Review: Music City Baroque — Playing New World music with Old World grace

Thanks to everyone who made our 2012-13 season a great success: our audience members, donors and sponsors, board of directors, artistic partners, and musicians. We are excited about our plans for next season, so please sign up for our email list or follow us on Facebook to keep up with the lastest news. In the meantime, check out the review of our season finale from ArtsNash:

"Music City Baroque was stretching its programmatic wings on Sunday afternoon, presenting a concert devoted entirely to early music from the Spanish New World. Everything was played with rhythmic vitality and joy."

"Music City Baroque augmented its usual period instruments ... with authentic New World percussion instruments – turtle shell drums, deer-hoof rattles and such. These instruments gave works ... a rhythmic vibrancy that was quintessentially and unmistakably Latin."

"Special mention goes to guitarist Francis Perry, whose beautifully expressive performance of Santiago de Murcia's dance 'Otrio canaries' was ... the emotional highpoint of the whole concert." — John Pitcher, artsnash.com

Read the complete review.

MCB Performs Bach with APSU Chamber Singers

Music City Baroque is becoming known as one of the leading interpreters of Bach's music in the region, and we are always excited to bring historically informed performances of this great music to new audiences.

This April musicians from MCB will collaborate with the Austin Peay State University Chamber Singers to present Bach's Mass in G minor, one of several "short" masses by the composer.

"'This will be a brilliant new experience for Tennessee audiences,' Dr. Korre Foster, director of choral activities at APSU, said. 'When people think of a Bach mass, they think 'B minor.' They don’t think of 'G minor.' This is one of those hidden gems.'

'It's highly important for our students to have an experience with Bach,' Foster said. 'It's very intricate and ever changing music. From a vocal point of view, it's very difficult for singers because many of the lines are instrumentally conceived. But it's very rewarding because the music is dramatic.'"

Free admission. For more details of this exciting collaboration, visit ClarksvilleOnline.

Review: For Music City Baroque, it's all Handel all the time

"We get to hear great viola da gamba players in Nashville about as often as we see solar eclipses of the sun ... [so] fans were excited about gamba virtuoso Brent Wissick's appearance Sunday afternoon with Music City Baroque."

"For those in the audience who were familiar with Handel only for his Messiah, Sunday's concert may have come as a revelation. Wissick's program showed us Handel as an exciting composer of dance music and song. It also revealed [his] orchestral side."

"Music City Baroque did justice to the entire concerto, playing the fugue with clarity and precision, and the Largo with grace and taste."

"[Soprano Terri] Richter sang with a beautiful soprano voice that was silky in its middle range and translucent in its top ... Wissick was at the top of his game ... playing with energy, vitality and joy."

"This performance was excellent from top to bottom, from the stately bass lines ... to the quivering, shimmering strings." — John Pitcher, artsnash.com

Read the complete review.

Third Year Running, MCB is Writer's Pick for Best of Nashville

BEST PERIOD-INSTRUMENT PERFORMANCE: MUSIC CITY BAROQUE PLAYING BACH'S B-MINOR MASS

Moments after Music City Baroque launched into the "Sanctus" from Bach's B-minor Mass last March at St. George's Episcopal Church, a bright beam of light streamed through one of the upper windows. It has been said that Bach's mighty Mass is God's favorite piece of music. Now we had proof. Conductor Murray Somerville led his musicians and singers in a performance that was remarkable for both its sweetness of tone and extraordinary expression. The Almighty was surely pleased.
— JOHN PITCHER