The preëminent New York-based early music ensemble TENET has gained international renown for its annual Green Mountain Project performances of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610. The composer’s music continues to play a significant part in the ensemble’s repertoire, and on Saturday, April 16, at the Society for Ethical Culture, special guest director Paul O’Dette will lead regular members of the Green Mountain Project and guest artists in a program featuring music from Claudio Monteverdi’s Madrigals of War and Love.

For Madrigals of War and Love, TENET’s artistic director Jolle Greenleaf brings together an expanded roster of leading internationally acclaimed musicians including European-based cornettist Doron David Sherwin and viola da gambist Erin Headley, Irish baroque harpist Maria Christina Cleary and New York-based violinist Robert Mealy. Under the musical direction of lutenist Paul O’Dette, this is the ensemble’s most ambitious undertaking of the season.

Claudio Monteverdi’s Eighth Book of Madrigals, the monumental secular collection known as Madrigals of War and Love (Madrigali guerrieri ed amorosi), was published in 1638, just two years before his grand collection Selva Morale was published. TENET’s Green Mountain Project performed selections from this collection to great acclaim in 2012, producing a “glorious, smoothly blended, beautifully textured sound (The New York Times). The music that Monteverdi brought together for Madrigals of War and Love spans a 30-year period and represents a major musical testament of the late Renaissance. The composer drew from poetry by Petrarch, Tasso, Guarini, Rinuccini and others. The compositional style is one of Monteverdi’s own invention, stile concitato or “agitated style,” which employs effects such as rapid repeated notes and extended trills as symbols of aggression or anger. TENET’s sold-out 2012 concert of madrigals from this collection was performed at Columbia University’s Italian Academy.

TENET’s program will include Altri canti d’amore (Let others sing of Love), Hor che ciel (Now, while the sky), Lamento della ninfa (The Nymph’s Lament), and Ardo e scoprir, ahi lasso, io non ardisco (I burn and alas, do not have the courage to reveal) which appears on TENET’s recording UNO + ONE: Italia Nostra (AVIE Records). Instrumental works will include brass ensembles by Giovanni Gabrieli and his contemporaries, and Palestrina’s Io son ferito, ahi lasso featuring diminutions by Doron David Sherwin, executed by Mr. Sherwin and Erin Headley.

The next and final concert of TENET’s 2015-16 season, on Friday, May 20, is the third and final installment in a season-long exploration of avant-garde French repertoire from the 14th to the 16th centuries, under the direction of Robert Mealy.

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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

Claudio Monteverdi’s Madrigals of War and Love
Saturday, April 16, 2016 – 7:00 pm

Program
WAR
Toccata from Orfeo
Altri canti d’amore
Batalla di Barabaso yerno de Satanas by Falcionieri from Il Primo Libro di Canzone, Sinfonie, Fantasie
Gira il Nemico, Insidioso Amore
Echo canzona by Bastiano Chilese
Hor che ciel

LOVE
Canzon Ottava by Marini
Altri canti di marte
Io son ferito, ahi lasso by Palestrina featuring Doron Sherwin/Erin Headley
Ardo e scoprir
Ego flos campi
Non havea febo ancor/Lamento della ninfa
Ballo, Final Chorus, and Moresca from Monteverdi’s Orfeo

Performers
Jolle Greenleaf soprano and artistic director
Molly Quinn soprano
Reginald Mobley alto
Jason McStoots and Aaron Sheehan tenors
John Taylor Ward bass

Robert Mealy and Adriane Post violins
Erin Headley viola da gamba

Doron David Sherwin and Kiri Tollaksen cornetti
Greg Ingles, Erik Schmalz and Mack Ramsey trombones

Paul O’Dette theorbo and guest music director
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