Concert & Event Schedule

Music in the Time of Quarantine

Flute and Violin Duo

Sunday, May 31, 3-4pm

LIVE on Facebook

Rachel Braude, flute

Charles Dimmick, violin

Performer Bios

Rachel Braude

Rachel Braude, flutist and piccoloist, is an active performer and teacher in the Boston area. She can often be seen performing with the Boston Ballet Orchestra, the Boston Pops and the Boston Symphony and she currently holds positions in the Boston Philharmonic, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Portland Symphony, Rhode Island Philharmonic and Opera Boston. She is the former principal piccoloist of the St. Louis Symphony. An active teacher, she teaches at the New England Conservatory of Music (Prep Division) and maintains a private studio. Former teaching positions include the University of Massachusetts (Boston) and Rhode Island College. Rachel is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music and the Juilliard School and her principal teachers include Trevor Wye, Bradley Garner, Geralyn Coticone and Lois Schaefer. She can be heard on the Chandos, Naxos, New World and BMOP Sound labels. Her debut solo recording can be heard on the album In Media Res in a piece written especially for her by the composer Lisa Biewala, long time BMOP collaborator and Prix de Rome winner. In the summers, Rachel performs at the New Hampshire Music Festival and teaches at the Greenwood Music Camp (Junior Division). Rachel and her husband, the violinist Charles Dimmick, have a young daughter, Chloe, and two naughty cats who occasionally object to her practicing high notes on the piccolo.

Charles Dimmick

Praised by the Boston Globe for his “cool clarity of expression,” violinist Charles Dimmick enjoys a varied and distinguished career as concertmaster, soloist, and chamber musician. As one of New England’s most sought after orchestral musicians, he is concertmaster of the Portland Symphony and the Rhode Island Philharmonic, co-concertmaster of the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, and has held guest concertmaster positions with Arizona Musicfest and the New Hampshire Music Festival. A frequent soloist, Charles has garnered praise, packed houses, and received standing ovations for what the Portland Press Herald has called his “luxurious and stellar performances” and his “technical and artistic virtuosity.” Recent solo engagements have included performances with the Portland Symphony, Winston-Salem Symphony, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Arizona Musicfest, Chamber Orchestra of Boston, and the Boston Civic Symphony. As a chamber musician, Charles can be heard collaborating with the Sebago Long Lake Chamber Festival, the Chameleon Arts Ensemble, Radius Ensemble, and Monadnock Music. He lives in Boston’s Jamaica Plain with his wife, flutist Rachel Braude, and their daughter Chloe. Charles performs on a 1784 Joseph Gagliano violin.

Head over to the Music in the Time of Quarantine page to view replays of all of our free concerts so far.

Facebook Event

Virtual Village Concerts

Although it will not be possible to present our season this summer as originally planned, Monadnock Music remains committed to preserving the joy and community spirit that is at the heart of our Village Concerts. To fully capture the sounds and sights of a Village Concert, this series will be produced with the highest quality film and audio recording to be streamed via YouTube and Facebook, and subsequently available throughout the summer here on our website.

For more details about the Virtual Village Concerts and Monadnock Music's plans for later in the season see the 2020 "Virtual Village Concert" Series Announcement.

Like our Village Concerts, our Virtual Village Concerts will be freely available to the public. Please note that it will most likely not be possible to rehearse and broadcast these performances on their original concert dates due to ongoing issues of health and safety; we will plan to announce an updated performance schedule as more information becomes available to us.

Virtual Village Concert 1
Woodwind Quartet

Date and Time TBA

Streaming on YouTube and Facebook

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Fantasia in f minor, K608 (arr. Munclinger)
Eugene Bozza – Contrasts III, for clarinet and bassoon
Frank Bridge – Divertimenti for woodwind quartet
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach – Sonata in e minor, F. 54
Karl Goepfart – Wind Quartet, op. 93
Arthur Berger – Quartet in C major for woodwinds

From Mozart’s grand Fantasia (originally written for a table clock with a miniature organ built in!) to Arthur Berger’s sunny, neoclassical quartet, our opening performance this summer explores the diverse sonorities of the four winds. I always adore Frank Bridge for his searing romanticism, but it’s fun to hear his lighter, more humorous side. And the quartet by Liszt pupil and noted conductor Karl Goepfart is lush, charming, and well worth getting to know.

Virtual Village Concert 2
Ari &Mia

Date and Time TBA

Streaming on YouTube and Facebook

Our second concert features the cross-genre folk/improv cello, fiddling, and vocal duo Ari and Mia. Billed as “New England’s Americana Sister Act,” Ariel and Mia Friedman are graduates of New England Conservatory’s Contemporary Improvisation program, and both highly acclaimed songwriters in their own right. I’ve been excited to present them at Monadnock Music since hearing their most recent album, “Sew the City” – their performances are always honest and compelling and deeply moving.

