ARCHIVE OF PAST SEASONS
BOSTON's PROFESSIONAL CHORAL ENSEMBLE PERFORMING MUSIC OF WOMEN COMPOSERS FROM THE 9th CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY
BOSTON's PROFESSIONAL CHORAL ENSEMBLE PERFORMING MUSIC OF WOMEN COMPOSERS FROM THE 9th CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY
BOSTON's PROFESSIONAL CHORAL ENSEMBLE PERFORMING MUSIC OF WOMEN COMPOSERS FROM THE 9th CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY
BOSTON's PROFESSIONAL CHORAL ENSEMBLE PERFORMING MUSIC OF WOMEN COMPOSERS FROM THE 9th CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY
BOSTON's PROFESSIONAL CHORAL ENSEMBLE PERFORMING MUSIC OF WOMEN COMPOSERS FROM THE 9th CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY
Photo: Eric Antoniou
PAST SEASONS
Songs that Enchant
September 21st, 2024 @ 4PM
September 22nd, 2024 @ 4PM
Join us for a concert-length ritual in music: Cappella Clausura’s first concert of the season presents music that transports the listener to a world that blurs the line between dreams and reality. In this magic world, mermaids lure innocent people to their deaths, people are haunted by the ghosts of their dead lovers, the wind carries countless messages, and the most interesting things happen at night. Let us be your guide through this dream-world, as you fall under this spell and emerge transformed by the end. World class pianist Lois Shapiro returns to join us in this magical program, reprising excerpts of Das Jahr, performing lieder with soloists from the choir, and more. Featuring music by Clara Faisst, Alma Mahler, Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel, Clara Schumann, and Julia Schwartz.
October 14th, 2023 @ 8PM
October 15th, 2023 @ 4PM
Cappella Clausura presents: Exultet Terra, the first program of our 2023-2024 season. Exultet Terra is for double reeds: 2 oboes, English horn, 2 bassoons and double chorus of 16 singers. It centers on three poems by Welsh-born poet George Herbert (1593-1633): Paradise, Colos, and Heaven. The composer, Hilary Tann, has interspersed within the poetry language from the Psalms in both the Latin Vulgate and the King James bible.
With Exultet Terra translating to “rejoice in the earth”, this piece is a reflection of the amazing landscapes and natural world that Tann witnessed throughout her life. With her unique ability of synesthesia, Tann was able to use her combined senses to mimic the immersive atmosphere she experienced. Today, Cappella Clausura is so excited to kick off the beginning of the 2023-24 season by providing one of a kind programming that both honors the roots of the organization, as well as a dear friend.
November 18th, 2023 @ 8PM
November 19th, 2023 @ 3PM
Das Jahr has been called by some music historians a work of remembrance of the year in Italy which Fanny and Wilhelm and little Sebastian spent in 1839-40. Beginning with the brand new year in a low bass opening, one can hear the bristeling blue night sky and single stars of midnight on January 1st. Then the rising bass octaves in February are like the unrelenting wind, punctuated by repeated bass octaves. Or listen for the rising and swiftly moving lines in March that are like the onset of warmer spring and rains, or the crushing and crashing heat and storms of August and July. This is truly a year in her climate.
March 3rd, 2024 @ 4PM
Suffragette, composer, and famed memoirist, Smyth’s outsized personality made her friends amongst the upper classes who introduced her to Queen Victoria for whom she played her Mass on the piano, singing all the parts (now that’s chutzpah). The Queen ordered a full performance in the new Victoria and Albert Royal Hall. This huge work lacked performance materials: LeClair made a new edition and SHIFT Orchestra Project joins us for this premiere.
April 27th, 2024 @ 8PM
April 28th, 2024 @ 4PM
Cappella Clausura performs Vespers by Chiara Margarita Cozzolani (1650) with the help of the H+H Youth Choruses' Chorus of Sopranos + Altos. Featuring an organ, 2 gambas, 3 theorbos, and choruses of men and women; this performance proves to be a spectacular end to an already exciting season. As this is Amelia LeClair's last performance as Artistic Director for Cappella Clausura, this is a must-see event this spring. Get your tickets now and join us for this unforgettable performance. And don't forget to keep an eye out on our socials and e-mails for a chance to purchase access to the professional audio and video of Dame Ethel Smyth's Mass in D performed at the beginning of this March 2024.This program is supported in part by a grant from the Newton Cultural Council, a local council that is supported by the Mass Cultural Council and the City of Newton.
September, 2022
An immersive performance of Sarah Kirkland Snider’s “Mass for the Endangered”, a moving composition for choir and orchestra. Vibrant images paired with breathtaking music to create a celebration of the natural world– and humanity’s place within it.
