February 12th, 2010: ONE CONCESSION TO THE 21st CENTURY
Well, we've finally taken the Facebook plunge, and we have to admit that it's kind of fun. We've set up a public page, which means you don't have to be a Facebook addict to check us out - although Facebookers may post comments and photos.Thanks to everyone who has become a fan - an excellent way to keep up with our activities, by the way. www.facebook.com/mignarda
February 10th, 2010: LECTURE/RECITALS AT CORNELL
We spent a delightful three hours at Cornell this morning & afternoon with Marty Hatch's (enormous!) classes, untangling the intricate process of turning dusty 500-year-old manuscripts covered in mouse droppings and obscure dialects into living, breathing, passionate music. Great classes; great questions. Thanks, Marty, et al!
January 24th, 2010: BACK IN THE STUDIO
If anybody's looking for us this week, we'll likely be back at Electric Wilburland, working on the latest recording. Stay tuned for preview clips and updates.
January 20th, 2010: MIGNARDA OPENS FOR THE NEWFIELD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHOIR!
We had an absolutely wonderful time this evening, as the opening act for the wonderful choir at the Newfield Elementary School, directed by Sunny Miller. After our visit there last Spring, the kids learned a few of "our" tunes, and tonight, before a full house, they performed an all-renaissance concert, with a real live lute accompaniment. Congratulations and thanks so much to Sunny for passing this lovely music on to the next generation!
January 4th, 2010: HAPPY NEW YEAR: OUR TROPHY ARRIVED
Well, lookee here...our trophy arrived in the mail. Guess they weren't kidding.
December 27th, 2009: A SNOWY DAY AT WILBURLAND
Spent a nice day (Ron's birthday, by the way!) at Wilburland, getting a start on the next CD.
December 13th, 2009: JOIN US IN CLEVELAND ON ST. LUCY's DAY
We'll be back in Cleveland this weekend for the 2nd annual "Mignarda & Friends" St. Lucy's program, this year featuring sacred chant and polyphony for treble voices, followed by lute song for the season. Details on our concert listing page.
December 10th, 2009: YOU RAISED $500 FOR THE FOOD PANTRY!
Thanks a million to the wonderful crowd that turned for our annual benefit concert in Slaterville Springs, NY - in lousy weather - to raise $500 for our local Caroline Food Pantry. What a meaningful way to celebrate the season!
November 10, 2009: FRENCH CHANSONS OF THE 16TH CENTURY IS NOW AVAILABLE
At long last and after several interruptions, our performing edition of 16th century French chansons is now available. This wonderful music is featured prominently on our new CD, Au pres de vous, and contains many rare chansons newly arranged from original part-songs. Chansons are formatted for ease of performance with several intabulations for solo lute next to their vocal models. Since the popularity of 16th century French chansons was a pan-European phenomenon, settings are from a variety of sources, French, Italian, Flemish, German and English. We're pleased to offer this edition of 42 rare chansons and lute solos at a cost of less than one dollar per piece.
November 8th, 2009: THIS AFTERNOON: AU PRES DE VOUS AT THE LYCEUM SCHOOL IN CLEVELAND, OH
We'll be back in Cleveland this weekend for our first performance at the Lyceum since new Headmaster Luke Macik has been at the healm. We're so grateful to be continuing our wonderful relationship with this amazing school, and to have gotten to know Luke a bit while we were last in town. Join us!
October 25, 2009: THIS AFTERNOON: MUSIC AT GRACE CONCERT SERIES, ELMIRA, NY
We hope you'll join us this afternoon at 4pm for our first appearance at the beautiful Grace Epicopal Church in Elmira, NY. Thanks to Gerald Wolfe for the invitation.
October 23, 2009: ITHACANS: CATCH US TODAY ON WSKG 90.9 FM
We'll be visiting once again with WSKG's Bill Snyder at noon today to talk about and play a few songs from our program of Tudor music, which we'll be performing Sunday for the Music at Grace Series at Grace Episcopal Church in Elmira, NY. Tune in. Better still, join us in Elmira on Sunday afternoon! Details on the concert listings page.
