The pre-eminent New York-based early music ensemble TENET announces its 2014-15 season, a series of six performances that encompasses an array of Renaissance and Baroque music by those eras’ greatest composers from England, France, Germany and Italy. Hallmarks of TENET’s 2014-15 season include the group’s annual TENEbrae offering at Lent, and the return of the Green Mountain Project which this season expands from the group’s celebrated annual performance of Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, to include a newly constructed Vespers featuring music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier.

Of the 2014-15 season, TENET’s Artistic Director Jolle Greenleaf remarks, “I am thrilled to present our sixth season to include inspiring works by baroque masters. This year’s Green Mountain Project returns with a fantastic, newly constructed Vespers by Scott Metcalfe with music by Charpentier, alongside our annual performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610. We close our season with a staged, memorized show for three sopranos entitled Concerto delle donne, featuring works by, for, and about women. This special presentation brings me great joy as it has been an idea that has evolved and expanded over time. I very much look forward to sharing this exciting season with our audiences in New York!”

TENET’s season opens on Saturday, September 20 with a program of motets by J. S. Bach. In stunningly clear one-singer-to-a part renditions with instrumental doublings, the voices of TENET will join forces with the vibrant ensemble the Sebastians, under guest conductor Scott Metcalfe. The program includes Komm, Jesu komm, Der Geist Hilft unser Schwachheit auf, Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, and Fürchte dich nicht, ich bin bei dir, in addition to instrumental works for oboes and strings.

On St. Cecilia Day, November 22, TENET honors the patroness of music with a program of songs, odes and sonatas by Henry Purcell, the great 17th-century English composer who enthusiastically participated in the annual celebrations and competitions for St. Cecilia. For 2014 TENET honors the occasion with a festive new program of works from Purcell’s numerous but seldom performed “symphony songs,” or secular cantatas, as well as dances and airs from his music for the theater and other chamber music. The program will be repeated on November 23 at St. Barnabas Church in Greenwich, Connecticut.

The Green Mountain Project returns in January 2015 when TENET offers a pair of Vespers, much as they did in the summer of 2014 during the inaugural Early Music Festival:NYC when they performed Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 as well as Scott Metcalfe’s newly reconstructed Vespers for the Feast of St. John the Baptist. TENET returns with Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 on January 10, and on the previous evening, January 9, they will perform a newly recreated vespers from the French master Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Further performances of the Charpentier and Monteverdi will take place in Boston on January 11 and 12, 2015.

TENET completes a three-year series that began in 2013 to commemorate the anniversary of Carlo Gesualdo’s death, by performing the 16th-century Italian composer’s harmonically adventurous Tenebrae Responsories for Holy Week. This year’s Lenten performance, on March 12, offers the Responses for Holy Saturday, a program that will be repeated on March 14 in Jacksonville, Florida, and March 15 in Savannah, Georgia.

On April 18, three of TENET’s leading ladies, Jolle Greenleaf, Molly Quinn and Virginia Warnken, present Concerto delle donne, re-enacting the female vocal singers of the same name who became famous during the late Italian Renaissance. Praised for their artistry, the virtuosas’ signature style was florid and filled with ornaments, inspiring composers throughout Italy, including Rossi, Mazzocchi and Monteverdi as well as female composers Barbara Strozzi and Francesca Caccini. Concerto delle donne highlights close-harmony 17th-century Italian vocal style in solos, duets and trios, and bridges two compositional styles: secunda practica, a term coined by Monteverdi in which emphasis given to text over harmonic rigors, and stile moderno, the florid, ornamental style developed by the next generation which strove to create a balance between music and poetry.

TENET’s 2014-15 season is augmented with their return to The Metropolitan Museum on January 21 and 22, for The Grand Tour, a gallery-hopping excursion that marries music with art. Following last year’s sold out performances, this year’s Grand Tour traverses Europe, with music from the British Isles for solo harp in the Met’s English galleries; Dutch songs and dances played on recorders, shawms, bagpipes and lute as seen in the paintings of Bruegel, Vermeer, and Rembrandt; music from 16th-century Spain in the El Greco gallery; and, honoring the Met’s 17th-century Italian galleries, music composed for Concerto delle donne, the group of professional female singers who revolutionized the role of women in music during the late Renaissance under Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara.

