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AMASS: A New Mass for Old Instruments
Sunday, March 10, 2024, at 7:30pm Christ Episcopal Church 120 W. High St., Charlottesville VA Early Music Access Project offers a world premiere from composer James Dargan that features vocal soloists Brianna Robinson, Patrick Dailey, and the composer himself, accompanied by strings and organ. For this new work, AMASS, Dargan has married two musical styles he has grown up singing, embedding the spirituals of the Black churches he attended as a child into the Latin mass tradition of his professional choral singing career, using compositional techniques of the medieval, Renaissance, and baroque periods, as well as period instruments. Works of Bach and Buxtehude have been selected to punctuate key moments of the Mass. James Dargan, composer & bass Brianna J. Robinson, soprano Patrick Dailey, countertenor Carmen Johnson Pájaro & David McCormick, baroque violins Tavya McCoy, baroque viola Jane Leggiero, viola da gamba Patricia Ann Neely, violone Nicole Keller, organ |
The Hemings Family of Monticello: A Musical History Dinner
April 27, 2023 | Montfair Resort Farm, Crozet VA Dr. Leni Sorensen of Indigo House and David McCormick of Early Music Access Project joined forces for an evening of food, wine, and music that offered a window into the many accomplishments of the Hemings family, once enslaved at Monticello. Leni introduced dinner guests to Chef James Hemings, who was trained in the art of French cooking while accompanying Thomas Jefferson in Paris. In Philadelphia, Hemings would use these skills to cook for countless diplomats and politicians during Jefferson’s time as Secretary of State. This multi-course meal offered a glimpse into the Hemings kitchen and the extended family members who learned from James Hemings and cooked at Monticello after his death. Throughout the evening, David played fiddle tunes associated with this highly musical family. All three of Sally Hemings’ sons with Thomas Jefferson appear to have been fiddlers, and there were three generations of fiddlers among their cousins in the Scott family.
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Early Music Access Project partnered with Heritage Film Project to produce Black Fiddlers, a groundbreaking documentary from filmmaker Eduardo Montes-Bradley. The film was recently an official selection at the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville, Virginia. EMAP sponsored a virtual screening in November 2022. The film is now available for streaming via Kanopy.
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Sacred Music of Monticello
March 6, 2022 | Christ Episcopal Church, Charlottesville VA Among the music gathered by Thomas Jefferson for his library at Monticello is a unique version of Italian composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's famous Stabat Mater, composed just before Pergolesi died of tuberculosis at age 26 in 1736. In Jefferson's copy, though, the traditional Latin text has been replaced by the words of a poem by Alexander Pope, "The Dying Christian to his Soul." But there was also a rich tradition of musical worship at Monticello among the community of enslaved people who lived and toiled there. This musical culture, less well documented but much more influential on American music over subsequent centuries, offers a powerful counterpoint to Pergolesi's hymn for voices and small chamber ensemble. Sacred Music of Monticello presents spirituals associated with Monticello's enslaved people interleaved with movements of the Pergolesi/Pope Stabat Mater. The concert, offered in person and online by Early Music Access Project at Charlottesville's historic Christ Episcopal Church, features soprano Brianna J. Robinson, countertenor Patrick Dailey, and instrumentalists of Charlottesville's Early Music Access Project. The program includes the world premiere of spirituals arranged by baritone James Dargan, who will also perform in the concert.
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Based on his research as a 2020 Fellow of the International Center for Jefferson Studies, David McCormick leads a tour of downtown Charlottesville that illuminates the lives of the Scott and Hemings family fiddlers with stops at the Maplewood Cemetery, the one-time sites of the Scott and Hemings family homes on Main Street, and a few other important landmarks like the Levy Opera House. McCormick caps off each tour with a short outdoor performance of fiddle tunes associated with the Scott and Hemings families.
On February 23, 2022, McCormick presented an online version of the walking tour for the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society via Facebook Live. |
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Telephone703.587.0483
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