Madison Early Music Festival
The Happy Journey:
Pastime With Good Company!
Concerts & Events April 22 – 24, 2022
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Read the programs, translations, and program notes for all three concerts before and after the MEMF 2022 Festival Weekend!
The University of Wisconsin–Madison Mead Witter School of Music announces a new collaboration and celebration with the Madison Early Music Festival (MEMF.) “The Happy Journey: Pastime With Good Company!” from April 22-24, 2022 on the UW–Madison campus in the new Hamel Music Center. Join us as we celebrate our legacy and our new partnership with the Mead Witter School of Music!
Featuring performances by Piffaro, The Renaissance Band, Incantare, a new early music ensemble that includes former MEMF participants, a MEMF Participant concert, and a culminating All Festival Concert with MEMF and School of Music faculty and students and participants.
Workshop Participants will experience a weekend of music, rehearsals and performances taught and performed by some of the world’s finest early music artists. Guest artists for the concert series Piffaro, The Renaissance Band (April 22); Incantare (April 23), and unique to MEMF, the culminating All-Festival Concert (April 24), featuring participants and faculty from MEMF and the Mead Witter School of Music performing together in the final concert.
The Madison Early Music Festival is internationally recognized as a top early music festival that features music from medieval, Renaissance and baroque eras from award-winning performers and distinguished faculty.
MEMF Classes
During the weekend participants will have several opportunities to play and sing in different ensembles. Instruments include bagpipes, dulcian, lute, recorder, sackbut, shawms, viola da gamba and violins. Participants learn from faculty, many of who are artists in the guest ensembles. Registration is $150 ($25 for full-time college students and free for Mead Witter School of Music students). Registration is required. Learn more at madisonearlymusic.org.
MEMF Concert Series
The MEMF Festival Concert Series features Piffaro and Incantare, and a culminating All-Festival Concert.
All concerts take place in the Hamel Music Center Mead Witter Concert Hall (740 University Avenue) with free pre-concert lectures at 6:30 in the Collins Recital Hall unless noted otherwise.
Individual concert tickets are $20 ($10 students) unless noted otherwise. Concert tickets are available at the Campus Arts Ticketing Box Office (Memorial Union, 800 Langdon St.), online, (608) 265-2787 or at the door.
Friday, April 22, 7:30 pm
6:30 pm Pre-concert lecture by J. Michael Allsen in Collins Recital Hall
Piffaro, The Renaissance Band | piffaro.org
“Musical World and Legacy of Charles V:
The Spanish-Flemish Connection”
Hamel Music Center, 740 University Avenue | 7:30 p.m. | $20/$10 students
Free for Mead Witter School of Music students and faculty
The famed traveling musical establishments of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V included a star-studded roster of composers: Alexander Agricola, Pierre de la Rue, Josquin des Prez in the Low Countries; Christóbal de Morales and Antonio de Cabezonin Spain. Charles’ influence and legacy carried as far as the New World, represented on this program by Gaspar Fernandes in Mexico. They interacted to produce an international language of Renaissance polyphony, a musical legacy of legendary proportions.
Piffaro’s performance will feature historic winds, brass and string instruments, including recorders, shawms, sackbuts, dulcians, krumhorns, bagpipes, straight trumpets, flutes, lutes, guitars and percussion.
Performers include Joan Kimball, Bob Wiemken, Priscilla Herreid, Grant Herreid, Greg Ingles, and Erik Schmalz with guests Héloïse Degrugillier, Sian Ricketts, Charlie Weaver and Gary Berkenstock.
Saturday, April 23, 7:30 pm
6:30 pm Pre-concert lecture by Liza Malamut in Collins Recital Hall
Incantare | incantaremusic.com
“Exile: Music of the Early Modern Jewish Diaspora”
Hamel Music Center, 740 University Avenue | 7:30 p.m.
