In a new program designed specifically for Gretna Music, Concordian Dawn, ensemble for medieval music, highlights the female voice and female agency in medieval song through a mesmerizing evening of monophonic and polyphonic vocal music. The concert centers around Benedictine abbess, visionary, writer, and prolific medieval song composer, Hildegard von Bingen and her morality play, Ordo Virtutum—a music drama on the battle for the human soul between 16 personified Virtues and the Devil. It is the earliest known morality play by more than a century and showcases Hildegard’s compositional and creative virtuosity. Alongside selections from the Ordo are monophonic and polyphonic songs from the liturgy of Martyr Saint Katherine of Alexandria, excerpts from the 14th-century French allegory and political satire Le Roman de Fauvel, and selections from the Codex Las Huelgas. Altogether, the program offers a counterpoint to some common misconceptions about the complicated gender roles of the Middle Ages and centers the female voice and perspective at its core, working against complicated (often mysogonist) narratives that have tended to erase or degrade female contributions/achievements in modern historical accounts.

About the ensemble:
Concordian Dawn, ensemble for medieval music, specializes in 12th- through 14th-century vocal repertoire, drawing on primary source material and focusing on socio-philosophical similarities between texts from centuries ago and the mindset of modern society. In doing so, the ensemble produces a musical experience accessible to contemporary audiences, relating the human condition of the past to the familiar experiences of the present. Concordian Dawn was founded in 2012 and performs regularly on the east coast, annually with Gotham Early Music Scene in NYC, and at venues across the country. The ensemble’s “mesmerizing” (Early Music America) debut album, Fortuna Antiqua et Ultra (MSR Classics), was released in December of 2021 to critical acclaim. In July of 2022, Cornell University Press published a collaborative book-recording project between the ensemble and medieval studies scholar, Sarah Kay, entitled Medieval Song from Aristotle to Opera, and the ensemble’s “palpably enchanting” and “unforgettable” (Fanfare) second album based on this collaboration was released by MSR Classics in October of 2023. Concordian Dawn made its west coast debut in 2022 with the Santa Cruz Baroque Festival and at UC-Berkeley and UC-Davis. The ensemble, which received a 2020 Ensemble Forward Award from Chamber Music America, and its director, Christopher Preston Thompson, have performed and led workshops and lectures for Princeton University, Stanford University, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Modern Language Association, the CUNY Graduate Center and the Medieval Academy of America, among others. For more information, please visit www.concordiandawn.com.

Musicians:
Amber Evans – soprano and percussion
Michele Kennedy – soprano
Kristina Boerger – soprano
Emily Lau – mezzo-soprano
Niccolo Seligmann – vielle and percussion
Christopher Preston Thompson – artistic director, tenor, and medieval harp