Arcadia Players 2026-27 Season
Five varied and exciting programs of music performed by superb singers and period instrumentalists
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Season Tickets
Purchase tickets to all five concerts at a discount.
During the month of August, season tickets are available for a special early-bird price of just $144. After September 1, the price goes up to $171.
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Season Opener: A Parisian Salon circa 1760
A sonorous and colorful recital by Artistic Director Andrus Madsen
Sunday, October 4 at 4 PM
Wistariahurst Museum, Holyoke, MA
Arcadia presents a Parisian Salon, c. 1760 with harpsichordist Andrus Madsen. This concert takes us into the realm of the culturally elite Parisian women who hosted salons that were centers of music, literary, and philosophical discussion. Andrus will play a copy of an instrument built in 1769 by the most beloved Parisian harpsichord builder, Pascal Taskin. The Taskin harpsichord has a generous, sonorous and rich sound that favors color over clarity. Composers like Couperin, Duphly, and Forqueray wrote music for this instrument that leans deeply into creating color and sonority rather than focusing on counterpoint. All of this music for the salon comes with pithy titles aimed at generating discussion and evoking literary, philosophical or political connections.
English Music for Voices and Viols
Dowland, Purcell and more performed by voices and Arcadia Viols
Saturday, November 7 at 5 PM
Edwards Church, Northampton, MA
This concert highlights Arcadia Viols playing fantasies, consort music, and consort songs and anthems by Dowland, Gibbons, Tomkins, Jenkins, and Purcell. You are in for a feast for the mind and the senses, as you engage in the rich poetry and lush expressivity of this incredible music. It will take you to regions both melancholy and sublime.
Featuring
Arcadia Viols: Robert Eisenstein, Jane Hershey, Douglas Kelley, Anne Legêne, Alice Robbins
Andrus Madsen – harpsichord
Handel and Porpora, Rivals Paired
Friday, December 11 at 7:30 PM
Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Longmeadow, MA
Saturday, December 12 at 3 PM
Abbey Chapel, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA
This concert pairs Part I of Handel’s celebrated Messiah with psalms and antiphons by Nicola Porpora, Handel’s rival in London in the 1730s. In the 1730s a group of English nobles founded an opera company, “The Opera of the Nobility,” to compete with Handel’s “Queen’s Theater” company, and engaged the Italian composer Nicola Porpora. By 1737 both opera companies had failed, which later led Handel to take up the genre of oratorio. This proved to be much more successful financially in London. Porpora was never out to get Handel, and it’s quite likely that the failure of both opera houses had as much to do with politics and economic factors as it did with attendance and the music itself. You all know and love Handel’s Messiah, and you might be surprised how much you enjoy the exuberant sacred music of Porpora.
The Sacred Art of Hans Leo Hassler
Saturday, January 30 at 3 PM
Abbey Chapel, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA
This concert pairs motets and antiphons by Hans Leo Hassler with his spectacular organ music; we’ll be taking advantage of the beautiful Fisk organ and the acoustics of Abbey Chapel. Hans Leo Hassler was one of the most significant German composers to straddle the Renaissance and the Baroque. He was an organist and composer at some of the most important music centers of the time, starting with San Marco in Venice, then working for the Fuggers in Augsburg, then in Nuremberg, and finishing his career at the Saxon court chapel in Dresden. His Magnificat settings for organ are the most substantial keyboard Magnificats of the time. His choral music is sublime, and the acoustics and the organ of Abbey Chapel offer the best opportunity you may have to hear this music on our continent.
Tenebrae in Austria circa 1690
Friday, March 19 at 7:30 PM
Grace Church, Amherst, MA
This will be a concert reenactment of a Tenebrae ritual as one might have witnessed it in 17th-century Salzburg or Vienna. The Tenebrae ritual involved the extinguishing of fifteen candles in a richly musical service featuring settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, as well as other music focusing on the crucifixion. This concert will feature the Stabat Mater of Giovanni Sances, Lamentation of Jeremiah settings by Giovanni Paolo Colonna, and mystery sonatas dealing with the crucifixion by Heinrich Ignaz Biber. Violinist Susanna Ogata, soprano Teresa Wakim, and Artistic Director Andrus Madsen have a particularly intimate relationship with this music, and they will take you into darkness and hope on a journey you will not soon forget.