Join us at early music Day 2024!
With special guests from the Blue Heron Vocal Ensemble!
Sunday, October 20th at Powers Music School, 160 Lexington Street, Belmont
12:00 – 5:00 PM
Powers students and faculty – Free!
Non-Powers students, Teachers, General public – $25 fee
Sign Up Here
Not a Powers student? Pay your $25 fee here
What does the day look like?
- 12:00 – 1:00 pm – BOGA: Bow Yoga with Job Salazar Fonseca
- 12:00 – 1:00 pm – 16th-century Italian Dance with Ken Pierce
- 1:00 – 2:00 pm – Filling in the Gaps: An Introduction to Improvisation with James Perretta
- 2:00 – 4:00 pm – Singing a Song from 15th-Century Notation with special guests from the Blue Heron Vocal Ensemble
- 4:00 – 5:00 pm – Playing in Style: Baroque Music for Strings with Sarah Freiberg
- 4:00 – 5:00 pm – Topic Theory: Early Music’s Hidden Stories with Sachin Shukla
Questions? Email nstone@powersmusic.org for questions about workshops and registration.
Designed Especially for You
Using feedback from our community and Workshop Week attendees, we’ve hand-crafted a special day devoted just to early music, with opportunities for all experience levels. Whether you are a devoted Early Music fan already or a curious beginner to this world, Early Music Day has something for you.
New to Early Music?
Early music has a strong influence on the modern music we play today. Imagine the composers of centuries ago writing musical phrases that you might hear in an upcoming recital or a local concert! What might it have been like to play Baroque and Renaissance music over three hundred years ago?
At Early Music Day, you can see, hear, and feel the music that delighted audiences both then and now. Have fun learning an Italian ballroom dance or singing with notation from the 15th century, and experience it all for yourself!
This event continues a love for early music that has been a part of Powers’ fabric for 60 years. We know that Early Music Day would make our namesake, Ellen Huff Powers, smile – her passion for the genre resulted in an extensive collection of viola da gambas that still graces the school. We hope you enjoy it as much as she did!
For Early Music fans…
This is the perfect opportunity to introduce and share your love for this style of music with others. Come together with other devoted early music enthusiasts to try a historical dance, participate in a workshop with the esteemed Blue Heron Vocal Ensemble, or learn 17th century English improvisation! We know you’ll enjoy this full day of activities and workshops with your peers.
Early Music Day Experiences
BOGA: BOW YOGA
Sunday, October 20th, 12:00 – 1:00 PM
Instructor: Job Salazar Fonseca
Best for: Middle School, High School, Adult
Level: Any
Instrument: Bowed string instruments
Please have ready: Comfortable shoes and clothes, your instrument and bow
What do string instruments and yoga have in common? Come find out in this judgement-free workshop that explores how getting to know our bodies better can improve our craft as players. We will learn some practical and useful exercises that combine yoga and historical practice bow techniques and articulations. These exercises are applicable to all genres and repertoire for bowed string instruments. It should be a lot of fun!
16TH CENTURY ITALIAN DANCE
Sunday, October 20th, 12:00 – 1:00 PM
Instructor: Ken Pierce
Best for: Middle School, High School, Adult
Level: Any
Instrument: none
Please have ready: Comfortable clothing, lightweight shoes
Dance and music have a close relationship in both early and modern music. In this workshop, students will learn sections of simple ballroom (couple) dances from late-Renaissance Italy. By experiencing how steps and music interact in these dances, you’ll gain an understanding of ways to approach music that was made for, or influenced by, dance.
Filling in the gaps: an introduction to improvisation
Sunday, October 20th, 1:00 – 2:00 PM
Instructor: James Perretta
Best for: High School, Adult
Level: Intermediate, Advanced
Instrument: Strings and winds
Please have ready: Your instrument, tuned to A=440
This workshop is an introduction to improvising over bass lines in a 17th century English style. Writings from the time period on this subject quickly jump from basic examples to advanced elaborations, but this class focuses on skills we can learn and practice in order to improve our ability to improvise in this style.
Singing a Song from 15th-Century Notation (with special guests from the blue heron vocal ensemble!)
Sunday, October 20th, 2:00 – 4:00PM
Instructor: special guests from the Blue Heron Vocal Ensemble
Best for: High School, Adult
Level: Any
Instrument: Any
Please have ready: Your voice and/or your instrument
In this class, you will learn to sing a 15th-century song from the original manuscript notation, with the guidance of Blue Heron’s Artistic Director Scott Metcalfe and several Blue Heron singers. All voice types are welcome – and players, too.
The vocal ensemble Blue Heron has been acclaimed by The Boston Globe as “one of the Boston music community’s indispensables” and hailed by Alex Ross in The New Yorker for the “expressive intensity” of its interpretations. Combining a commitment to vivid live performance with the study of original source materials and historical performance practices, Blue Heron ranges over a wide repertoire, including 15th-century English and Franco-Flemish polyphony, Spanish music between 1500 and 1600, and neglected early 16th-century English music, especially the unique repertory of the Peterhouse partbooks, copied c. 1540 for Canterbury Cathedral. Learn more about Blue Heron here!
Playing in Style: Baroque Music for Strings
Sunday, October 20th, 4:00 – 5:00PM
Instructor: Sarah Freiberg
Best for: Middle School, High School, Adult
Level: Intermediate, Advanced
Instrument: Violin, Viola, Cello, Bass
Please have ready: Your instrument and bow!
Come enjoy an introduction to the wonderfully varied sounds of earlier times. From thinking of music as speech to using your bow as a paintbrush to elicit all kinds of emotions, playing Baroque music can enhance how we communicate through music. We will explore how Baroque music allows for creativity and expression, learning how to use dynamics when none are written and when to enhance a note with vibrato.
Topic Theory: Early Music’s Hidden Stories
Sunday, October 20th, 4:00 – 5:00PM
Instructor: Sachin Shukla
Best for: High School, Adult
Level: Any
Instrument: Any
Please have ready: Just yourself!
If “music is the universal language,” and “when words fail, music speaks,” what is the music actually saying? What is it trying to tell us? Once you know what to listen for, you can listen to music like you would read a book, finding the real hidden stories in classical music.
In this workshop, we will learn how to discover these hidden stories by listening for what we call topoi: musical references to real world situations, places, people, or things, understood by listeners familiar with the music’s cultural context. These meanings can turn music from an abstract into a rich narrative. Since many of these musical references were developed hundreds of years ago, the untrained ear today is totally oblivious to what was once immediately apparent to listeners of the past. Epic sagas, shocking tragedies, and even comedies and satire are hiding in plain sight. This workshop will explore topoi, what they mean, and how to interpret the hidden stories they tell.