‘Louis XIV’s Bassoon’

Photo Courtesy of concert spirituel

MARSH

Tacoma native and accomplished baroque bassoonist Anna Marsh will be part of an unusual and exciting performance Jan. 4 when she and the musicians of Concert Spirituel present “Louis XIV’s Bassoon” at Grace Lutheran Church. Playing early music always on period instruments, the Concert Spirituel players have received wide acclaim from across the country and around the world for their mastery of their instruments, superb playing and way of presenting the material such that it can be thoroughly enjoyed by aficionados and newcomers alike.

“Louis XIV’s Bassoon” will explore the role of the bassoon at the court of Louis XIV and later during 18th century through the talents of Marsh on bassoon, baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan and lutenist John Lenti. This program, for a most intriguing and unusual combination of instruments, will in part delve into one of the most precious unpublished and little-known musical manuscripts in the Library of Congress. Prepared by André Danican Philidor l’ainé, music librarian to Louis XIV, and presented to the Duke of Bavaria, Elector Maximilian II Emanuel, it contains 220 works from operas and other works by Louis XIV’s favorite composers such as Lully, De la Lande, Charpentier and Lambert, all transcribed by Philidor for bassoon and one or two additional instruments for the Duke’s private entertainment. Philidor’s own “Air pour la Flûte Allemande,” which predates any other known solo specifically for the baroque transverse flute, will be heard along with other selections from this remarkable volume.

Concert Spirituel has presented music from the renaissance through the present, always on period instruments, since the early 1980’s in Seattle and throughout the Puget Sound region. An influential concert series in Paris from 1725 until 1790, the Concert Spirituel offered outstanding and innovative sacred and chamber music performances presented by the leading European instrumentalists and composers of the day.

Currently in great demand for regular performances in Seattle, New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Canada, March is currently pursuing a doctorate in historical bassoons at Indiana University. She has a wide variety of musical interests and performs regularly on modern, baroque and classical bassoon and contrabassoons, shawms, dulcians, saxophone and voice. March received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in modern bassoon from the University of Southern California where she studied early music. She has appeared in Germany and the Czech Republic and for the Hollywood Bowl, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Boston Early Music Festival, Sante Fe Pro Musica, Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, Chicago Chorale, Symphony in the Barn and others. Anna will appear as a guest artist on a forthcoming album on Centaur Records “Bassically French.”

Cohan has performed as a solo flutist in 25 countries, having received international acclaim both as a modern flutist and as one of the foremost specialists on all transverse flutes from the Renaissance through the present. He is the only person to win both the Erwin Bodky Award in Boston, and the highest prize awarded in the Flanders Festival International Concours Musica Antiqua in Brugge, Belgium. First prize-winner of the Olga Koussevitzky Young Artist Awards Competition, he has performed throughout Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, and worldwide for the USIA Arts America Program.

He received the highest rating from the Music Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts, and has recorded for NPR in the United States, and for national radio and television in Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Holland, Fiji and the Solomon Islands. Many works have been written for and premiered by him, including four new flute concerti since 2000.

Additionally, Cohan is artistic director of the Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival in Washington, D.C. and the Cascade Early Music Festival. He can “play many superstar flutists one might name under the table” according to the New York Times.

Lutenist Lenti has performed repertoire stretching from the 12th to the 18th centuries on lute and theorbo throughout the United States, at the Bloomington and Boston Early Music Festivals, the Festival Guldener-Herbst in Sondershausen, Germany and at the Magnolia Baroque Festival in North Carolina. Lenti is associate director and regularly plays continuo for the Seattle Baroque Orchestra and has performed with the Seattle Opera and the Pittsburgh Opera, besides playing chamber music with groups like Ensemble Amarelli, Stolen Bread, Harmonious Blacksmith and La Monica.

His recording credits include “The Courtesan’s Arts,” with Ellen Hargis, on Oxford University Press and “On the Amorous Lyre” with La Monica. He is also co-founder with soprano Linda Tsatsanis of the ensemble Dulces Exuviae, described by the Seattle Times as the “best new concert series of 2007,” with Lenti’s playing singled out as “a joy to behold.”

Following undergraduate guitar study with Gerald Klickstein at the North Carolina School of the Arts, Lenti moved to London to study lute, returning to the United States in 2002 to study at Indiana University.

“Louis XIV’s Bassoon” will be performed at 7:30 p.m., Jan. 4 at Grace Lutheran Church, 6202 S. Tyler St. The suggested donation (a free will offering toward expenses) will be $15. Youth 18 and under get in free. For more information, call (253) 472-7105.

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