Arcadia Players - New England's Period Instrument Ensemble
Arcadia Players embraces
historical performance practice to illuminate and invigorate the great Western heritage of vocal and instrumental music. |
Annual Meeting
The Annual Meeting of Arcadia Players will be held Wednesday, June 15th at 4 pm at the Arthur F. Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies at UMASS, 650 E. Pleasant Street, Amherst. The public is welcome. Please let us know in advance if you’re attending by sending an email to info@arcadiaplayers.org. The meeting will be recorded and posted on our YouTube channel for those who can’t make it.
ARCADIA PLAYERS welcomes our new director and our live audience!
Andrew Arceci, the new Artistic Director of Arcadia Players, will lead his inaugural in-person concert exploring the origins of the symphonic genre. The program will include Vivaldi’s Sinfonia-Al Santo Sepolcro, Handel’s “Sinfony" from Messiah, and early string symphonies by Johan Helmich Roman, Giovanni Battista Sammartini, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and others.
The concert will be held on Saturday, April 2, at 7 p.m. in Wesley United Methodist Church in Hadley, MA. Map and directions here. Tickets are available at arcadiaplayers.org or at the door. To welcome all our friends back, and to thank you for your support, tickets will be "pay what you wish," with a suggested payment of $25 each. Your safety and that of our performers is of the utmost importance. Proof of full vaccination will be required at the door. Masks are required at all times. The approximately 1-hour program will be performed without intermission. You are invited to meet Andrew Arceci following the performance. This concert is supported by grants from the Amherst Cultural Council, the South Hadley Cultural Council, the Hadley Cultural Council, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. We look forward to seeing you again! 
Meet Our New Artistic Director!
We’re excited to announce that Andrew Arceci will be Arcadia Players’ new Artistic Director. Arceci is a well-known performer, teacher, composer, and scholar who has appeared with Arcadia Players playing viola da gamba, violone, and double bass. He holds degrees from the Peabody Conservatory, The Juilliard School, and the University of Oxford. He directed the Collegium Musicum at Wellesley College from 2015-2020, and since 2016, has led the Winchendon Music Festival in Winchendon, Massachusetts. He succeeds Ian Watson, who led Arcadia Players for 15 years, departing after the 2018 concert season. We are delighted that Andrew will be joining us as we move into the new realities and new opportunities of the post-COVID era. We look forward to working with him to continue our long tradition of bringing inspired historically-informed performances of great music to audiences in the Pioneer Valley and beyond. 
We’re sad to announce the passing of our friend, colleague and long-time Arcadia Players board member, Arthur F. Kinney.
A world-renowned scholar, editor, author and pedagogue, Arthur taught at UMass Amherst for 50 years and in 1998 established the Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies which now bears his name. From the beginning he envisioned the Center as a gathering place filled with music, dance and gardens as well as books and scholarly talks. To that end, he partnered with our founder Margaret Irwin-Brandon for Arcadia Players to be the 'Artists in Residence" at the Center, where over the years we have co-presented musical programs (Meg played at the Center several times, and kept her virginal there for spontaneous concerts) and have also taken advantage of the beautiful facility for Board meetings. When Arthur became frail in recent years, he opened his home to us for meetings so that he could still take part in our work, and he insisted on attending Arcadia Players concerts even though confined to a wheelchair. He was a loyal and generous member of the Arcadia Players family, and we will miss his creativity, his wit, and his presence in our midst. JOIN US (virtually) FOR HANDEL’S MESSIAH!
It was a dark and stormy night (really!) in December of 2019 when several hundred hardy folks gathered at Our Lady of the Valley Parish in Easthampton for Arcadia Players’ presentation of “Messiah.” Luckily, that performance was filmed, and we are happy to offer it again for those who couldn’t make it that night and for everyone who will miss attending a live performance of Handel’s oratorio this year.
Conductor Woodrow Bynum leads a brisk performance featuring the Arcadia Players, the Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys, Albany, and soloists Sarah Yanovitch, soprano, Margaret Lias, alto, David Vanderwal, tenor and David Tinervia, baritone. You can enjoy the webcast on YouTube any time, free of charge.
Arcadia Players mourns the passing of distinguished American artist Robert Cumming, who died on December 16th in California from the effects of Parkinson’s Disease. A close friend of Arcadia Players’ founding Artistic Director Margaret Irwin-Brandon, Robert created the Arcadia Players tree logo and designed the organization’s sandwich board, early posters, stationery, and publicity materials, as well as photographing Arcadia concerts and events. The recipient of numerous awards and the subject of one-man shows at some of America’s most distinguished art museums, Robert created work that will endure as a testament to his genius as a sculptor, painter, photographer, and printmaker. We remember, with affection and thanks, his long-time support as a good friend of Arcadia Players.
https://www.palmspringslife.com/robert-cumming-artist/ Our “Live from the Sanctuary” benefit concert has launched! If you missed the livestream or would like to hear any of it again, just visit:
https://www.livefromsanctuary.org/ Thanks for your support! 
Please join Alice Robbins and Jane Hershey, viols, and Gregory Hayes, organ, for a benefit concert to support Arcadia Players, featuring music by Baroque composers Johann Erasmus Kindermann, Johann Pachelbel, Matthew Locke, William Lawes and more.
The concert is free, but donations to Arcadia Players are encouraged! Our thanks to the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence for hosting this event. Click Here for a Message from the PresidentArcadia Players is being as careful as possible during the corona virus outbreak.
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Arcadia Players' 2020-2021 concert season is made possible through the support of you, our patrons and donors,
our hosts Mount Holyoke College, Wesley United Methodist Church, and Our Lady of the Valley Parish,
our media sponsor New England Public Radio, WFCR and all-news WNNZ,
and in 2019 by the Cultural Councils of Amherst, Easthampton, South Hadley, and Hadley,
and local agencies supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.
Arcadia Players is Ensemble-in-Residence at the Arthur F. Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies.
our hosts Mount Holyoke College, Wesley United Methodist Church, and Our Lady of the Valley Parish,
our media sponsor New England Public Radio, WFCR and all-news WNNZ,
and in 2019 by the Cultural Councils of Amherst, Easthampton, South Hadley, and Hadley,
and local agencies supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.
Arcadia Players is Ensemble-in-Residence at the Arthur F. Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies.
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Arcadia Players
New England's Period Instrument Ensemble
160 Main St. Suite 27
Northampton, MA 01060
413 586-8742 (413 58-MUSIC)
New England's Period Instrument Ensemble
160 Main St. Suite 27
Northampton, MA 01060
413 586-8742 (413 58-MUSIC)