October 9th, 2009: A NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO
We've just recorded a handful of new videos, mostly songs from the new CD, at Electric Wilburland. Here's the first of them; we'll post more as we have time to edit them.
September 24th, 2009: MP3 DOWNLOADS NOW AVAILABLE FOR AU PRES DE VOUS AND ALL OTHER CDS
We know that many - if not most - of you have transcended the antiquated realm of CD collections, so we wanted to let you know that CD Baby has finally added single-track and full-album MP3 downloads to their listing for our new CD (as well as the previous ones). They'll make it to Amazon, and iTunes eventually, but they're available right now at CD Baby.
September 27th, 2009: AN ALMOST IMPROMPTU CONCERT AT ST. THOMAS' SLATERVILLE SPRINGS, NY
We're so darned pleased at the release of our new CD and at the award for Divine Amarillis that we've decided to do a local concert as a dual celebration. Ithacans, join us this Friday, October 2nd for a sampling of French music from the 16th and 17th centuries - representing both CDs. Thanks to Cullie Mowers for throwing the party.
September 15th, 2009: NOW AVAILABLE: MIGNARDA'S NEW CD, AU PRES DE VOUS
We're happy to announce the release of our 6th CD, Au Pres de Vous. Recorded in the warm and vibrant acoustic of an old country church, our latest release explores the important marriage of music, poetry and dance tunes of sixteenth century France. It will be a while before the CD is available on Amazon and other online outlets, but you can buy it directly from us right here! Single-song and full-album MP3 downloads will be available soon at Amazon.com, CD Baby, iTunes, or your favorite download site.
We'll be scheduling performances in New York and Ohio to celebrate this release, and we'll let you know about those when the time comes. In the mean time, we've posted some sample sound clips at the link above - drop by and give it a listen!
September 1st, 2009: DIVINE AMARILLIS WINS 2009 JPF AWARD IN NASHVILLE
Yep, you read it right. We've just been notified that our 2006 release Divine Amarillis: Airs De Court 1570-1640, won Best Album in the Classical Voice/Opera Solo category during Sunday night's 5-hour "Just Plain Folks" award ceremony in Nashville. JPF is a community of over 50,000 independent musicians and host of the world's largest music awards.
Just Plain Folks? Solo? Nashville? Opera?? Don't ask us. Despite a pool of 42,000 albums in 96 genres - there was, alas, no category for lute song duo, or even anything in the realm of early music. We have no idea who nominated us for the award, and are generally stunned at winning first place when looking at the considerable competition in this category.
But we'd like to think that this award really means something for the entire lute world: Our diabolical plan concerted effort to reach the mainstream listening audience with passionately performed music for lute and voice is working.
August 28th, 2009: ITHACANS: TUNE IN TO THE BOHEMIAN POTLUCK HOUR SUNDAY
If you're in the Ithaca area, you can hear us on the air live this Sunday August 30th from 2 to 3 PM on WVBR 93.5 FM. The program is Nonesuch, which airs Sundays 10 AM - 3 PM with host/producer Peter Fraissinet filling in for Tracey Craig. We'll be sharing some advance snippets from our brand new CD Au pres de vous, recorded right here in Newfield by Will Russell at Electric Wilburland and due for a September release. There will also be a few surprises toward the end of the show, so tune in from 2-3.
August 1st, 2009: LECTURE/RECITALS: We've updated our list of lecture/recital programs, and are booking now for academic year 2009/2010. We're always delighted to create something designed specifically for you, so don't hesitate to contact us if you have an idea for something different
July 12th, 2009: SINGLE DOWNLOADS NOW AVAILBLE FROM CDBABY
CD Baby has made some changes to their service this weekend, one of which will allow single-cut MP3 downloads, even music that isn't on any of our CDs. This is a very exciting development, since we'll be able to record a song and get it out to you immediately. Stay tuned.
