The pre-eminent New York-based early music ensemble TENET announces its 2015-16 season, a series of six performances spanning four centuries of the greatest European musical traditions, from the Medieval to the Baroque. Highlights of TENET’s 2015-16 season include a three-concert exploration of avant-garde French repertoire from the 14th to the 16th centuries under guest director Robert Mealy, a Christmas celebration of music by Michael Praetorius and his contemporaries, the group’s annual TENEbrae performance featuring Buxtehude’s cantata cycle Membra Jesu Nostri, and an expanded roster of international performers for a spring show featuring works from Claudio Monteverdi’s Madrigals of War and Love.

Of the 2015-16 season, TENET’s Artistic Director Jolle Greenleaf remarks, “I am thrilled to present our seventh season, which marks TENET’s expansion into lesser-known territory highlighting avant-garde music from the medieval repertoire with guest music director Robert Mealy. We also celebrate beloved composer Claudio Monteverdi in a program of works from his most important secular collection, his eighth book of madrigals, and featuring members of the Green Mountain Project alongside international artists who are combining forces for this special event.”

Throughout the 2015-16 season, TENET will explore avant-garde medieval music from 14th-, 15th- and 16th-century France with guest director Robert Mealy under the banner The Sounds of Time. The season opens on Friday, October 9 with music by the Northern French trouvères of the 1300’s. Inspired by the forms invented by their Provençal counterparts the troubadours, the trouvères infused a new, lighter vein into the southerners’ lyric tradition, producing a memorable body of music in which high art songs of courtly love mingle with fanciful tales, and eloquent monodies blend with rhythmic dances. TENET brings together distinguished musicians from across the country to recreate this rich, rarely explored tapestry of sound.

TENET’s season continues on Saturday, December 12, when the ensemble collaborates with Bach Vespers Holy Trinity and Dark Horse Consort for Praetorius: A Weihnachts Celebration. The three acclaimed ensembles join together during the Christmas season to perform works by Michael Praetorius and his German contemporaries including Vom himmel hoch, da komm ich her (From Heaven Above to Earth I Come) and Puer natus in Bethlehem (A child is born in Bethlehem).

The second concert of TENET’s 2015-16 Medieval Series takes place on Friday, February 5, and features music from the ars subtilior. The ars subtilior or “more subtle art,” was an extraordinary musical development that was centered in Paris and Avignon in the south of France at the end of the 14th century. Characterized by complex rhythms and notation, the songs – almost all secular – were sophisticated and complex, qualities that mirror TENET’s refined interpretations. Other new techniques of the ars subtilior included colored notation to indicate note values, and manuscripts in artistic shapes such as harps, hearts and maps.

Following a highly acclaimed, three-year series performing Carlo Gesualdo’s Tenebrae Responsories during Lent, this year’s TENEbrae performance, on Saturday, February 27, offers Buxtehude’s extraordinary Membra Jesu Nostri (“The Limbs of our Jesus”). Under frequent guest director Scott Metcalfe, TENET will perform this vast cantata cycle which is divided into seven parts, each referring to a different part of Christ’s crucified body: feet, knees, hands, side, breast, heart and head. Known as the first Lutheran oratorio, Buxtehude’s score is striking for is transcendental beauty.

TENET’s annual Green Mountain Project performances of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 have become “a treasured staple in New York in recent years (The New York Times), and Monteverdi’s music continues to play a significant part in the ensemble’s repertoire. On Saturday, April 16, members of the Green Mountain Project’s voices, strings, brass and continuo sections will be joined by acclaimed international guest artists cornettist Doron David Sherwin, Irish baroque harpist Maria Christina Cleary, and violinist Robert Mealy to present TENET’s most ambitious undertaking of the season, selections from Claudio Monteverdi’s monumental secular collection Madrigals of War and Love. Published in 1638, just two years before his Vespers, the music from Madrigals of War and Love spans a 30-year period and is a major musical testament of the late Renaissance.