November, 2022
An expanded investigation of music and visual arts from the Renaissance. With reimagined classical portraits by Fran Forman presented alongside Baroque music by women, this program transports to a world of rich innovation and inclusivity. Featuring music by Barbara Strozzi, Madalena Casulana, Vittoria/ Raffaella Aleotti, and Francesca Caccini.
January, 2023
Beautiful music, selected by the people who know it best! Singers’ Choice features a diverse assortment of works by women, ranging from Renaissance hymnals to contemporary compositions. Guest Conducted by Dr. Carolina Flores.
March, 2023
Artemisia brings together contemporary theatre and 17th-century music to create a rich tapestry of interwoven narratives about female resilience. This multidisciplinary program provides a new perspective on Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi and the women who inspired her. Featuring a play by Joy McCullough, cantatas by Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, and paintings by Artemisia Gentileschi.
May, 2023
Cappella Clausura– in partnership with the Boston Women's Heritage Trail, Suffrage100MA, and other local partners– celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the Boston Women’s Memorial with music and presentations. This event commemorates the contributions of Abigail Adams, Lucy Stone, and Phillis Wheatley with never-before-heard musical commissions inspired by their writings. With speeches by sculptor Meredith Bergmann and public historian Susan Wilson, as well as appearances by local politicians, this event is perfect for anyone passionate about Boston or women’s history.
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TROUBADOURS 2021: LIVE IN CONCERT
November, 2021
Riveting, world premiere commissions presented spanning a unique blend of jazz, hip-hop, classical European, and more.
March, 2022
Featuring a cappella pieces by a diverse array of contemporary and ancient female composers. Presented by Guest Conductor Dr. Ellen Gilson Voth and featuring genre-bending Guest Artists Burcu Güleç and George Lernis.
May, 2022
This outstanding program features a 14-piece string orchestra performing the works of Lili Boulanger, Elena Ruehr, and Amelia LeClair alongside our core ensemble of vocalists. With rarely performed works on an epic scale, this program provided an epic ending to our season
June, 2022
Our second-ever partnership with Newton Theatre Company. This production explored Euripides' tragicomedy about the youngest members of the House of Atreus. Featuring a five-women chorus performing arrangements of Kassia's chant, set to Rachel Hadas' text by Amelia LeClair, we were proud to put the music back into Greek tragedy.
Donna Chiara Margarita Cozzolani's MAGNIFICAT A OTTO VOCE
October, 2020
Spectacular work by one of the most talented nuns of the Italian Baroque period, Chiara Margarita Cozzolani (1602-c.1678), Abbess of Santa Radegonda in Milan and composer of the Vespers of 1650, motets, and many concerti sacri for solo, duo, trio and more. Recorded by each individual musician, using the conductor's video together with the continuo (theorbo) player's video. Video by Christopher Pitts. Audio Engineering by James Zaner.
CONCERTS IN EPISODES
Winter, 2020 | Edited by Kathy Wittman of Ball Square Films | Audio Engineering by Antonio Oliart
While we weren't able to sing live, Cappella Clausura presented pieces one at a time, originally intended to be performed around a dinner table. In addition to our singers and players in the ubiquitous squares, we provided images of each composer and her life: her residence, her town, her scores, her surroundings, and more.
MARY STUART
June, 2021 | Co-produced by Newton Theatre Company
Two queens; one throne. Two women pitted against each other in a Renaissance-style game of thrones in a sharp new adaptation of Schiller's drama. Featuring music by Lady Mary Dering, Miss Harriet Abram, and Anne Boleyn, with CC's Frank Campofelice, tenor, Barbara Hill, mezzo, and Charles Iner, lute.
July, 2021
A recorded collection of commissioned works honoring female troubadours of the 12th-14th century. Based on the writings of ancient songwriters, each piece in "Troubadours 2021" was given new life by an eclectic group of modern day composers specializing in everything from jazz and hip hop to medieval, classical, and Bengali music.
ILLUMINATIONS
October, 2019
We invited audiences into the pages of a book: The Salzinnes Antiphonal of 1554. They sat amidst the nuns intoning the liturgical Hours, meditated, and were transported. They watched the calligrapher at her work, read the displayed pages, and took in the complex symbolism in each gesture. Curator Judith Dietz, who discovered this ancient manuscript, told its story. With tactile elements from the period, our audiences became absorbed in ancient and universally moving chant.
