2025 ViRtual Series

Concert videos premiere Fridays (and one Saturday!) at 7:30pm on our YouTube channel.
Free to watch, with donations heartily encouraged.

Ampersand
Madeline Apple Healey, soprano & co-director
Timothy Parsons, countertenor & co-director
Hannah Baslee, contralto
Jacob Perry, tenor
Andrew Padgett, bass-baritone

*Saturday, July 5 AMPERSAND

equal the stars in number: on the cusp of the 16th century

Vocal ensemble Ampersand explores the astonishing creativity on display in the Chigi Codex and the Eton Choirbook, both compiled in the waning years of the 15th century. Their program highlights the floridity and inventiveness of the counterpoint found in these works as well as the curious style of combinative myth-making on display–many of the texts mix imagery from ancient Greek and Roman mythology with flowery exhortations to Mary, the mother of Jesus. The Eton Choirbook is represented by English composers William Horewud, Walter Lambe and William Cornysh; and the Chigi Codex by Franco-Flemish masters Johannes Regis, Gaspar van Weerbeke, and Loyset Compere. Learn More

Friday, July 11
Seven Times Salt

From Plimoth to Yorktown

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the “shot heard round the world." The historic events at Lexington and Concord on the morning of April 19, 1775 sparked the beginning of the Revolutionary War and the eventual creation of the United States. This tour of early New England traces a musical lineage from the first settlers at Plimoth to their descendants on the eve of the Revolution and eventual victory at Yorktown. English catches and early shape note hymns lead to songs of liberty, rants against taxation and tyranny, wartime laments, and even some of George Washington's favorite dance tunes. The program includes works by Thomas Arne and William Billings, selections from the Ainsworth Psalter and the Bay Psalm Book, and a pleasing variety of dance tunes from 18th-c. American manuscripts. Learn More

Seven Times Salt
Julia Soojin Cavallaro, mezzo-soprano
Karen Burciaga, violin, guitar, alto
Daniel Meyers, recorders, flute, percussion, baritone
Josh Schreiber, viol, cello, bass
Matthew Wright, lute, guitar, tenor

Long & Away
Karen Burciaga, treble & tenor viol, vielle 
Anne Legêne, treble & tenor viol 
James Perretta, bass viol, vielle

July 18 Long & Away

Songs of Time: Music for the Muses

Viol consort Long & Away presents an eclectic program that travels with the Muses from the 1400s to the present day. Inspired by the time hopping “Song of Time” theme from The Legend of Zelda, the journey begins with a trove of early Renaissance music by Dufay, Binchois, and their contemporaries performed on the vielle, ancestor of the viol. The program then highlights the great 16th and 17th-c. English viol consort composers Gibbons, Jenkins, and Purcell. Moving ever forward in time, the musicians sample dance tunes of 18th-c. Scotland and choral writing of 20th-c. France, then make their way to the modern era with pieces by living New England composers Will Ayton and Larry Wallach. The consort bids farewell to the Muses and closes the Door of Time with James Perretta’s Consort Fantasy on The Song of Time. Learn More

July 25
Silentwoods Collective

Sicilian Fables & Legends of the South

Silentwoods Collective dives into the passionate and fiery music of Southern Italy, a region rich in Greek and Arab cultural heritage. Rituals of the early modern and pre-Christian eras reveal not only antiquity’s aesthetic influences in the area but also functional relations. Evolving and mutating with each passing generation, one example of such relationships is the lore surrounding the tarantella, a genre descending from ancient times. A reaction to emotional and or physical trauma, this program traces the lineage of the tarantella’s vigorous energy through the centuries to the ecstatic rituals involving music and dance surrounding the orphic and bacchic cults of antiquity. As the musicians explore these and other stories and rituals of Southern Italy, they feature gems of a seldom performed and understudied repertoire–works by Scarlatti, Coya, Caresana, Giulio de Ruvo, Provenzale, and more.
Learn More

Silentwoods Collective
Carley DeFranco, soprano
Danilo Bonina &
Nelli Herskovitz-Jabotinsky, violins
Andrew Koutroubas, cello
John McKean, harpsichord 
Luce Burrell, theorbo

These programs are supported in part by grants from the Lincoln and Andover Cultural Councils, local agencies which are supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.