Another return is to Puerto Rico’s Festival Casals where, on March 7, the voices of TENET will feature as soloists in Bach's seminal St. Matthew Passion, conducted by Helmut Rilling.

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For further information, image or interview requests please contact Melanne Mueller, MusicCo International, 917 907 2785, melanne@musiccointernational.com

For further information about TENET, please visit http://www.tenetnyc.com

PERFORMANCE INFORMATION?
The Motets of J. S. Bach
Saturday, September 20, 2014 – 7:00 pm
Including Komm, Jesu komm, Der Geist Hilft unser Schwachheit auf, Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, and Fürchte dich nicht, ich bin bei dir
under guest conductor Scott Metcalfe
TENET:
Jolle Greenleaf and Molly Quinn sopranos
Virginia Warnken and Geoffrey Williams altos
Jason McStoots and Donald Meineke tenors
Dashon Burton and Charles Wesley Evans basses
with
the Sebastians:
Daniel Lee and Alexander Woods violins
Kyle Miller viola
Ezra Seltzer cello
Debra Nagy, Kathryn Montoya, and Priscilla Herreid oboes
Nate Helgeson bassoon
Jeffrey Grossman organ

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church?
3 West 65th Street
New York, NY 10023

ODES: In Honor of St. Cecilia
Saturday, November 22, 2014 – 7:00 pm
St. Luke in the Fields?
487 Hudson Street?
New York, NY 10014
Sunday, November 23, 2014 – 5:00 pm
St. Barnabas Episcopal Church
954 Lake Avenue
Greenwich, CT 06831
A selection of Henry Purcell’s secular symphony songs, theater music, dances and airs

GREEN MOUNTAIN PROJECT
Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Vespers
Friday, January 9, 2015 – 7:30 pm
Church of St. Joseph
371 Sixth Avenue
New York, NY 10014
Sunday, January 11, 2015 – 7:30 pm in Boston, MA

Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610
Saturday, January 10, 2015 – 7:30 pm
St. Jean Baptiste Church ?
184 East 76th Street (Lexington Avenue)
New York, NY 10021
Monday, January 12, 2015 – 7:30 pm in Cambridge, MA

The Grand Tour
Wednesday, January 21, 2015 – 8:00 pm
Thursday, January 22, 2015 – 8:00 pm
Concerto delle donna: works by, for and about women from 17th-century Italy
The Metropolitan Museum of Art?
1000 Fifth Avenue?
New York, NY 10028-0198

J. S. Bach St. Matthew Passion
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Aaron Sheehan Evangelist / Mischa Bouvier Jesus / Jolle Greenleaf soprano / Virginia Warnken alto / Jason McStoots tenor / Tyler Duncan bass
Helmut Rilling conductor
Festival Casals de Puerto Rico  
Pablo Casals Symphony Hall
www.festcasalspr.gobierno.pr

TENEbrae
Gesualdo Tenebrae Responsories for Holy Saturday
Thursday, March 12, 2015 – 7:00 pm
St. Ignatius of Antioch?
552 West End Avenue (West 87th Street)?
New York, NY 10024
Saturday, March 14, 2015 at 7:30 pm 
Palm Presbyterian Church
3410 3rd Street
South Jacksonville Beach, FL 32250
Sunday, March 15, 2015 – 3:00 pm
St. Peters Episcopal Church?
3 West Ridge Road
Savannah, GA 31411

Concerto della donne
Saturday, April 18, 2015 – 7:00 pm
Music by, for, and about women by 17th century Italian masters Luigi Rossi, Barbara Strozzi and others
House of the Redeemer?
7 East 95th Street
New York, NY 10128
Jolle Greenleaf and Molly Quinn sopranos / Virginia Warnken mezzo-soprano