Virtual Village Concert 3
Music for Two Violins

Date and Time TBA

Streaming on YouTube and Facebook

Georg Philipp Telemann – Gulliver Suite
Grażyna Bacewicz – Suite for two violins
Eugène-Auguste Ysaÿe – selection from Sonata for two violins
Angelica Negron – Tres insultos
Louis Spohr – Duo Concertante op. 67 #2

This program showcases the virtuosity and amiability of the violin in a setting of intimate duos. While the Ysaÿe and Bacewicz are well-known pillars of the duo repertoire - boldly passionate works by two brilliant virtuosi - much of the joy in creating this concert was discovering the lesser known pieces. Telemann’s Gulliver Suite is whimsical in the extreme, from the gallantry of the Lilliputian Chaconne to the gentle Loure of the Well-Mannered Hoyhnhnms (which is played at the same time as the Wild Frenzy of the Untamed Yahoos!) Angelica Negron writes music for “accordions, robotic instruments, toys and electronics as well as chamber ensembles and orchestras” and that encapsulates perfectly what I love about her music. Her Three Insults for two violins are a wonderfully imaginative way to contextualize the dialogue between two similar voices. I recently became acquainted with Spohr’s Duo Concertante through a historic performance by Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman, and completely fell in love with the piece (no less than the performance!)  It utterly exudes charm and delight and I cannot wait to hear our brilliant musicians tackle it.

Virtual Village Concert 4
Clarinet and String Quartet

Date and Time TBA

Streaming on YouTube and Facebook

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – String Quartet in B-flat major, K589
Nicola Lefanu – Invisible Places, for clarinet and string quartet
Bernard Herrmann – Souvenirs de Voyage, for clarinet and string quartet

There’s something incredibly special about the sound of clarinet and strings – although the sonorities are distinctly different, they complement each other so perfectly to create a sound that is both blended and stratified. In this concert, we explore two remarkable pieces for this combination. British composer Nicola LeFanu’s Invisible Places is a set of 16 miniatures inspired by Italo Calvino’s surreal novel Invisible Cities. (Concert attendees from last season may remember our performance of Elizabeth Maconchy’s third string quartet; I was fascinated to discover after selecting Invisible Places that LeFanu is Maconchy’s daughter!) Bernard Herrmann is of course best known for his film scores, particularly Hitchcock’s Psycho and Vertigo. His last concert piece, Souvenirs de Voyage, unfolds slowly and patiently over the course of three gorgeously contemplative and mysterious movements.  And Mozart’s dazzling B-flat quartet opens the program with grace and wit.

Virtual Village Concert 5
Olav Chris Henriksen, Lute Master

Date and Time TBA

Streaming on YouTube and Facebook

We are excited to feature Olav Henriksen in an intimate program of Renaissance and Baroque solo music for the lute and its glorious cousins. A highly acclaimed specialist of the archlute, theorbo, and baroque guitar, Maestro Henriksen will be performing and demonstrating several pre-classical plucked string instruments in a very special evening.

Concert 6
Franz Josef Haydn – The Seven Last Words of Christ

Date and Time TBA

Streaming on YouTube and Facebook

I had planned to program the Seven Last Words this season long before the world shut down, and it feels now like an especially timely solace. In 1786, Haydn was commissioned to write instrumental music on the Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross, in the form of seven successive slow movements. Each movement corresponds not to a single word, but to an utterance; the first of these is Pater, dimitte illis, quia nesciunt, quid faciunt (Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do) and the last In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum (Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit.) Haydn prefaces these seven movements with a slow, magisterial introduction, and concludes with a musical depiction of the ensuing earthquake (Il terremoto), in which the fury and tumult that has been suppressed for the previous hour bursts forth violently. The following year, Haydn adapted this work for string quartet; it is this version that is most frequently performed today. Whatever your personal spiritual inclinations, it is a work of monumental power and beauty.

Listen & Lunch

Monadnock Music in Depot Park

Thursdays, July-September, 12-1pm

Depot Park, Peterborough

Every Thursday, July through September, come enjoy an hour of music during lunch, 12-1pm, at Depot Park in Peterborough. Safe for social distancing, all ages welcome!

Performer Bios

 

July 2

Alison Hale - Flute

July 9

Michael Day - Percussion

July 16

Mary Kay Robinson - Flute

July 23

David William Ross - Guitar

July 30

Tara Novak - Violin

August 6

Alison Hale - Flute

August 13

Mary Kay Robinson - Flute

August 20

David William Ross - Guitar

August 27

Michael Day - Percussion

September 3

Alison Hale - Flute

September 10

Mary Kay Robinson - Flute

September 17

David William Ross - Guitar

September 24

Michael Day - Percussion