Cantabile in September 2007 (Photo by Bill Sitler)

Left to right: David Olsson, Peter W. Shea, Kayla Werlin, James Mead, Deanna Joseph, Dorie Goldman
not in picture: Sudie Marcuse (on leave)

650 East Pleasant Street, Amherst

Directions at http://www.umass.edu/renaissance/contact.htm

There is no charge, but you are asked to bring a favorite food (cheese, dips, other hors d’oeuvres) or beverage to share. The event will be held in any weather, with the Annual Meeting in the parlor and the concert and auction in the newly created theater space in the Renaissance Center barn. The theater provides performance space for the Renaissance Center Theater Company until the Center's planned replica of a 16th century Great Hall is constructed on the grounds as an appropriate facility for conferences and the Renaissance performing arts.

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Cantabile is a self-directed vocal ensemble based in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts that specializes in a cappella performances of vocal chamber music from the European Renaissance of the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. We have also performed 18th and 20th century music by special invitation.

In the beginning:  Cantabile was founded as an octet in 2001 and made its concert debut in January 2002 at the Wistariahurst Museum in Holyoke, Mass. with a program of a cappella Venetian Renaissance works that we later performed for other enthusiastic audiences in western Massachusetts and New York. In October 2002 we collaborated with actress/reader Doris Abramson and pianist Gregory Hayes in a program of Emily Dickinson songs and readings, presented in conjunction with the Emily Dickinson World Weekend held in Amherst, Massachusetts.

2003, a full year: In February 2003, Cantabile was featured at the Amherst Club’s annual "Love Notes" benefit concert. In June and July, we presented a program of Renaissance music from Spain, entitled "Love, Shipwrecks, and the Virgin Mary," at several concerts in western Massachusetts and New York. We again collaborated with Gregory Hayes in July as part of the Mohawk Trail Concert series, presenting choruses, solos, and duets from Handel’s oratorio L’allegro, Il Penseroso, ed il Moderato.  In September 2003 we participated along with several other area vocal ensembles in a project of the Grace Church Center for Sacred Music: Spem in alium nunquam habui, a 40-voice motet by Thomas Tallis. On November 4 we performed works by Victoria, Josquin, Schütz, Monteverdi and Flecha for the Tuesday Morning Music Club of Springfield MA, sharing the program with organist Grant Moss. Our final performance of 2003 was as guest professional vocal ensemble at the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Choral Spectrum '03 on November 8.

In December of 2003 Catherine L. Bowers, mezzo-soprano and founding member of Cantabile, was diagnosed with advanced cancer. She died on March 8, 2004. Individually and as a group we were hit hard by this grievous loss of a beloved friend and colleague.

2004:  When the surviving members of Cantabile convened in April after a hiatus of nearly five months, we decided that what Cathy had fervently wished was also what we most deeply needed:  to continue to feed our souls and those of our listeners with beautiful music.  Our sadness was inextricably mixed with a joyful sense of how we had been blessed by Cathy's inimitable musicianship, talent, warmth, honesty and enthusiasm.  In August and September the seven of us presented the music of Josquin des Prez, sung in Cathy's memory, at King’s Chapel, Boston, Massachusetts (August) and at Pacem in Terris, Warwick, New York (September).  In November, we invited Dorie Goldman to join us in our music making.

2005: On Sunday, March 13 Cantabile performed a concert entitled Saints and Sailors: Sacred, Sad and Silly Songs of the Sixteenth Century, including works by Josquin Desprez, Mateo Flecha, Gaspar Fernandes, Juan Vasquez and Tomas Luis da Victoria on the Music at First concert series, First Church of Christ, Congregational ("Old First Church"), Court Square, Springfield MA.

On Sunday, June 26, 2005 we  performed Mediterranean Madrigals in Spanish, French and Italian, featuring Luca Marenzio's madrigal cycle Baci soavi e cari at Arcadia Players' New Season Celebration at the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies, Amherst MA. We repeated the Marenzio cycle at the "March the Music Back" benefit for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. John M. Greene Hall, Smith College, Northampton MA on Friday, September 20, 2005.

In the fall of 2005 two of our members had to leave the group for personal reasons, and we decided to continue Cantabile as a sextet.

2006: Cantabile’s 2006 spring concert "From Venice to Padua" was sung in Holyoke and Northampton, and featured Marenzio’s madrigal cycle Baci soavi e cari and a complete performance of a madrigal comedy by Adriano Banchieri. We also taped this program for Amherst Community Television’s Public Access Channel 12. See the ACTV website for cablecast schedule information. We did a short program of Dutch Baroque music by Jan P. and Dirck J. Sweelinck and Jan Baptist Verrijt for the Arcadia Players' New Season Celebration in June at the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies, Amherst MA. We repeated the Dutch program twice in August 2006. On August 20 it was paired with Bach's Cantata 106 and we were joined by instrumentalists Gregory Hayes, Alice Robbins and friends, at Pacem in Terris, Warwick NY, in a concert dedicated to the memory of Frederick Franck, recently deceased artist, writer and Pacem co-founder. On August 30 the Dutch music was followed by an encore performance of Banchieri's madrigal comedy Barca di Venetia per Padova (A Boat Ride from Venice to Padua) on the Watermelon Wednesdays concert series in West Whately, MA.

In the fall of 2006 one of our sextet, Sudie Marcuse, took a leave of absence to complete graduate work at Boston University, and we invited soprano Deanna Joseph to join us. Since then we have given several performances of madrigals, canzonets and Hebrew Psalm settings by Salamone Rossi, joined by an ensemble of superb instrumentalists, including Robert Eisenstein and Joe Jewett, violins, Laure Rabut, viola da gamba, and Margaret Irwin-Brandon or Gregory Hayes, harpsichord. This program was performed four times between April 2007 and January 2008 at the Jewish Community of Amherst, the National Yiddish Book Center in South Amherst, and as part of the Arcadia Players concert season in Deerfield and Holyoke MA. In November 2007 a selection from this program was performed, together with English madrigals from The Triumphs of Oriana, for the Tuesday Morning Music Club in Springfield MA,

 

"...thank you again for the stunning program that Cantabile presented as part of the series this season. Clearly the group
was carefully chosen; it is uncanny to have eight voices that complement each other so well. Your love for Renaissance music
permeates every nuance and phrase sung. And the joy of the singers is most apparent and adds so much to the transcendent
quality of the concert.

It is astonishing to me that such variety can be found in such a program.

I look foward to hearing more from Cantabile in the future."

• "A Splendid Salamone Rossi Sampler," November 2007, from Classical Voice of New England
  

"For the 2nd concert of its 19th season, four instrumentalists from Arcadia Players roster joined forces with the vocal sextet Cantabile to present a recital of music by violinist and composer Salamone Rossi in the Italianate Music Room added in the early 20th-century to the late-19th-century Empire-style Skinner mansion, Wistariahurst, here ... This was the perfect setting for the music by this Jewish composer of Mantua, contemporary of Cremonan Claudio Monteverdi, and to a degree heir of Venetian Giovanni Gabrieli of the previous generation, and the musicians exploited the venue magnificently" ... You may read the full text of this review at Classical Voice of New England.

 

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