Award-Winning Blue Heron Ensemble Presents Ockeghem@600: Sine nomine
Friday, March 18, 2022 8:00 pm
Saturday, March 19, 2022 2:30 pm
First Church Cambridge, 11 Garden Street, Cambridge MA
Virtual Concert Release: Friday, April 1, 2022 12:00 pm
Ockeghem@600 is Blue Heron’s multi-year project to perform the complete works of Johannes Ockeghem in thirteen programs over the course of seven seasons. Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1420-1497), one of the most celebrated musicians of the 15th century, is one of the greatest composers of all time, every bit the equal of J.S. Bach in contrapuntal technique and profound expressivity and, like Bach, able to combine the most rigorous intellectual structure with a beguiling sensuality. Blue Heron’s Ockeghem concerts are praised as “cerebral, sensitive, and sensual” (Ru, The Boston Musical Intelligencer) in performances “rich and ardent” (Gantz, The Boston Globe).
Blue Heron’s traversal of the complete works of Johannes Ockeghem approaches completion in the 11th concert of this 13-concert undertaking with a program featuring the so-called Missa sine nomine (“Mass without a name”) for five voices. The cycle, a Missa brevis (“short Mass”) consisting of just three movements, all based on plainchant, is brief indeed, yet in typical Ockeghemian fashion packed full of complexity, surprise, and wit. The program also includes a stand-alone, virtuosic Credo sine nomine, the plangent Salve regina, and a several additional songs by Ockeghem, as well as motets by Heinrich Isaac and Jacob Obrecht and the gorgeous song Quant j’ay au cueur by Busnoys.
Don’t miss this epic repertoire, proclaimed in its time as “most suitable for the immortal gods.” (Tinctoris, Liber de arte contrapuncti of 1477).
Featuring Blue Heron musicians Megan Chartrand, Kim Leeds, Corey Dalton Hart, Jason McStoots, Mark Sprinkle, Sumner Thompson, Paul Guttry, David McFerrin and Scott Metcalfe, artistic director.
Free pre-concert talk by Prof. Sean Gallagher (New England Conservatory), 45 minutes prior to each concert.
Please note our COVID safety protocols for in-person attendance at https://www.blueheron.org/covid-19/
Tickets for live concerts are $50 for adults, $35 for Seniors, $10 for students or low-income, and include on-line access. Tickets for online-only concerts are $39 for adults, $30 for seniors, $10 for students or low-income. Visit www.blueheron.org/concerts for full details.
ABOUT BLUE HERON
Blue Heron 2021
BLUE HERON has been acclaimed by The Boston Globe as “one of the Boston music community’s indispensables” and hailed by Alex Ross in The New Yorker for its “expressive intensity.” The ensemble ranges over a wide repertoire from plainchant to new music, with particular specialties in 15th-century Franco-Flemish polyphony and early 16th-century English sacred music, and is committed to vivid live performance informed by the study of original source materials and historical performance practices. Blue Heron offers a catalog of twelve recordings and is the first group outside of Europe to receive the Gramophone Classical Music Award for Early Music (2018). Blue Heron is Renaissance vocal music for the 21st century. For more information and photos, go to www.bluheron.org
