European Music from Before 1700: Claremont Concert Choir, Claremont Treble Singers & HMC Early Music Ensemble

Charles W. Kamm, director
Jonathan Johnson, collaborative keyboardist/harpsichord

PROGRAM

Tonight’s program features a variety of music from the European Middle Ages, Renaissance, and early Baroque eras of music history. First in the program you will hear chant by the earliest named European composer—Hildegard von Bingen, a Christian mystic, nun, writer, and composer—as well as early polyphony (part music), including part of a Mass composed at Reims before 1365 by Guillaume Machaut. The Early Music Ensemble brings us into the Renaissance with two dances by Tielman Susato. We then perform a number of pieces of secular vocal polyphony, including a Spanish villancico, French chansons, and Italian and English madrigals. Pieces from the early Baroque era include a chorus from an early opera, La Liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina, by Francesca Caccini, Psalm settings by a Jewish and a Lutheran composer, and an Italian trio sonata. We close the concert by returning to the Middle Ages to all welcome in summer.

The Harvey Mudd College Early Music Ensemble is a group that performs European music of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Baroque periods on instruments of the time.

Bill Alves is a composer, musician, and Miller Professor of Humanities at Harvey Mudd College. His recordings include The Terrain of Possibilities, Imbal-Imbalan, Mystic Canyon, and Guitars and Gamelan, and his work with computer animation is collected by the Kinetica Video Library as Celestial Dance. He is the author of Music of the Peoples of the World (3rd edition from Cengage/Schirmer) and coauthor of Lou Harrison: American Musical Maverick (Indiana University Press). He was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Indonesia, where he taught and studied gamelan music, and he is now director of the American Gamelan Ensemble at the Claremont Colleges. He is co-director of MicroFest, the Southern California festival of microtonal music.

The Claremont Concert Choir and the Claremont Treble Singers are the choirs of the Joint Music Program of Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, and Scripps Colleges. The Joint Music Program choirs were established with the Concert Choir in 1963 as a combination of the Scripps College Glee Club and the then Claremont Men’s College Stag Chorus. The Concert Choir has performed with the Atlanta Symphony, the Santa Monica Symphony, the Utah Symphony, the Orange County Symphony, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, as well as its regular series with the Claremont Concert Orchestra. The Treble Singers is a newer offering of the Joint Music Program, reflecting the changing demographics of the constituent colleges. The choral program is a member of the Pacific Southwest Intercollegiate Choral Association.

Charles W. Kamm is the director of the choirs of the Joint Music Program of Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, and Scripps Colleges. He is an associate professor in the music faculty at Scripps College, where he teaches music history, core humanities courses, and conducting. From 1996-2002, Charles served as visiting professor of choral conducting at Vassar College. He taught at the University of Massachusetts Boston from 1993-1996, concurrently holding a conducting fellowship at Harvard University. Kamm has led both amateur and professional ensembles in the United States, Europe, and China, and has prepared choirs for Finnish National Radio and for the Classical Music Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria. He has held a Fulbright Fellowship, studying conducting at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and performing and researching Finnish choral music. Kamm received the Bachelor of Arts from Earlham College, the Master of Music from Michigan State University, the Doctor of Musical Arts from Yale University, and has also studied in Vienna, Austria.

Keyboardist Jonathan Johnson is the collaborative choral accompanist for the Joint Music Program of Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, and Scripps Colleges. He holds a master’s degree from the USC Thornton School of Music. Jonathan also works as an accompanist at Chaffey College and freelances as a musical theater pianist and keyboardist.


Thank you

The choirs especially appreciate the work of Joint Music Program Coordinator, Gregory Jackson, and Scripps College Performing Arts Center Technical Director, Cameron Mostoufi, and his team.

HMC is deeply grateful for the generous support that created The Ken Stevens ’61 Founding Class Concert Series.