$20/$10 students
Free for Mead Witter School of Music students and faculty
EXILE highlights Jewish music as it shifted and melded with traditions in early modern Europe. The program takes as its starting point the rich musical cultures fostered by Jews in early modern Italy and their points of contact with non-Jewish traditions, exploring the influences of Italian, German, and English music and Jewish culture, highlighting Jewish musicians, the non-Jewish composers they influenced, and composers who inspired innovations in Jewish composition. The program includes instrumental and vocal works by Salamone Rossi, Claudio Monteverdi, Thomas Lupo, Mutio Effrem.
Performers include Cynthia Keiko, Alice Cullin-Ellison, violins; Ben David Aronson, Garrett Lahr, Liza Malamut, sackbut; and Naomi Gregory, organ with guests Chelsie Propst, soprano, Andrew Rader, countertenor, Garrett Eucker, tenor, Kyle Sackett, bass.
Sunday, April 24, 2:00 pm
MEMF All-Festival Concert
“The Happy Journey: Pastime with Good Company”
Hamel Music Center, 740 University Avenue | 2:00 p.m. | $20/$10
The 2022 All Festival Concert will feature works that represent the themes of our past festivals. This final event celebrates MEMF’s 22 years of inspiring participants and audiences of all ages with a love for early music, the integration of the festival into the Mead Witter School of Music, the retirement of Co-Artistic Director Cheryl Bensman-Rowe and other MEMF Faculty, and the new early music leaders as they continue the legacy of historical performance practices that they learned at MEMF. Featuring members of Piffaro, Incantare, MEMF Participants and Faculty, Mead Witter School of Music Collegium directed by Professor John Chappell Stowe and the UW-Madison Concert Choir conducted by Professor Mariana Farah.
Friday, April 22 – Sunday, April 24
WORKSHOP CLASSES
The MEMF Workshop includes all concerts, classes, and social events.
Classes taught by members of Piffaro, Incantare, Jerry Hui, and others.
An Advanced Loud Band Intensive Reunion!
MEMF’s mini festival in April offers a wonderful opportunity for ALBI alumni and others to gather once more to make professional-quality music on renaissance cornetti, shawms, sackbuts and dulcians. A day of reading and rehearsing a variety of repertoire will form a well-tuned, practiced and historically-informed ensemble that will have the opportunity to perform for an audience at the All-Festival concert on Sunday of the festival weekend. Repertoire for the Intensive will cross several genres from sacred motet to secular dance. Attendance will be by invitation or permission of the instructor, Bob Wiemken. bob@piffaro.com
Friday, April 22, 12:00 pm
MEMF Fringe Concert
Update (April 20, 2022): Unfortunately, due to illness, this concert has been cancelled. Mr. Vinikour’s appearance has been rescheduled for Tuesday, May 31, 2022 at 7:00 p.m.
Free event
Jori Vinikour | www.joryvinikour.com
Harpsichord Recital | Free
First Unitarian Church, 900 University Bay Drive | Noon |
Harpsichordist Jory Vinikour comes to Madison as featured soloist for the 2022 First Unitarian Society’s annual Mark Rosa Harpsichord Recital in partnership with the Madison Early Music Festival! Mr. Vinikour is one of the outstanding harpsichordists of his generation, with a career that takes him to the world’s most revered festivals, concert halls, and opera houses as recitalist and concerto soloist. This program includes works by William Byrd, John Bull, J. S. Bach, Domenico Scarlatti, Jean-Philippe Rameau, and Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer on FUS’s world-class French double harpsichord.
About the Madison Early Music Festival | madisonearlymusic.org
A program of the Mead Witter School of Music, the Madison Early Music Festival (MEMF) was established in 2000 to provide an opportunity for musicians, scholars, teachers and early music enthusiasts to gather and exchange information and ideas about medieval, Renaissance and baroque music – and to bring acclaimed early music artists and scholars to Madison.
MEMF 2022 is presented by UW–Madison Mead Witter School of Music in collaboration with campus partner the Division of the Arts.
Funds are generously provided by the William J. Wartmann Endowment for the Madison Early Music Festival, the Jane Graff Bequest for Madison Early Music Festival and Friends of the Madison Early Music Festival.