NEWS RELEASE

Contact: David West (west@nsula.edu )
News Bureau
Northwestern State University
Natchitoches, LA 71497
(318) 357-6466

3/22/2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NATCHITOCHES ­The Plano Baroque Chamber Ensemble will perform at Northwestern State University Sunday, April 3, at 3 p.m. in Magale Recital Hall. Admission is free and open to the public.

The ensemble is comprised of current and former students of the University of North Texas, who perform on historically accurate copies of instruments of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries produced by some of the most prominent makers of historical instruments active today.

No ensembles in Louisiana perform on period instruments so this concert will prove to be informative as well as entertaining. The performance of Renaissance, baroque and classical music on copies of the instruments for which the music was originally composed, coupled with the use of historically informed performance practices, breathes new life into music of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Musicians involved in historical performance are scholars as well as performers, using treatises (such as those by Jacques Hotteterre, Johann Joachim Quantz, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and Leopold Mozart) as well as diaries, letters, and evidence from the visual arts to resurrect the performance practices of early music.

There are several differences between modern and period instruments. Renaissance instruments, such as viols, shawms, krummhorns, dulcians, and renaissance recorders, produce very distinctive timbres that are well suited to the consort style of playing (where three to five instruments of the same or similar tone quality play as a group) which was common in the Renaissance.

Baroque wind instruments are less resistant (blown more easily) than their modern counterparts, and the lack of an intricate system of keys causes the player to have to use more complicated cross-fingerings, which gives each scale (and therefore the melodies) an uneven quality that was most attractive to baroque and classical composers. Baroque string instruments use strings made of cat- or sheep-gut; the sound is therefore lighter and more laden with overtones than that of the modern strings. The bows are also of a lighter construction, and are shaped in a way that is more conducive to the rhythmic ebb and flow of baroque and classical music.

Members of the ensemble include Jennifer Carpenter of Goldsboro, N.C., on baroque recorders, Renaissance recorder and krummhorn, Edmond Chan of Corpus Christi, Texas, on baroque violin, Cecilia Hamilton of Semmes, Ala., on baroque flute, Renaissance recorder and krummhorn, Shawna Hamilton of Denton, Texas, on baroque violoncello, René Perez of Veracruz, México on harpsichord, Jennifer Sadoff of Chicago on baroque bassoon and dulcian and Billy Traylor of Denham Springs on baroque oboe, harpsichord, Renaissance recorder and krummhorn.

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