July 10th, 2009: JOIN US OCTOBER 25th IN ELMIRA, NY
We're delighted to announce our first appearance on the Music at Grace Concert Series, at the beautiful Grace Episcopal church in Elmira, NY. Details as they materialize on our concert listings page.
July 1st, 2009: WE'RE EXPECTING TWINS!
Apparently we really like early 16th century French music: our next CD has surprised us by by morphing into our next two CDs. So look for volume one of Au Pres de Vous in the autumn, to be followed by volume two - including a few part songs, soon after.
April 11, 2009: UPCOMING PERFORMANCE IN CLEVELAND
We're happy to announce that we'll be taking our Tudor program to our old neighborhood in Cleveland in May. Join us for a bit of time-travel through the 118-year reign of England's Tudor dynasty. Saturday, May 16th at the Lyceum School in Cleveland's Little Italy. Details on our concert listings page.
April 7th, 2009: WORKING ON A NEW CD
We've been at Electric Wilburland this week, editing some of the material we recorded around the first of the year for our new CD. It's sounding great so far, and we're looking forward to a release in early autumn. Stay tuned for details.
February 17, 2009: COMING IN MARCH: LUTE SONG OF THE TUDOR COURTS
Join us for a bit of time-travel through the 118-year reign of England's Tudor dynasty. Sunday, March 22nd in Ithaca, NY. Details on our concert listings.
January 14, 2009: WE'RE ON A NEW SERVER
We'll spare you the gory details, but after five stable years we have reluctantly moved our domain and our web site to a new host. We love the new host, but we hate the repercussions of this move, particularly the bit about how all the links to us in Google don't work anymore. One of the reasons we moved was to avoid this redirection nightmare, but it's going to take a few weeks to sort itself out. In the mean time, if you have linked to us, or bookmarked us as mignarda.eglanteria.com, please be sure to make the change to: www.mignarda.com. Sorry for the nuisance!
January 6, 2009: ANOTHER NEW REVIEW
We were surprised and very pleased to see that Lute News, the newsletter of the Lute Society (UK) managed to find time to squeeze in a review of Duo Seraphim for their December 2008 issue. Read the full text here.
December 28th, 2008: BACK IN THE STUDIO
An amazingly generous and demanding patron has ordered us back to the recording studio this week to work on our latest project: a new CD recording of early 16th century French chansons. We're especially excited to be featuring the sublime music of the inexplicably obscure Philip Van Wilder, but we'll also include his more well-known contemporaries Claudin de Sermisy, Orlando Lassus, and Thomas Crecquillon, with lute solos from the prints of Attaignant and Phalese. So if you're looking for us for the next week or so, we'll likely be at Will Russell'sElectric Wilburland. Thanks, Russ.
December 20th, 2008: $1,000 FOR THE CAROLINE FOOD PANTRY!
We're very grateful to everyone who came out to Slaterville Springs, NY on a Thursday night just before Christmas and made our benefit for the Caroline Food Pantry a great success. We raised nearly $1,000 to support St. Thomas' important work, and we met a lot of awfully nice people in the process. Thanks to Cullie Mowers for making it happen. Stay tuned for a few sound clips from the concert coming soon.
December 16th, 2008: VIDEO FROM THE ST. LUCY'S CONCERT IN CLEVELAND
Thanks to Clyde Rinsema, who came all the way from Chicago to video our performance (oh...and also to hear his talented daughter, Rebecca!), we have a few Dowland songs from the concert in Cleveland on December 13th. They're on our YouTube page.
