2009 Season Overview

	At the Sherman Library & Gardens, each performance is preceded by live brass music al fresco while concert-goers enjoy strolling through the gardens.

The 29th annual season, coming upon us this year, invites special recognition of four composers: Henry Purcell (b. 1659), George Frideric Handel (d. 1759), Franz Joseph Haydn (d. 1809) and Felix Mendelssohn (b. 1809).

We shall observe these anniversaries through performances of works by these and other significant composers, with emphasis on the enticing late-Baroque music of Handel that will be heard throughout the week.

Returning vocal and instrumental soloists, our Festival Chorus of mixed voices (including male countertenors as altos) and the Festival Orchestra that consists totally of period instruments will reproduce faithfully the sounds of the 17th and 18th centuries, and here and there will venture ahead stylistically.

The opening Sunday afternoon concerto program in the lovely parish church of Saint Michael & All Angels will offer concerted works by Purcell, Handel, Telemann and Vivaldi for harp, violin, viola da gamba, trumpet and organ, including a concerto grosso by Handel.

Organ recitalist Gabriel Arregui, with trumpeter John Thiessen, will return for Monday evening’s recital on St. Michael’s expanded organ, offering music from the Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Contemporary periods, including Haydn’s trumpet concerto in E flat and splendid solo organ pieces by Bull, Bach, Handel, Mendelssohn and Alain.

Our usual two events in the gorgeous Sherman Gardens follow our traditional pattern. Wednesday evening’s chamber concert for vocal soloists and string instruments with oboe and trumpet will offer works by Purcell, Handel and Mendelssohn. Our Friday evening flute-violin-violoncelloharpsichord foursome again will dazzle while concentrating on the entertaining chamber music of Handel.

The Festival Finale, being held this year for the first time in the spacious new and acoustically superb St. Mark Presbyterian Church on San Joaquin Hills Road at MacArthur, will conclude our 29th season with dramatic works of Purcell, Handel and Mendelssohn.