PROGRAMS

NEW PROGRAMS

Hombres de Maiz
featuring Barbara Ceron, voice and Veracruz harp

Traditional repertoires from Mexico and Italy are often remarkably alike, and many have kept tunes, harmonic structures and names that date back to the Italian Renaissance.  Here, Ensemble Lucidarium combines Italian folk songs and dances with their 16th and 17th century models, while Barbara Ceron Olvera performs the music of her native Veracruz in a joyful musical melting-pot that preserves ancient sonorities while remaining surprisingly close to modern sensibility.
voices, Veracruz harp, recorders, violin, chitarra battente, jarana, percussion, hammer dulcimer, pipe and tabor

Kehi Kinnor – A Jewish Wedding in Renaissance Italy
featuring Bruna Gondoni and Marco Bendoni, Renaissance Dance and
Enrico Fink, voice and narration

Lucidarium’s interpretation of a Jewish wedding day in the Renaissance, when Italy was a multicultural microcosm that attracted Hebrews from Spain, Germany, and the East. Ensemble Lucidarium invites you to join them in this multicultural celebration of one of life’s most joyous moments - “L’CHAIM!”
voices, recorders, lute, cetra, Renaissance guitar, percussion, hammer dulcimer, pipe and tabor

Con l'Arte e con l'Inganno – The Musical Roots of the Commedia dell’Arte
featuring Enrico Fink and Martine Zbylut-Marincola, commedianti

In an homage to the first days of the Commedia dell’Arte, Lucidarium, in a semi-staged production, shows what life might have been like for a troupe of down-on-their luck actors and musicians in the 16th century.  Moving seamlessly between music and theater, Con l'Arte e con l'Inganno unites frottole, strambotti, canzoni and balli that treat typical Commedia themes with comic scenes drawn from its earliest sources.
voices, recorders, pipe and tabor, lute, cetra, Renaissance guitar, percussion, hammer dulcimer

ARS ITALICA

Ninfale - Ovid, Metamorphosis, Music and Poetry in the Late Middle Ages
Ovid played an important role in the European cultural universe of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.  His influence can be found in the mythological and metaphorical themes that abound in the poesia per musica of late medieval Italy.
voices, recorders, double flute, pipe and tabor, shawm, cetra, vielle, percussion, hammer dulcimer

Una Musa Plebea - “Minor” repertoires in Italian Renaissance music
Life in the bustling city states of Renaissance Italy must have been an intense experience, full of constantly changing sights, sounds and odors.  People of all classes were thrown together, and very different levels of society often had surprisingly similar tastes in music.  Although great Northern masters like Josquin composed for the courts, most people preferred the era’s home-grown repertoire: Giustiniane, frottole and improvised sung poetry with soaring melodies, sonorous harmonies and universal themes; dances that still swing after 500 years.
voices, recorders, double flute, cetra, Renaissance guitar, lute, percussion, hammer dulcimer, pipe and tabor

Macchine – Music and Science at the Time of Leonardo da Vinci
While Leonardo da Vinci was carrying out his experiments in the visual arts, French and Flemish composers were doing the same with music: inventing gorgeous, soaring architectural structures.  At the same time, the Humanists dreamed of reviving the classical tradition,  preferring music that was simple, direct, and closely linked to the text, considering complicated polyphony a remnant of times past.  Eventually, the two styles were reconciled, and the diffusion of polyphonic forms better suited to Italian taste began.  Leonardo's interest in music is well-documented: he sang and played, was probably a competent improviser of verses, and made sketches of new instruments, macchine designed to produce music.  This program unites Northern, Italian and “fusion” compositions, often found side by side in the sources of Leonardo’s time, in an attempt to recreate the sounds of this vibrant, passionately curious era.
vocal quartet, recorders, double flute, pipe and tabor, bagpipe cetra, lute, vielle, percussion, hammer dulcimer

Il Moro di Granata
As a bridge between Central Europe and the Mediterranean, a border between East and West, Italy absorbed a myriad of musical idioms. Il Moro di Granata is a program that fuses music and texts drawn from different eras and different repertoires, exploring the traces of the Mediterranean tradition in Italian music, in the crossover between art and tradition.
vocal trio, recorders, double flute, pipe and tabor, cetra, colascione, percussion, hammer dulcimer, Renaissance guitar

ARS HEBRAICA

La Istoria de Purim – Music and Poetry of the Jews in Renaissance Italy
featuring Enrico Fink, voice and narration

This program is a celebration of the musical and poetic legacy of the Jewish communities of Renaissance Italy: a vast, entertaining and cohesive repertoire, the exuberant result of a fertile crossover fed by the confrontation between different cultures.
voice, recorders, pipe and tabor, dulcian, lute, colascione, viola da mano, percussion, hammer dulcimer, Renaissance guitar

Ayn neue Lid – When Yiddish Was Young
featuring Enrico Fink, voice and narration

The music that a Jewish family in 16th Century Germany might have sung, danced or listened to.  This is Yiddish before the “fantastic voyage” that would bring it across Eastern Europe and back again, but with its pithy humor, biting satire and contemplative moments, it is just as lively, earthy and touching as the Yiddish of yesterday and today.
voice, recorders, pipe and tabor, bagpipe, dulcian, lute, cetra, colascione, percussion,
hammer dulcimer, Renaissance guitar

JUST FOR FUN

MED-REN-JAM
Lucidarium’s instrumentalists unite in a decidedly relaxed program.  A medieval – Renaissance jam session made up of dance music, intabulations and arrangements from sources ranging from the 13th to 21st centuries.
recorder, pipe and tabor, double flute, bagpipe, double flute, viola da mano, cetra, colascione, percussion, hammer dulcimer