Arcadia Players presents

Arcadia Players Founding Trio 20th Anniversary Concert

Arcadia Players Founding Trio Dana Maiben, violin Alice Robbins, cello and gambas Margaret Irwin-Brandon, harpsichord and organ
Works by Dieterich Buxtehude, Georg Philipp Telemann, J. S. Bach, Matthew Locke, Giovanni Paolo Cima, Henry Butler, William Young, and Jean-Philippe Rameau.
Listen to a two-minute excerpt from the Trio's 2006 CD with Jaap Schroeder on the Fuga Libera label.
Saturday, September 26, 2009 at 7:30 PM Reception after concert	Sunday, September 27, 2009 at 3:00 PM
White Church Community Center 6 Memorial St., Deerfield MA Directions (on WMRLS website) Location on Google Maps NOTE: this venue is NOT the well-known Brick Church Meetinghouse (First Church of Christ Deerfield). It is located two tenths of a mile south of the Brick Church, on the corner of Old Main and Memorial Streets.	Wistariahurst Museum, 238 Cabot St. Holyoke MA Directions and map (on the museum's website)
Pre-ordered tickets: general $20, preferred $30. $5 more at door. Students always $10.	Go to Tickets page or order individual tickets from

Arcadia Players begins its 2009–2010 season, A Season of Anniversaries, with two concerts by its founding musicians in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the music ensemble, on Saturday, September 26, 2009, 7:30 PM, at the White Church Community Center in Deerfield, and Sunday, September 27, 3:00 PM, at Wistariahurst Museum, Holyoke.

The opening season performances reunite violinist Dana Maiben; pianist and harpsichordist Margaret Irwin-Brandon; and cellist and viola da gambist Alice Robbins in a program of favorites from the Trio’s Baroque repertoire. The concerts are dedicated to the memory of Paul Utgoff, a long-time friend and supporter of Arcadia Players and a former board member, who died last October.

The program includes sonatas by Dieterich Buxtehude, Georg Philipp Telemann, Giovanni Paolo Cima, and Henry Butler; the Prelude and Fugue in D major for harpsichord from the Well-Tempered Clavier II by J. S. Bach; Matthew Locke’s Suite No. 6 in A minor-major from Consorts “For Several Friends”; the Prelude in D minor for solo viol by William Young; and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Troisième Concert from Pièces de Clavecin en Concert.

A reception will be held after the Saturday evening performance. 

The Arcadia Players Trio began performing together in 1989, and served together for many years as the principal players and core of Arcadia Players Baroque Orchestra and Chamber Ensembles. The Trio has appeared at the Boston Early Music Festival and in concerts throughout New England, and has collaborated with numerous guest artists in its own Connoisseur Concerts Series at the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts. The Trio collaborated with acclaimed Dutch violinist Jaap Schroeder, touring with him in the United States and Italy. The group engaged in a long-term project with Schroeder exploring the trio sonatas of Henry Purcell and the Italians who inspired him. Collaboration on this project included many concerts at home and abroad, and resulted in the 1994 recordings of Purcell and Bononcini trio sonatas on the fuga libera label.
 
            Arcadia Players Artistic Director Emerita Margaret Irwin-Brandon, a specialist in early keyboard instruments, is a concert recitalist in the Americas and Europe. Her harpsichord performances of J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier in New York’s Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall were received with critical acclaim. She has been a soloist in many European and American festivals and has performed in national and regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists and the Organ Historical Society. As founding artistic director of the Arcadia Players Baroque Orchestra, Chorus, and Chamber Ensembles, she produced “Arcadia Players – A Baroque Celebration” presented by WGBY-TV in 1992. She also produced Arcadia Players’ first fully staged Baroque opera and premiered Richard Einhorn’s score, Voices of Light, for the classic film, La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc. As a Fulbright Scholar in Germany, she studied organ with Karl Richter and continued harpsichord studies with Gustav Leonhardt. Irwin-Brandon serves as director of music at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Greater Springfield, Massachusetts. She is an associate fellow at Davenport College of Yale University and has served on the faculties of the Oberlin College Conservatory, the University of Oregon, Portland State University, and Mount Holyoke College.
 
            Violinist, composer and conductor Dana Maiben, hailed by the Boston Globe for her “supremely joyous artistry,” played principal violin for Arcadia Players for many years and was music director for the ensemble’s 10th anniversary season, among other occasions. Maiben was a founder member of Concerto Castello, a groundbreaking ensemble for 17th century music, and in 2002 she launched a new ensemble for the period, Concerto Incognito. Colin Tilney, writing in Continuo Magazine, called her “high priestess of the Italian 17th century solo.” Maiben has served as concertmaster of the New York Collegium under the direction of Christophe Rousset, Martin Gester, Paul Goodwin, and Andrew Parrott. She has often performed with her principal teacher, violinist Jaap Schroeder, and in duo with fortepianist Monica Jakuc Leverett. Maiben is founding Music Director of Foundling, a baroque orchestra based in Providence, R.I. At the Longy School of Music she teaches violin, chamber music, and a wide range of performance practice styles, and occasionally directs opera. Her own opera, based on Gertrude Stein’s play Look and Long, has been presented in staged workshop at Smith College. Maiben’s credits include recordings on Centaur, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Dorian, EMI, fuga libera and Hyperion.

            Alice Robbins is principal cellist and viol soloist with Arcadia Players. Vitally active in the historic performance ensemble since its inception in 1989, she has served as interim artistic co-director. Robbins has performed widely on baroque cello, viola da gamba, and vielle in numerous ensembles, including the Early Music Quartet (Studio der frühen Musik), Concerto Vocale, Smithsonian Chamber Players, Boston Early Music Festival, Boston Camerata, New England Bach Festival, 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, Opera Lafayette, and Washington Bach Consort as well as Arcadia Players. She frequently appears as viola da gamba soloist with orchestras including Washington Bach Consort. A member of the Five College Early Music faculty at Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges, Robbins has also taught in the Historic Performance department at Boston University. She earned degrees at Indiana University and the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, where she was a student of Hannelore Mueller. Robbins has recorded for Telefunken, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, fuga libera, Smithsonian, and Gasparo records, as well as for many radio productions.
      
            Paul Utgoff was a professor of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts,  Amherst, where he directed the Machine Learning Laboratory. His research focused on “many-layered learning,” following the principle that all learning is simple if the prerequisites are in place. Also an accomplished organist and harpsichordist with a music degree from Oberlin Conservatory, Utgoff served on Arcadia Players’ board of directors from 2000–2003.  He was the organist and choirmaster for Saint Philip’s Episcopal Church in Easthampton from 2005 until his death in 2008.  Utgoff’s passion for music joined with his state-of-the-art work in machine learning in his research on how artificial intelligence meets various topics in music, such as music perception, cognition, and understanding.

Paul Utgoff

Arcadia Players Founding Trio: Dana Maiben, Margaret Irwin-Brandon, Alice Robbins

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