Hildegard von Bingen's ORDO VIRTUTUM
February, 2020
Hildegard von Bingen: abbess, composer, singer, poet, herbalist, nutritionist, spiritual advisor, traveling con- sultant to popes, emperors, seer, prophet, Sybil of the Rhine, ultimate visionary, New Age darling. Her music is played in such a variety of venues, sacred, spiritual, meditative, even spooky. A close look at her notation would suggest it is not for the faint of heart, even to those unfamiliar with it. When one looks at the manuscript, the notation itself suggests activity, movement, even agitation. Hildegard, no shy flower, meant to provoke her singers as well as her listeners into alertness and vigilance. She believed the Devil was working all around us...
November, 2018
In these seismic times, even the notoriously white and male and conservative classical world has had to accommodate the reality of women composing music, as we like to say, from (at least) the 9th century to the present day...
PREMIERE PERFORMANCE OF CHOLERA CANTATA
March, 2019
When Lea Mendelssohn first caught sight of her newborn daughter Fanny, she exclaimed, “Bach fugue fingers!” Fanny did not disappoint, showing prodigious talent in music, only to be overshadowed by her gifted younger brother...
January, 2019
Women composers are emerging from their studios. So we thought it was time to return to the repertoire of baroque Italian cloistered nuns - women in clausura - who gave us our beginnings and our name 15 years ago...
MESSE DE NOSTRE DAME & BIRDS OF THE PSALMS
November, 2017
On our journey from 14th century Reims to 21st century Maine, we met poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut and his 21st century counterpart Patricia Van Ness. Machaut, now considered the greatest poet-composer of his time, wrote one of the earliest known polyphonic (many voiced) settings of what came to be called the ordinary of the mass, a sequence of six unchanging daily prayers dating back to the early Common Era.
January, 2018
In our hyper-visual culture, the experience of pure listening is a rarity. For this, the fourth edition of our signature surround sound program, we invited audiences to sit inside the music and let our ensemble, in ever-changing constellations of voices, surround and delight you with pure melody and harmony...
March, 2018
Barbara Strozzi would have been about thirteen in 1632 when Claudio Monteverdi, in his sixties, published Scherzi musicale, his final volume of diverse works which includes the baroque pop tune Zefiro Torno. Being Venetian, and the daughter of a member of the cognoscenti, she may even have met Monteverdi at some point.
May, 2018
When Artistic Director Amelia LeClair first heard Elena Ruehr’s Eve, as premiered by the Cantata Singers, she was captivated. She loved the beyond gorgeous harmonies and rhythms, and was transfixed by Ruehr’s redaction of Genesis: the work ends not with the banishment from the garden, but on the line just before the banishment: “And the eyes of them both were opened.”
May, 2017
Song and dance from the court of Versailes, by Charpentier, Antonia Bembo, and the mysterious Mlle. Laurent. With renowned baroque dancers, Ken Pierce and Camilla Finlay.
November, 2016
Music for 16 voices by Sulpitia Cesis, from her Motteti Spirituali, together with ethereal works by Arvo Pärt and John Tavener.
January, 2017
Sacred chants from medieval times through the present day: works by Hildegard von Bingen and Kassia; chant from the Salzinnes Mansuscript and the Florentine Laudario.
March, 2017
From Behind the Caravan by Abbie Betinis with songs of the medieval French trouveres, all around a dinner table.
May, 2017
Song and dance from the court of Versailes, by Charpentier, Antonia Bembo, and the mysterious Mlle. Laurent. With renowned baroque dancers, Ken Pierce and Camilla Finlay.
November, 2015
Choral works by England's pathbreaking Rebecca Clarke and Aaron Copland. Elena Ruehr's stunning a cappella opera CASSANDRA, arranged for Cappella Clausura especially for these concerts.
January, 2016
Sacred chants from medieval times through the present day: works by Hildegard von Bingen and Arvo Pärt, the Renaissance music of Italian nun Raffaella Aleotti, and contemporary works by German composer Erna Woll.
MADRIGALIA
March, 2016
Featured the poetic, lyrical madrigals of Barbara Strozzi, who was active in the 1650s, as well as those of Madalena Casulana, credited with publishing the very first printed musical work by a woman in 1568.
Patricia Van Ness' BIRDS OF THE PSALMS
May, 2016
The incandescent Patricia Van Ness composed "Birds of the Psalms", for Cappella Clausura and Amelia LeClair, which premiered in these concerts. Also featured Victoria, Weelkes, Tallis, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky; and the ancient Greek composer Kassia.
November, 2014
Two moving Baroque masterpieces. A generation, gender, and worlds apart but joined in spiritual passion. Featuring the Cappella Clausura vocal ensemble with guest artists Carol Lewis, gamba; Catherine Liddell & Olav Chris Henriksen, theorbos.