This program has been in the works for many years, and we couldn't have done it without a lot of help. We must particularly thank Fred Lautzenheiser for his research and invaluable guidance in finding, selecting, interpreting, and preparing the chants and motets proper to St. Lucy's day for the first half of the program. (It's not as if a church musician had anything else important to do a week and a half before Christmas.) Rebecca Rinsema tackled some of John Dowland's most challenging repertoire (to gorgeous effect!), and gamely left Ithaca with us at 5am on an eight degree morning in order to get to Cleveland in time to rehearse with the other singers. And hats off to some of the bravest singers in Cleveland, who prepared a challenging program of chant, polyphony, and part-songs in - well let's just say not nearly enough time. Sara Segal, Ray Lyons, and Greg Heislman, thanks so much for making this long wished-for program a reality.
December 8th, 2008: THANK YOU, SYRACUSE
We had a lovely time on Saturday, December 6th, performing for nearly 100 very nice folks in the magical acoustic of Pebble Hill church. Thanks to everyone who came, and especially to Bette Kahler, our wonderful host at Pebble Hill.
We'll repeat the program on Thursday, December 18th at St. Thomas' Episcopal Church in Slaterville Springs, NY, just east of Ithaca. Join us! More info here
November 7, 2008: A NEW REVIEW
Some nice words about Duo Seraphim from Richard Banks:
"...As a jaded and sated holiday listener, I am drawn to anything lacking in kitsch, and there is nothing I've heard this season further from the manufactured art of American Christmas than Duo Seraphim ...There are a lot of ways to get at the holiday spirit; Duo Seraphim has chosen the road less traveled, putting together a unique and substantial collection of latinesque works, adorned only with voice and lute."
November 5, 2008: UPCOMING PERFORMANCES IN DECEMBER
We're looking forward to celebrating the debut of our new Christmas CD, Duo Seraphim with concerts in Bath, Syracuse, and Slaterville Springs, NY. We hope you can join us if you're in the area. Stay tuned to our concert listings for details.
September 15th, 2008: THANKS, SYRACUSE & ITHACA!
Many thanks to our wonderful audiences the weekend of September 13th & 14th, who despite a plethora of other choices in both cities, ventured out to hear lute song (and much tuning) in the midst of two days of sudden steam bath-like heat and humidity. We've added a few MP3 clips from the Ithaca concert below.
And kudos to Jaime Gould Kibelsbeck, Rebecca Rinsema, Adam Perl, Jonathan Vance, and Geoffrey Royall, who endured (and, we hope, enjoyed) a summer-long seminar in the intricacies of 16th century performance practice, and who gamely tackled the utterly confounding inconsistencies of Early Modern French spelling and pronunciation. It's a treat to work with you all.
MP3 clips from "Au pres de vous" in Ithaca, NY - September 14, 2008:
(with profound thanks to Bob Spear, who suffered both from the dreadful heat that evening, and from an unexpected "phase shift", as he puts it, when, um, someone kicked his mic stand. Bob, you're a trooper.)
MP3 clips from "Fire & Ice" in Binghamton, NY - March 30, 2008:
The MP3s below are recordings from a performance in Binghamton NY last spring, featuring the more Italianate music of Dowland, with a few Italian songs from Musical Banquet, and one by Monteverdi. We were very pleased to be joined by Alexander Rakov on treble and bass viol. These mp3 files are short samples of about one minute each:
New scores coming Summer 2009
We are back at work on producing performing editions of historical music, after having been diverted by life's little interesting events. Our forthcoming edition, French chansons of the 16th century is scheduled for printing this summer. Sign up to be notified when this title is available.
New downloads available
We have added several new pdfs to our downloads page, including a lute quartet arrangement of Dowland's Queen Elizabeth's galliard, a lute duet arrangement of Victoria's Duo seraphim (from our latest CD), Fors seulement by Albert de Rippe, a Fantasye by Vallet, and an arrangement of a Scots tune, Royal lament.
Stay tuned for more lute ensemble pieces, and don't forget to take them with you to those summer lute courses!
JPF is a community of over 50,000 independent musicians and host of the world's largest music awards.
