Renaissance Dances and Circle Songs
March 9, 2024 • Lutheran Church of Honolulu
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March 10, 2024 • Queen Emma Community Center, Kealakekua
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Ciaramella
Join Ciaramella in a concert of circle dances from the Renaissance, from florid basse dances of fifteenth century courts to rousing sixteenth branles, alongside French love songs with subtle turns of phrase inspired by Fortune’s Wheel and performed on recorder, shawm, bagpipe, and lute.
CIARAMELLA brings to life Medieval and early Renaissance music from historical events and manuscripts. Praised for performing intricate fifteenth-century counterpoint “with the ease of jazz musicians improvising on a theme,” its members are united by the conviction that every composition conceals a rich story waiting to be unlocked through historical research and speculative performance.
Founded on a core of winds: shawm, sackbut, recorder, bagpipe, and voice, Ciaramella takes its name from the Italian shawm and from a fifteenth-century song about a beautiful girl whose clothes are full of holes. When she opens her mouth, she knocks men flat. Directed by Adam and Rotem Gilbert, from the Early Music Program at USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles, the ensemble performs at major festivals throughout the United States, Italy, and Germany. Performances have included the Cleveland Museum of Art, Bloomington Early Music Festival, Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute, the Lute Society of America, the American Musicological Society in Seattle, and on early music series in Cleveland, San Francisco, San Diego, Houston, Arizona, Early Music in Columbus, Salt Lake City, Seattle’s Early Music Guild, the Connecticut Early Music Festival, Amherst Early Music Festival, Renaissance and Baroque Society of Pittsburgh and the Early Music Society of the Islands in Victoria, BC. In 2007 they gave their New York debut at Music Before 1800 and performed at the Tage Alter Musik Festival in Regensburg. Recently the group has performed for Early Music Hawaii, and has created a program for Mission San Antonio and Mission Santa Barbara, CA. Ciaramella has designed programs for the Da Camera Society music series “Chamber Music in Historic Sites” in Los Angeles, and for the Getty Museum in Los Angeles in coordination with specific exhibits.