February, 2015
A chance to sit inside the chant. Music by composers from Hildegard to Stravinsky. The singers and instrumentalists surrounded audiences in ever-changing constellations, immersing them in this exquisite music. Hildegard von Bingen, Igor Stravinsky Kassia, Francis Poulenc, Amelia LeClair, Raffaella Aleotti, Maurice Duruflé, and Patricia Van Ness.
March, 2015
Allegri’s exquisite Miserere, settings from the Song of Songs by Tomás Luis de Victoria, Raffaella Aleotti, Alessandro Scarlatti, Giovanni da Palestrina, Clemens non Papa, and Francisco Guerrero.
May, 2015
Evocative music of Arvo Pärt, Eric Whitacre, Hildegard von Bingen and distinguished Welsh composer Hilary Tann. Featuring the New England premiere of Tann’s “Exultet Terra,” as recreated for Cappella Clausura for double choir and double reed quintet, featuring guest oboist Peggy Pearson.
May, 2014
A performance/ installation piece inviting audiences to immerse themselves in the world of a 1554 Belgian convent with chant from a recently discovered antiphonal, period costumes, period food, and full color banners of pages from the Salzinnes Antiphonal.
March, 2014
Sampling some of the delicious madrigals of Renaissance teenager Vittoria Aleotti (published 1593), plus songs and madrigals of the young Dowland (1597) and the young Gesualdo (1594).
December, 2013
Composers include Hildegard von Bingen, Sulpitia Cesis, Rafaella Aleotti, Chiara Cozzolani, and Patricia Van Ness.
The program is ornamented by dance and puppetry. Featuring Helena Froehlich's CREATIONDANCE
October, 2013
Composers include Hildegard von Bingen, Sulpitia Cesis, Rafaella Aleotti, Chiara Cozzolani, and Patricia Van Ness.
The program is ornamented by dance and puppetry. Featuring Helena Froehlich's CREATIONDANCE
Annually in December, 2008-2013
Composers included Hildegard von Bingen, Sulpitia Cesis, Rafaella Aleotti, Chiara Cozzolani, and Patricia Van Ness.
The program was ornamented by dance and puppetry. Featuring Helena Froehlich's CREATIONDANCE.
May, 2012
Works by the maestre of early baroque composition: Chiara Cozzolani, Raffaella Aleotti, Bianca Maria Meda, Caterina Assandra, and Sulpitia Cesis, as they might have been performed outside of the convents.
March, 2012
Music to celebrate the 400th birthday of Mistress Anne Bradstreet, America’s first poet, who arrived in Salem, MA on the Arbella in 1630. Music by Dorothy Crawford, and a premiere by Hilary Tann, plus works of Leonarda and Strozzi.
October, 2011
This Garland of Madrigals was written by 14 year old Aleotti and published in 1593. Aleotti was only the second woman to have printed a volume of music devoted exclusively to her compositions.
ELISABETH JACQUET DE LA GUERRE
April, 2011
Works for small instrumental ensemble and voices by the brilliant court composer to Louis XV, as well as a mini-opera by a certain Mlle Laurent.
GREAT MOTETS OF SULPITIA CESIS
February, 2011
We partnered with select members of Concord Women's Chorus and special guests Mack Ramsey and Tom Zajac on sackbut, to present all 18 motets by this remarkable sound engineer who played the lute and composed these stunningly beautiful pieces for double choir as well as smaller groupings.
Hildegard von Bingen's ORDO VIRTUTUM
November, 2010
The first opera ever written was by a woman of immense stature in her day. We performed it in a contemporary setting, with a female devil (CEO) who tempts the young Anima with worldly goods.
BARBARA STROZZI & ISABELLA LEONARDA
May, 2010
Highly ornamented works for voices (Strozzi) and violins (Leonarda) that pushed the boundaries of composition in the 17th century, and still today.
March, 2010
A rarely heard Easter season mass for four voices and continuo instruments by Chiara Margarita Cozzolani. Included Hilary Tann's "Psalm 136" written especially for high voices.
A CHANTAR: THE GREEK CONNECTION
November, 2009
Recently transcribed Byzantine chant by 9th century Greek nun Kassia juxtaposed with songs of love by medieval women trouveres and trobairitz. Featuring lute, harp, recorder, veille and percussion.
May, 2009
Donna Caterina Assandra was one of the first Italian nuns to have an entire collection of music published. We joined her and Donna Chiara Cozzolani, Margaret of Austria and Elizabeth Jaquette de la Guerre for harmony and contrast.
March, 2009
Musical traditions of 16th century Cistercians remained little changed since Hildegard von Bingen. With this program, we visited the music of the Salzinnes Antiphonal, juxtaposing this work with Hildegard's Symphonia, and ended with a new piece by Abbie Betinis based on the poetry of 14th c. Persion poet, Hafez.
Want to experience our past concerts for yourself?
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