Arcadia Players presents a concert of 16th- and 17th-century music for viols from England and Italy, on Saturday, October 24, 2009, at 7:30 p.m. at Wesley United Methodist Church, 98 North Maple Street, Hadley, Mass. In the second program of its 20th anniversary season, A Season of Anniversaries, Arcadia Players celebrates the 350th birthday of Henry Purcell with his masterful Fantasies for four viols, and with works for one to four viols by William Young, Carlo Farina, Tarquinio Merula, Vicenzo Ruffo and Thomas Lupo.

        Members of the Consort are Marcy Jean Brenner, tenor and bass viols; Robert Eisenstein, bass viol; Jane Hershey, tenor and treble viols; and Alice Robbins, treble and bass viols.  Besides playing Baroque chamber music as a consort (the 17th-century counterpart of the later string quartet), each of the musicians is a teacher and performs widely with early music and other ensembles.

        “Most of the music in this program was written not for performance, but rather for the enjoyment of the players and perhaps a small audience of friends,” said Eisenstein. “The pieces are intimate and delightful musical conversations among the equal members of the viol consort—one of our great chamber music combinations.  And just as the composers did, we invite our audience to experience this close connection,” he said.

        Marcy Jean Brenner spent her youth in Pennsylvania exploring several instruments: piano, violin, recorder, cello and French horn. She was introduced to the harpsichord and viola da gamba in her late teens. She studied both instruments at Oberlin Conservatory and German literature at the College before going to Vienna, Austria, on a Fulbright scholarship in 1979. There she continued her studies on viola da gamba, working with Wieland Kuijken. She spent the next 28 years teaching and freelancing in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain. Her son was born in Italy but went to school in Austria, where he still resides.  A year ago Marcy returned to the United States and settled in Newport, Rhode Island. During the summer Marcy sails extensively in Scandinavia with her husband Michael and plays the hurdy-gurdy on board.

        Robert Eisenstein is director of the Five College Early Music Program, for which he coaches and directs student ensembles including the Five College Early Music Collegium and Euridice Ensembles. He studied viola da gamba with Judith Davidoff and Richard Taruskin and is a founding member and co-artistic director of the Folger Consort, the early music ensemble in residence at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., performing on medieval fiddle, violin, and viola da gamba. He teaches music history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst as well as a course in Music and Technology at Mount Holyoke College, and performs regularly with colleagues in the Mount Holyoke Baroque Ensemble. He has performed with many ensembles including the Washington Bach Consort, the Newberry Consort, the National Symphony and Western Wind, and has appeared recently at Tanglewood, Amherst Early Music, and other summer festivals. He has been a member of the Arcadia Players Board of Directors for several years.

        Jane Hershey studied with Wieland Kuijken at The Hague Conservatory, and at the Longy School of Music with Gian Silbiger. She has toured and recorded with the Boston Camerata. As a member of the trio Charivary she has been a frequent guest at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and in other early music series around the country. As a violone player, she has performed with the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra, Monadnock Music, and the Santa Fe Baroque Orchestra, and has appeared with Arcadia Players since its founding. She has toured as a guest artist with the Renaissance music ensemble Hesperus and has recorded with them on the Koch and Dorian labels. She can be heard with Frances Fitch and friends on a 2005 Centaur release of music by Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre. Jane teaches in the graduate program in Early Music at the Longy School of Music and at Powers Music School. She has directed the Tufts Early Music Ensemble since 1995.

        Alice Robbins, principal cellist and viol soloist with Arcadia Players, has served as interim artistic co-director of the ensemble and has performed widely on baroque cello, viola da gamba and vielle in numerous chamber ensembles, including the Early Music Quartet (Studio der frühen Musik), Concerto Vocale, Smithsonian Chamber Players, Boston Camerata, Violins of Lafayette, and the Oberlin and Boston Consorts of Viols.  She was a founding member of Concerto Castello, an international quintet specializing in the music of the early 17th century, and currently performs with Handel & Haydn Society, Arcadia Players, Boston Early Music Festival, Opera Lafayette and Washington Bach Consort. She frequently appears as viola da gamba soloist with orchestras including New England Bach Festival and Washington Bach Consort. A member of the Five College Early Music faculty at Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges, Robbins has taught in the Historic Performance department at Boston University, and earned degrees at Indiana University and the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, where she was a student of Hannelore Mueller. She has recorded for Telefunken, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Smithsonian and Gasparo records, as well as for many radio productions.

        Arcadia Players’ season sponsor is WGBY – Public Television for Western New England. Media sponsors also include The Daily Hampshire Gazette and 88.5FM/WFCR – NPR News and Music for Western New England – and WNNZ, its AM broadcast station.  Arcadia also receives season and concert support from the Cultural Councils of Hadley, Holyoke, Northampton, Plainfield, and Whately.