Juilliard Historical Performance Presents “Sprezzatura: Virtuoso Music for Three Violins From the 17th Century”; Featuring Violinists Elizabeth Blumenstock, Robert Mealy, and Cynthia Roberts Thursday, October 27, 2016, at 7:30pm in Paul Hall, Presented as Part of Juilliard’s Daniel Saidenberg Faculty Recital Series

NEW YORK — Juilliard Historical Performance presents “Sprezzatura: Virtuoso Music for Three Violins from the 17th Century” featuring historical performance faculty members Elizabeth Blumenstock, Robert Mealy, and Cynthia Roberts on Thursday, October 27, 2016, at 7:30pm in Paul Hall. The three violinists will be joined by cellist Phoebe Carrai, harpsichordist Avi Stein, and Charles Weaver on theorbo and guitar. They’ll perform chamber works from the 1600s by Buonamente, Buxtehude, Castello, Falconieri, Galli, Marini, Pachelbel, Purcell, Rosenmüller, and Schmelzer. (The complete program follows at the end of this press release.) The recital is presented as part of Juilliard’s Daniel Saidenberg Faculty Recital Series.

“This program celebrates the brilliant violinist-composers of the seventeenth century, and explores the rich and sonorous possibilities offered by three violins,” writes Robert Mealy, director of Juilliard Historical Performance. “From one of the earliest works written specifically for violins by Giovanni Gabrieli, to the spectacular virtuosity of the German violinist Johann Schmelzer, our concert is an opportunity to hear some rarely-performed masterpieces played by a sparkling musical conversation among colleagues.”

Juilliard’s full-scholarship Historical Performance program was established and endowed in 2009 with the generous support of Bruce and Suzie Kovner.

	Elizabeth Blumenstock

Elizabeth Blumenstock is a long-time concertmaster, soloist, and leader of the San Francisco Bay Area’s Philharmonia Baroque and American Bach Soloists, concertmaster of the International Handel Festival in Göttingen, Germany, and artistic director of the Corona del Mar Baroque Music Festival. Her love of chamber music has involved her in several accomplished smaller ensembles including Musica Pacifica, Galax Quartet, Ensemble Mirable, Live Oak Baroque, and Voices of Music. In addition to Juilliard’s Historical Performance program, she teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the American Bach Soloists’ summer Festival and Academy, the International Baroque Institute at Longy, and the Valley of the Moon Music Festival. Ms. Blumenstock plays a 1660 Andrea Guarneri violin built in Cremona, Italy, on generous loan to her from the Philharmonia Baroque Period Instrument Trust.

Cellist Phoebe Carrai received her MM at the New England Conservatory of Music and studied with Nikolaus Harnoncourt at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. She joined Musica Antiqua Köln in 1983, making 40 discs for Deutsche Grammophon with the ensemble. She taught at the Conservatory of the Arts in Berlin for 16 years and at the Hillversum Conservatory in Holland. Ms. Carrai joined the Juilliard faculty in 2009 and also teaches at the Longy School of Music. She directs the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra and performs regularly with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, Göttingen Händel Festival Orchestra, and Arcadian Academy. Her recording of the six Bach suites for solo cello is on the Avie label. She has also recorded for Harmonia Mundi, Telarc, Decca, and BMG.

	Robert Mealy

One of America’s leading historical string players, Robert Mealy has recorded and toured a variety of repertoire with many ensembles in the U.S. and in Europe, including Les Arts Florissants, Tafelmusik, Sequentia, the Boston Camerata, and the American Bach Soloists. Mr. Mealy is principal concertmaster at Trinity Wall Street and the orchestra director of the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra; he received a Grammy for his work with the festival. A devoted chamber musician, he co-directs the 17th-century ensemble Quicksilver, and recently completed a series of concerts surveying the obbligato sonatas of J.S. and C.P.E. Bach in Washington at the Smithsonian Museum’s National Museum of American History. Committed to education as well as performing, he directs Juilliard’s Historical Performance program having joined the faculty in 2009. From 2003 to 2015, he taught at Yale University, directing the postgraduate Yale Baroque Ensemble and the Yale Collegium Musicum. Prior to that, he taught at Harvard for over a decade and founded the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra. In 2004, he received Early Music America‘s Binkley Award for outstanding teaching and scholarship. He has recorded more than 80 albums on most major labels.

	Cynthia Roberts

Cynthia Roberts appears regularly as concertmaster with Musica Angelica and the Clarion Orchestra, and performs with the Trinity Baroque Orchestra, Smithsonian Chamber Players, Tafelmusik, Philharmonia, and the Boston Early Music Festival. In Europe, she has performed as concertmaster of Les Arts Florissants and appeared with Orchester Wiener Akademie, the London Classical Players, and the Taverner Players. Her teachers include Joseph Silverstein, Josef Gingold, and Stanley Ritchie. She joined the Juilliard faculty in 2009 and also teaches at the University of North Texas and the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, and has given master classes at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Indiana University, Eastman School of Music, the Cleveland Institute, Cornell University, Rutgers University, Minsk Conservatory, Leopold-Mozart-Zentrum Augsburg, Shanghai Conservatory, Vietnam National Academy of Music, and for the Jeune Orchestre Atlantique in France. Her recording credits include Sony, Analekta, and Deutsche Harmonia Mundi.

Avi Stein teaches continuo and chamber music at Juilliard and is the associate organist and chorus master at Trinity Church Wall Street as well as the artistic director of the Helicon Foundation. Mr. Stein performed on the 2015 Grammy Award winning recording by the Boston Early Music Festival of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers and La Couronne de Fleurs, and he was recently featured in Early Music America magazine in an article on the new generation of leaders in the field. He directed the young artists’ program at the Carmel Bach Festival and has conducted a variety of ensembles including the Opera Français de New York, OperaOmnia, the Amherst Festival opera, and his own 4×4 Festival. Mr. Stein studied at Indiana University, Eastman School of Music, University of Southern California, and was a Fulbright scholar in Toulouse.

Charles Weaver performs on early plucked-string instruments both as a recitalist and as an accompanist. Chamber music appearances include Quicksilver, Early Music New York, Piffaro, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Folger Consort, Blue Heron, Musica Pacifica, and the Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Ensemble. He is on the faculty of The Juilliard School, where he teaches historically informed performance on plucked instruments. In 2016, he was the assistant conductor for Juilliard Opera’s production of Cavalli’s La Calisto. He also works with the New York Continuo Collective: an ensemble of players and singers exploring seventeenth-century vocal music in semester-length workshop productions. He has taught at the Lute Society of America Summer Workshop, the Madison Early Music Festival, and the Western Wind Workshop in ensemble singing. He is associate director of music at St Mary Church in Norwalk, Conn., where he specializes in Renaissance polyphony and Gregorian chant.

Juilliard’s full-scholarship Historical Performance program was established and endowed in 2009 by the generous support of Bruce and Suzie Kovner. The program is open to candidates for the master of music, graduate diploma, and doctor of musical arts degrees, and offers comprehensive study of music from the 17th and 18th centuries. A high-profile concert season of opera, orchestral, and chamber music is augmented by a performance-oriented curriculum that fosters an informed, vital understanding of the many issues unique to period-instrument performances with the level of technical excellence and musical integrity for which Juilliard is renowned. The faculty comprises many of the leading performers and scholars in the field. Frequent collaborations with Juilliard’s Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts and the integration of modern instrument majors outside of the Historical Performance program have introduced new repertoires and increased awareness of historical performance practice throughout Juilliard.

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