Washington Early Music Festival Fights On

Read my review today on the Washington Post Web site:

Charles T. Downey, DC's Early-Music Groups Join to Pass the Hat
Washington Post, July 20, 2009

The Washington Early Music Festival is doing its best to endure uncertain financial times. To raise money for the 2010 festival (which will focus on France), seven groups and one soloist donated their talents for a gala benefit concert Saturday night at St. Mark's Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill, a hodgepodge that was entertaining, often lovely but overall unspectacular.

Among the vocal selections, the Countertop Consort gave the most consistently beautiful performance, with eight voices evenly balanced in a section of Tallis's "Lamentations." The Hebrew letters before each verse, likely because of their exotic inscrutability, inspired the composer to create some of his most mysterious and imaginative music -- rendered here as luscious vocalises, unfurled like the whorls of a manuscript's elegantly illuminated capital letters. [Continue reading]

Washington Early Music Festival
St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Capitol Hill

Previously:
Washington Early Music Festival: 2008 | 2006