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What's New
with Stephen Stubbs
February 3, 2012
Rare Baroque Jewels
Stephen Stubbs, Director
Tragicomedia
“Early Handel Cantatas”
Douglas Williams, bass-baritone
Morgan Library, New York City Jan. 27
First Church Cambridge, Cambridge Jan. 28
“Rare Baroque Jewels shine at Morgan Library with Boston’s
Tragicomedia”
"Tragicomedia presented a jewel-box of baroque cantatas at
Gilder Lehrman Hall at the Morgan Library Museum. The elite
ensemble, directed by Stephen Stubbs, includes some of America’s
finest Baroque musicians. Friday evening’s concert also featured
bass-baritone Douglas Williams.
"Baroque scores of this type have more in common with a “lead sheet”
used by jazz musicians than scores by other composers, where what is
written becomes law. The continuo group functions much like the
rhythm section in a jazz combo.
"Stubbs is incredibly adept at adding echo effects in the music,
imitating the vocal line in the melody of his improvised
accompaniment. Hearing him perform certain pieces, one unfamiliar
with continuo playing would assume he was playing from a
well-wrought score by Handel himself." – Bachtrack
“Tragicomedia Unsurpassed in Handel Cantatas”
“It is, of course, one thing to have Stubbs co-direct the Boston
Early Music Festival, but another thing entirely to have someone of
Stubbs’s achievement and understanding performing on stage.” – The
Boston Musical Intelligencer
MORE about Stephen Stubbs
January 26, 2012
New Life for Carissimi
Stephen Stubbs, Music Director
Pacific MusicWorks
GIACOMO CARISSIMI Oratorios-Prophets
MARC-ANTOINE CHARPENTIER The Denial of St. Peter
“Pacific MusicWorks Breathes New Life into Carissimi Oratorios”
--The SunBreak
"Handel’s sacred oratorios are really operas in a
guise acceptable to the Bishop of London (who forbade sacred
subjects on a stage), but it means they are easy to stage today. But
oratorios written a century earlier are a different matter....In
“Carissimi—Prophets,” the group sang and staged three oratorios by
Giacomo Carissimi (1605-1674) and one by his student Marc-Antoine
Charpentier (1643-1704)...which were intended to be sung in a small
chapel-like room for prayer called an oratory (hence the name).
"One of the hallmarks of Pacific MusicWorks is the quality of its
performers. Music director Stephen Stubbs has an international
reputation in the field of early music, as a lutenist and conductor
of staged and unstaged performances, and he fields an international
group of singers and musicians for his presentations. Here, Stubbs,
on lute and harpsichord, directed a small group of equally fine
musicians.
"A cast of eight singers performed the three Carissimi oratorios,
Abraham and Isaac, Jephte, and Job, and Charpentier’s Le Reniement
de St. Pierre. All of them are superb, expressive singers, who sound
completely comfortable in the florid ornaments and runs of early
17th century Italian music." --The SunBreak
MORE about Stephen Stubbs
NEXT PERFORMANCES:
Boston Early Music Festival
Tragicomedia, directed by Stephen Stubbs
Early Handel Cantatas
Friday, January 27, 2012, 7:30 p.m.
The Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
http://www.themorgan.org/public/program.asp?id=431
Saturday, January 28, 2012, 8:00 p.m.
First Church in Cambridge, Congregational, Cambridge, MA
http://www.bemf.org/pages/concerts/11-12_boston/tragicomedia.htm
January 13, 2012
Fully Staged Baroque Oratorios
Stephen Stubbs, Music Director
Pacific MusicWorks
GIACOMO CARISSIMI
Oratorios-Prophets
MARC-ANTOINE CHARPENTIER The Denial of St. Peter
FULLY STAGED BAROQUE ORATORIOS
Opera was not the only music-drama born in the 17th century. While
Monteverdi and Cavalli were delighting audiences in the theaters of
Venice with tales of secular passion, a composer often called their
equal was composing wrenchingly emotional scenes of spiritual crisis
drawn from Old Testament stories. Experience Giacomo Carissimi's
renditions of the torments of Job, Abraham's agony over the
sacrifice of his son Isaac, and the tragic consequences of Jephtha's
oath to God in fully-staged performances. This remarkable program
will conclude with Marc-Antoine Charpentier's rarely-heard New
Testament drama The Denial of St. Peter.
Performances start tonight:
St. James Cathedral, Seattle
January 13 and 14, 8:00pm
http://pacificmusicworks.org/content/carissimi-oratorios-prophets
MORE about Stephen Stubbs:
http://www.schwalbeandpartners.com/artistpage.asp?LAST_NAME=Stubbs
February 9, 2011
The Full Monte
MONTEVERDI
Vespers of 1610
Stephen Stubbs, conductor
Pacific
MusicWorks
Concerto Palatino
Seattle Baroque Orchestra
"The full Monte at St. James"
"The interpretation led by Stephen Stubbs left no question as to
the power of Monteverdi's masterpiece to thrill, delight, and move
contemporary audiences....His approach wonderfully served the
dramatic character of the music. What emerged marvelously in
Stubbs's conception overall was the essential theatricality of the
Vespers....Score another triumph for Stubbs..." -- Thomas
May, Crosscut
"A 'Vespers' for the ages at St. James Cathedral"
"This was an utterly thrilling Vespers, of a quality you
are unlikely ever to encounter anywhere else in the world.
[Stubbs's] direction was as lively and spontaneous as it was
meticulous in detail. He drew superb playing from the Concerto
Palatino ensemble and from members of the Seattle Baroque
Orchestra....The man is a genius. Oh, I meant Stubbs. But
Monteverdi, too, was no slouch." -- Bernard Jacobson, The Seattle
Times
February 27, 2011
Stephen Stubbs, conductor
Seattle Symphony
VIVALDI The Four Seasons
www.seattlesymphony.org
Read more about Stephen
Stubbs
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