Medieval History
Ironically, one of the most acclaimed names in classical vocal groups for the past quarter-century has been Anonymous 4.
On Saturday, at Mountain View's Community School for Music and Arts, the fabulous female foursome offers an "Informance," a one-hour program of performance and conversation, presented by Stanford Lively Arts. Anonymous 4 will demonstrate the building blocks of creating arrangements for their medieval songs and chants.
In 1986, in New York, the four women of Anonymous four came together, from different musical backgrounds and with different musical instincts. "For us, it was an experiment," said founding member Marsha Genensky, a Menlo Park resident. "All of us knew each other from singing in other groups that did slightly later early music, Renaissance music."
They wondered what medieval music would sound like in higher voices. "In the mid-1980s, women were not singing medieval music professionally. So we didn't know what it sounded like. And we couldn't go back to the Middle Ages to find out," Genensky said, laughing. "We tried it, loved the sound and decided to do a program. Then we wanted to do another program. We had a passion for it and worked really hard at it. At a certain point, we made a pact among ourselves to forego other freelance work, so that we could focus all of our rehearsal and performance time on creating this sound with this one set of people. It snowballed and here we are, 25 years later."
Click here to read this article from the Mercury News
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Medieval History
The healing joy of singing 13th-century girl-group music
On Saturday, at Mountain View's Community School for Music and Arts, the fabulous female foursome offers an "Informance," a one-hour program of performance and conversation, presented by Stanford Lively Arts. Anonymous 4 will demonstrate the building blocks of creating arrangements for their medieval songs and chants.
In 1986, in New York, the four women of Anonymous four came together, from different musical backgrounds and with different musical instincts. "For us, it was an experiment," said founding member Marsha Genensky, a Menlo Park resident. "All of us knew each other from singing in other groups that did slightly later early music, Renaissance music."
They wondered what medieval music would sound like in higher voices. "In the mid-1980s, women were not singing medieval music professionally. So we didn't know what it sounded like. And we couldn't go back to the Middle Ages to find out," Genensky said, laughing. "We tried it, loved the sound and decided to do a program. Then we wanted to do another program. We had a passion for it and worked really hard at it. At a certain point, we made a pact among ourselves to forego other freelance work, so that we could focus all of our rehearsal and performance time on creating this sound with this one set of people. It snowballed and here we are, 25 years later."
Click here to read this article from the Mercury News
- The Melodies Of The Emperors
In ancient China, court music was so valued that musicians and their instruments were buried with the emperor after the ruler?s death. In fact, so respected was such music that it spread to imperial courts in Japan, Korea and Vietnam. But in the early...
- Vocalists Of Trio Medieval Breathe Life Into Old And New Songs
The art of vocal production is both subtle and difficult, and the Trio Medieval displayed their impressive skills Saturday night in a program of English Medieval polyphony and Norwegian folk songs. Presented at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception...
- Middle-earth Minstrel
McFarland recently published Bradford Lee Eden, ed., Middle-earth Minstrel Essays on Music in Tolkien. The publisher's description reads: "The twentieth century witnessed a dramatic rise in fantasy writing and few works became as popular...
- ?in Search Of Lost Sound: Recovering Musical Experience From The Medieval Past
The UCLA Department of Musicology Distinguished Lecture Series is pleased to announce a talk by Professor Elizabeth Randell Upton, Assistant Professor of Musicology, UCLA. ?In Search of Lost Sound: Recovering Musical Experience from...
- Musical Networks ? The 2012 Echo Conference: October 19-20, Ucla
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