Portuguese Polyphony
Saturday, September 19, 2026 • 7:30 pm
Lutheran Church of Honolulu
1730 Punahou Street
The Early Music Hawaii Ensemble
Scott Fikse, director
The Early Music Hawaii Ensemble presents a rare opportunity to experience the luminous sacred music of Renaissance Portugal in a program of richly expressive polyphony by some of the Iberian Peninsula’s finest composers. From the intricate counterpoint of António Carreira and Dom Pedro de Cristo to the lush sonorities of Duarte Lobo, Filipe de Magalhães, and Manuel Cardoso, these works span more than a century of Portugal’s musical Golden Age. The program also features Gaspar Fernandes, whose career carried Portuguese musical traditions across the Atlantic to the Americas. Discover the beauty, intimacy, and intensity of Portuguese polyphony in music that has waited centuries to be heard again.
Trio Sefardi
Friday, October 23, 2026, at 7:30 pm
Lutheran Church of Honolulu
Sunday, October 25, 2026, at 3:30 pm
Queen Emma Community Center, Kealakekua
TRIO SEFARDI, a northern Virginia-based ensemble, performs traditional songs of the Sephardim, the descendants of Jews exiled from Spain in 1492. Their repertoire draws on the song traditions of Sephardic communities from the former Yugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, and North Africa, with a special emphasis on traditional and original songs they learned from their mentor, Bosnian-born singer/composer, Flory Jagoda. The trio has performed extensively at prestigious East Coast concert venues, festivals, synagogues, and Jewish community centers since forming in 2010. To highlight the variety of their musical offerings, early music instruments such as medieval rebec and renaissance lute; violin and viola da gamba; and ethnic dumbek, riq, and Pontic lyra are played.
La Fonte Musica
Friday, March 19, 2027, at 7:30 pm
Lutheran Church of Honolulu
Saturday, March 20, 2027, at 7:30 pm
Brigham Young University, Lā‘ie
Italy-based LA FONTE MUSICA is an acclaimed early music ensemble on period instruments founded and led by lutenist and conductor Michele Pasotti. Specializing in the 14th through 17th centuries with a deep focus on Italian repertoire, the group bridges the late Middle Ages, humanism, and the early Baroque. Their program Enigma Fortuna, music by Antonio Zacara da Teramo (ca. 1360–1416?), is an invitation to discover the great vitality and eccentricity of his music, which entwines enigmas, oracles, obsessive variations on the theme of Fortune, proverbs, popular mottos, dialectal words, the sarcastic, ironic, often self-deprecating tone, the autobiographical lyrics, the never-ending melodic invention, and a great rhythmic audacity.
A Madrigalian Tale
Friday, May 8, 2027, at 7:30 pm
Lutheran Church of Honolulu
The Early Music Hawaii Ensemble
Scott Fikse, director
Theater, poetry and music meet to dramatic effect in this unique collaboration between locally-based actors and the Early Music Hawaii Ensemble. Europe enjoyed a new musical obsession beginning in the 16th and early 17th centuries—the secular madrigal. Born and developed in Italy, this dramatic and poetic genre took root throughout Europe, reaching a creative peak in the hands of composers like Arcadelt, Marenzio, Gesualdo, Monteverdi, Morley, Weelkes, and a host of others. Similar compositions in France, Germany, and Spain added to the expressive musical tapestry.