TENET’s 2015-16 season closes on Friday, May 20, with the final installment of the ensemble’s Medieval Series, presenting Music of the Burgundians. The 15th-century Burgundian School comprised a group of the greatest composers of the day, including Guillaume du Fay, Gilles Binchoys, and Antoine Busnoys. Their influence foreshadowed the music of Renaissance Europe, not unlike the influence that TENET projects on to today’s early music performance scene in New York City and beyond.

Supplementing TENET’s performance season is the release of the ensemble’s second recording for AVIE Records, The Secret Lover. Scheduled for release in March 2016, The Secret Lover celebrates music by, for, and about women and pays tribute to the 17th century Concerto delle donne, the ensemble of extraordinarily gifted professional female singers who were renowned for their performances in the courts of the late Italian Renaissance. The Secret Lover, the translation of composer Barbara Strozzi’s cantata L’amante segreto, features three of TENET’s own leading ladies – sopranos Jolle Greenleaf and Molly Quinn, and mezzo-soprano Virginia Warnken – performing the title track alongside works by Francesca Caccini, Luigi Rossi and others.

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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.tenet.nyc

PERFORMANCE INFORMATION

The Sounds of Time: Songs of the Trouvères
Friday, October 9, 2015 – 7:00 pm
Jolle Greenleaf and Molly Quinn sopranos
Virginia Warnken alto
Jason McStoots tenor
Robert Mealy vielle and guest director
Debra Nagy winds
Charles Weaver medieval lute

St. Malachy’s – The Actors’ Chapel

239 West 49th Street
New York, NY 10019

Praetorius: A Weihnachts Celebration
Saturday, December 12, 2015 – 7:00 pm
Jolle Greenleaf and 
Molly Quinn sopranos

Tim Keeler alto

Donald Meineke tenor

David McFerrin bass

Robert Mealy and 
Johanna Novom violins

Ezra Seltzer cello
Wen Yang violone
Alex Opsahl and 
Kiri Tollaksen cornetti

Greg Ingles, Erik Schmalz and 
Mack Ramsey trombones


Hank Heijink and 
Charles Weaver theorbos

Jeff Grossman organ

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church
Central Park West at 65th Street
New York, NY 10023

The Sounds of Time: Music of the Ars Subtilior
Friday, February 5, 2016 – 7:00 pm
Jolle Greenleaf soprano

Luthien Brackett alto

Andrew Padgett bass

Robert Mealy vielle
 and guest director
Shira Kammen vielle and harp

Kathryn Montoya winds

Charles Weaver lute


St. Luke’s in the Field
487 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014

TENEbrae: Buxtehude Membra Jesu Nostri
Saturday, February 27, 2016 – 7:00 pm
Jolle Greenleaf and 
Molly Quinn sopranos

Tim Keeler countertenor

Donald Meineke tenor

Mischa Bouvier bass


Scott Metcalfe violin and guest director

Johanna Novom violin

Emily Walhout and Larry Lipnik violas da gamba
Andrew Arceci viola da gamba and violone 


Hank Heijink theorbo

Jeffrey Grossman chamber organ

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church
Central Park West at 65th Street
New York, NY 10023

Claudio Monteverdi’s Madrigals of War and Love
Saturday, April 16, 2016 – 7:00 pm
Performers to include:
Jolle Greenleaf and Molly Quinn sopranos
Reginald Mobley countertenor
Luthien Brackett mezzo-soprano
Jason McStoots and Aaron Sheehan tenors
Taylor Ward bass
Robert Mealy violin
Doron David Sherwin and Kiri Tollaksen cornetti
Greg Ingles, Erik Schmalz, and Mack Ramsey trombones
Hank Heijink and Charles Weaver theorbos
Maria Christina Cleary baroque harp
Jeffrey Grossman harpsichord

New York’s Society for Ethical Culture
2 West 64th Street
New York, NY 10025

The Sounds of Time: Music of the Burgundians
Friday, May 20, 2016 – 7:00 pm
Jolle Greenleaf soprano

Virginia Warnken alto

Jason McStoots tenor

Andrew Padgett bass

Robert Mealy vielle and guest director

Priscilla Herreid winds

Charles Weaver lute

St. Peter’s Church
619 Lexington Avenue at 54th Street
New York, NY 10022