Colonial Musicale with Juilliard December 8, 2013

Drawing on an American tradition of celebrating the holidays with music, Grant Herreid, Artistic Director of the Yale Baroque Opera Project has curated a unique pastiche of 18th and early 19th century arrangements just for us. Attendees enjoyed historic works by European and American composers performed on English Guitar, Spanish Guitar, Theorbo and Lute. Grant was joined by his colleagues Andrew Rutherford and Daniel Swenberg. Their dynamic program tailored to the history of our site and the culture of old New-York will feature songs by Francis Hopkinson, works by Handel, and American, French, Spanish and English music for dances enjoyed in colonial times.

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This will be Grant's third appearance at JHC. He is on the faculty at Yale University, where he directs the Collegium Musicum and was music director for their recent productions of Cavalli's Giasone, Sacrati's La Finta Pazza, and Cavalli's Scipione Affricano. Grant also teaches at Mannes College of Music, and directs the New York Continuo Collective, an ensemble of singers and early plucked-string instruments devoted to the interpretation of 17th-century continuo song. He is a stage director for the Accademia d'Amore baroque opera workshop in Seattle, and has played theorbo, lute and baroque guitar with the Chicago Opera Theater, Aspen Music Festival, Portland Opera, and New York City Opera, as well as the opera programs at Juilliard, Curtis, and Mannes. Grant has created and directed several theatrical early music shows, and he devotes much of his time to exploring the esoteric unwritten traditions of medieval, Renaissance, and baroque music with the early music ensemble Ex Umbris and the plucked-string group Ensemble Viscera.