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Affetti Musicali: Virtuoso Music from the Italian Early Baroque
The 2024-25 season of Early Music Afternoons concludes Sunday, May 11, 2025, with a Mother’s Day concert of 17th-century music from Italy, performed by countertenor and cornetto virtuoso Michael Collver with Duo Maresienne (Carol Lewis, viola da gamba; Olav Chris Henriksen, archlute). The program includes music by Monteverdi, Frescobaldi, d’India, Kapsberger and others. The concert will take place at 3:00 pm at the Somerville Museum, One Westwood Road (at Central St.), Somerville, MA. Admission is $30 general admission, $25 students, seniors, and Museum members. Tickets are available at the door. Street parking is available, and the Museum is ADA compliant. For further information, call (617) 666-9810 or go to https://www.somervillemuseum.org/duo-maresienne
Many affluent Italian Renaissance courts were eager to display their splendor through music, and by the end of the 16th century, court composers had entered an era of emotional and intellectual experimentation. Collver and Duo Maresienne will perform vocal and instrumental works of Monteverdi, Frescobaldi, Sanches, and Cima, all notable for their chromatic expressivity and drama. Highlights of the concert include a dazzling toccata and dance music for archlute by Kapsberger, as well as a very moving lament for Giasone by d’India, both members of a new generation of Italian nobleman-composers, who had come of age and were providing their own style of avant-garde compositions, each one more surprising than the one before. Canzonas and sonatas by Buonamente, Uccellini and Bertoli will round out this program of Italian early Baroque music.
Countertenor and cornettist Michael Collver is well known for his performances with Ensemble Sequentia of Cologne, the Empire Brass Quintet, the Boston Camerata and Boston Baroque; he is a founding member of Project Ars Nova (P.A.N.), an ensemble specializing in music of the late Middle Ages, and he has concertized and recorded extensively in Europe and the United States. Duo Maresienne members Carol Lewis and Olav Chris Henriksen are also frequent collaborators with ensembles in the U.S. and abroad, including Capriccio Stravagante, the Boston Camerata and Capella Clausura.
