GEMS and Trinity Wall Street Present Parthenia & Sinfonia New York in Twelfth Night Festival, 12/27 & 29

This month, Gotham Early Music Scene (GEMS) will partner with Trinity Wall Street Church to present two concerts in Trinity's annual Twelfth Night Festival of Early Music, which runs from now through Sunday, January 6, 2013.

Tonight, December 27, 2012, at 7:30 p.m., Parthenia, a quartet of viols, will present "As It Fell on a Holie Eve - Music for an Elizabethan Christmas" with guest artist, soprano Julianne Baird.

On Saturday, December 29, 2012 at 3:00 p.m., Sinfonia New York, along with the Trinity Wall Street Choir, will offer a one-hour "Concert for Children of All Ages," a New York spin on a British tradition, the King's College Chapel Christmas Eve service, featuring music by J.S. Bach, and a reading of Clement Clarke Moore's 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. Both concerts will take place at Trinity Wall Street Church, Broadway at Wall Street, and are part of GEMS' Fifth Anniversary Celebration.

Gene Murrow, Executive Director of GEMS, says, "In the last three years, Trinity Church has made enormous contributions to New York City's early music scene with its choir, Baroque orchestra, and concert presentations. GEMS is very proud to partner with Trinity in presenting these special holiday concerts with an English pedigree and a New York accent."

Parthenia
TONIGHT, December 27, 2012, 7:30 p.m.
Trinity Wall Street Church | Broadway at Wall Street
Tickets: $25 - General Admission
By Phone: 212/866-0468 | Online: www.gemsny.org | or at the Door

As It Fell on a Holie Eve
"Music for an Elizabethan Christmas"

Rosamund Morley, treble viol | Lawrence Lipnik, tenor viol
Beverly Au, bass viol | Lisa Terry, bass viol
with Julianne Baird, soprano

A glittering array of songs, dances and carols from Elizabethan England. Along with music by Thomas Morley, Anthony Holborne, Thomas Ravenscroft, Dr. John Bull and Tobias Hume, this concert will feature a wide variety of music by the celebrated master composer of England's Golden Age, William Byrd. The program has toured throughout the United States; this will be its only performance in New York this season.

Program
Prelude and Voluntary | William Byrd (1543-1623)
Remember, O Thou Man | Thomas Ravenscroft (c. 1582-1635)
From Virgin's Womb this Day did Spring | Byrd
From Pavans, Galliards, Almains and other short Aeirs (1599) | Anthony Holborne (c. 1550-1602)
As it fell on a Holie Eve • The Cradle • The Night Watch
From Gradualia seu cantionum sacrarum (1607) | Byrd
O magnum misterium • Vidimus stellam • Puer natus est
Gentil Madonna | Dublin Virginal Manuscript (c. 1600)
Sweet was the Song the Virgin Sung | Anonymous (c. 1600)
Fantasia a 4 | Byrd
Out of the Orient Crystal Skies | Byrd
Fantasia a 4 | Giovanni Coprario (c. 1570-1626)
Fantasia a 3 | Byrd
Lully, lulla | Shearmen & Tailors carol (1591)
Gigge | John Bull (c. 1562-1628)
Fantasia La sampogna | Thomas Morley (1557-1602)
Fantasia a 4 | Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger (c. 1575-1628)
Divisions on Greensleeves | Anonymous (mid-17th century)
The Old Year Now Away is Fled | Traditional Waits' carol (1642)

Parthenia is a quartet of viols dedicated to the performance of ancient and contemporary repertoires. Parthenia is presented in concerts across America, and produces its own series in New York City, collaborating regularly with the world's foremost early music artists and ensembles, and has been featured on radio and television as well as in such festivals, series and venues as wide-ranging as Music Before 1800, the Pierpont Morgan Library, Columbia University's Miller Theatre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Yale Center for British Art, the Harriman-Jewell Series in Kansas City, and the Tage Alter Musik Festival in Regensburg, Germany.

Parthenia's unique variety of performances range from its popular touring program, "When Music & Sweet Poetry Agree," a celebration of Elizabethan poetry and music with actor Paul Hecht and mezzo-soprano Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek of Anonymous 4, to the complete viol fantasies of Henry Purcell and complete instrumental works of Robert Parsons, as well as commissions and premieres of many new works by composers such as Phil Kline, Richard Einhorn, Brian Fennelly, Will Ayton, Max Lifchitz, Kristin Norderval, David Glaser, and Frances White. The ensemble was featured along with frequent collaborators, the renaissance wind band Piffaro, in the Philadelphia premiere of the comic opera The Loathly Lady, by librettist Wendy Steiner and composer Paul Richards, based on Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale. Parthenia is in residence at Corpus Christi Church in New York, and is the Beatrice Diener Early Music Ensemble-in-Residence at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University in New York.