Arcadia Players, directed by Ian Watson, presents
"SHAKESPEARE CONCERT"
A Program of Diverse Music on Shakespearean Themes

Saturday, March 9, 2013, at 7:30 p.m., at
Abbey Memorial Chapel, Mount Holyoke College, 
South Hadley

Tickets:             
$35 General admission
$30 Senior (65+)
$10 Student with ID

Tickets may be purchased through MKtix.com or by downloading 
and mailing a ticket order form or by calling 413-586-8742. 

On Saturday, March 9, at 7:30 p.m., Ian Watson and Arcadia Players, New England’s Period Instrument Orchestra, present their final Pioneer Valley concert of the season. The Shakespeare Concert offers a remarkable program of music based on Shakespearean themes, ranging from settings by Shakespeare’s contemporary Thomas Morley to compositions of the late twentieth century. Guest soloists with the ensemble will be soprano Andrea Chenoweth, mezzo-soprano Kellie Van Horn, tenor Luke Grooms and baritone Paul Soper. 

The concert will be held at Abbey Memorial Chapel, Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley. The neo-Gothic chapel is located on Route 116 (College Street) directly across from the South Hadley Public Library. The chapel entrance is on the quadrangle side. Parking is available in the faculty/staff lots diagonally across Route 116, or in the public lots behind Village Commons, just to the north. Links to a street map, campus map and directions may be found at the “Concert venue directions” page of arcadiaplayers.org. 

The Shakespeare Concert is a fascinating juxtaposition of settings of texts from the Bard by composers of the last 500 years. The earlier settings by Thomas Morley, William Boyce, Thomas Arne and others are performed by Arcadia Players on period instruments, which are also used in settings by twentieth-century composers Peter Warlock and Joseph Summer. Other contemporary music on the same texts will be played by a modern-instrument string quartet with flute and French horn. 

Soprano Andrea Chenoweth delighted area audiences and critics as Lucia in Commonwealth Opera’s 2010 production of Lucia di Lammermoor and as Atalanta in Handel’s Xerxes with Arcadia Players in 2011. Also performing in the Shakespeare concert will be mezzo-soprano Kellie van Horn, who has sung with regional opera companies throughout the United States and appeared in the title role of Commonwealth Opera’s 2004 production of Carmen. Tenor Luke Grooms has sung a wide range of operatic roles with companies across the country, including a part in the Metropolitan Opera production of Prokofiev’s The Gambler. In 2010 he also joined the national tour of The Phantom of the Opera in the role of Piangi. Baritone Paul Soper made his professional operatic debut in Manon at Houston Grand Opera and has championed new operatic and other vocal works, singing a number of premieres. All four will perform in this wide-ranging concert on Shakespearean themes with Arcadia Players, under the direction of the celebrated conductor and harpsichordist Ian Watson. 

This concert will be repeated on April 6 at 8:00 p.m. at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall in Boston, and will subsequently be recorded by Parma Recordings for commercial release. 

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Arcadia Players, New England’s Period Instrument Ensemble directed by Ian Watson, embraces historical performance practice to illuminate and invigorate the great Western heritage of vocal and instrumental music. Besides its annual concert series in the Pioneer Valley, Arcadia Players presents concerts in Boston and elsewhere in New England. The renowned British organist, harpsichordist and conductor Ian Watson, now in his ninth season as Artistic Director of Arcadia Players, has been at the heart of the early music revival, performing and conducting in Great Britain, Sweden and Germany, touring widely, and appearing with period instrument ensembles in major U.S. cities. Arcadia Players is the Ensemble in Residence at The Massachusetts Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies.

Arcadia Players’ 24th concert season is made possible by the support of our patrons and donors, by our hosts Smith College and Mount Holyoke College, our media sponsor New England Public Radio: 88.5 FM WFCR and all-news WNNZ at AM 640 and 91.7 FM, the Mattina R. Proctor Foundation, the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, and in 2013 by the Amherst Cultural Council and the Northampton Arts Council, local agencies supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.

Arcadia Players - New England’s Period Instrument Ensemble