Diehn Concert Series Features Early Music Ensemble Boston Camerata
Boston Camerata, America's pre-eminent early music ensemble, will perform "Carmina Burana" for Old Dominion's Diehn Concert Series Tuesday, Oct. 29. The 8 p.m. performance will be in Chandler Recital Hall of the Diehn Center for the Performing Arts.
Associated with the Boston Museum of Fine Arts from 1954 to 1974, the Boston Camerata was founded by Narcissa Williamson and directed in its early seasons by Anne Gombosi, Howard Mayer Brown, Daniel Pinkham and Victor Mattfeld. Camerata began self-producing its own local concert series in 1974. It has been under the direction of French-born singer and scholar Anne Azéma since 2008.
"Carmina Burana" is the ages-old manuscript that lay in the vaults of the Benediktbeuren monastery in Bavaria, and may be the most important source of secular, medieval Latin poetry that we now have. The songs were collected, somewhere in Germany, from many places and sources, most likely in the early decades of the 13th century.
The ensemble has maintained an extensive touring schedule across the United States and has participated in early music festivals at Berkeley, Calif., and San Antonio, in addition to many of the biennial Boston Early Music Festivals. Camerata musicians were invited to perform in the renowned Tanglewood Festival in 1992, 1994 and 1995.
A widely praised national tour in 2000 marked Camerata's first collaboration with the Sharq Arabic Music Ensemble. The two groups performed together again in Paris in 2007. Other important Camerata appearances in the U.S. include Lincoln Center, The Cloisters and Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, and the Smithsonian Institute, National Cathedral and Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
In recent seasons, Camerata has been heard in Canada, England, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Singapore and Israel.
Tickets for the ODU performance are $15 for general admission and A$10 for students. To purchase tickets go to oduartstix.com or call 683-5305.