erik Ryding, 7:30 p.m.
Church of St. Luke in the Fields
487 Hudson Street (at Christopher/Grove), New York

My Lord Chamberlain's Consort: Ten Years Together
Concerts at One
Thursday, March 13, 2008, 1:00 p.m.
Trinity Church Wall Street
74 Trinity Place, New York
Information: www.trinitywallstreet.org

To Drive the Cold Winter Away
Sunday, December 16, 2007, 3:00 p.m.
Museum Concerts of Rhode Island
St. Martin's Church, 50 Orchard Ave., Providence RI
Information: http://www.museumconcerts.org

MLCC News

SONGS FOR A CYNICAL AGE -- John Maynard's unique 1611 collection "XII Wonders of the World" is the focus of our fall concert at St. Luke's, set for Sunday, September 18 at 2:00 p.m., with a pre-concert lecture by author Erik Ryding at 1:30 p.m. Maynard, a lute and lyra viol player, wrote his collection for a Twelfth Night celebration. At the close of dinner, according to a long-standing tradition, each guest was served dessert on a roundel, a small round plate on which was printed a song which the guest was then expected to sing.

The songs represent twelve basic personality types, in the character of various professions or life stations such as the Widow, the Merchant, the Physician, and the Soldier. The wickedly satirical texts hold a surprisingly vivid and direct relevance for Western society 400 years later. Eight instrumental dances complete the collection.

At holiday time, MLCC is delighted to be invited back to Music on Madison, presented by St. Andrew's Music Society at Madison Avenue Presbyterian. "A Renaissance Christmas," our program of late medieval and renaissance carols, noels, and instrumentals, is set for Sunday, December 4 at 3:00 p.m.

Our fall 2010 program featured A Musicall Banquet (1610). This early international anthology introduced England to exciting new sounds coming from the Continent, including the "new style" of Florentine opera. With songs in Spanish, French, and Italian as well as offerings from top English court composers like John Dowland and Daniel Bacheler, the book is a valuable survey of the "cutting edge" in the musical tastes of the time.

MLCC returned to "A Musicall Banquet" on Sunday, June 19, 2011, at 5:00 p.m. -- the occasion of our first appearance at the Connecticut Early Music Festival.The venue was beautiful Harkness Chapel on the Connecticut College campus. Early in 2011 the Consort also brought "A Renaissance Christmas" to two of our favorite New York series, Music on Madison and Midtown Concerts.

"A Musicall Dreame," our fall 2009 program, featured the songs of 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 were 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.

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 Upper East Side location, Immanuel Church on Lexington Avenue.

Watch this space as plans take shape for 2013!

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: luteworld@gmail.com

Or call (917) 538-0373

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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, Tenet, Chatham Baroque, The Clarion Music Society, Lionheart, New York’s Ensemble for Early Music, New York State Baroque, Piffaro, The Queens Chamber Band, the Tiffany Consort, 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.

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 has taught and lectured on the history of lute design and construction at the Lute Society of America Convention and Seminar.

Soprano Marcia Young sings and plays medieval, renaissance, and baroque harps with the medieval trio Trefoil, Duo Marchand (with lutenist Andy Rutherford), and in duo concerts with lutenist Christopher Morrongiello. In recent years she has appeared with Parthenia, Piffaro, the Folger and Newberry Consorts, and in recital at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cloisters, the Yale Center for British Art, the HotShops gallery space in Omaha, and the Ars Antiqua series in Chappaqua NY. She serves as Director of Performance Studies for the department of music at Stern College, Yeshiva University, and has taught vocal and instrumental classes at the San Francisco Early Music Society's summer workshop.

SITE PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREW STRAWCUTTER