Chamber Arts Series
Musica Pacifica - baroque ensemble
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Musica Pacifica achieved recognition as one of North America's premiere baroque ensembles soon after the group's founding in 1990. Mining a rich vein of Baroque literature for mixed wind/string ensemble, the group performs the spirited chamber concerti of Vivaldi and Telemann, colorful dance suites from the courts and opera houses of France, and the more intimate solo, duo, and trio sonatas from European countries as diverse as Scotland, Poland, Spain, and England. Musica Pacifica has been described by the press as "some of the finest baroque musicians in America" (American Record Guide) and "among the best in the world" (Alte Musik Aktuell). At home in the San Francisco Bay area, the artists are members of Philharmonia Baroque, and they appear with many other prominent early music ensembles nationally and abroad.
Musica Pacifica's stylish, high-energy, and virtuoso performances have consistently received enthusiastic reviews from critics and audiences alike. These qualities have led to appearances on such prestigious chamber and early music concert series as Music Before 1800 and the Frick Collection (NY), Tage Alter Musik (Regensburg), the Shrine to Music Museum (Vermillion, SD), the Cleveland Art Museum, the Pittsburgh Renaissance and Baroque Society, the Seattle Early Music Guild, Milwaukee's Early Music Now, the Houston Early Music Society, the Los Angeles County Museum, and the Cambridge Early Music Society (MA), among many others. They have three times been a featured ensemble at the Berkeley Early Music Festival, and their first appearance there was cited in Early Music (UK) as "perhaps the standout of the entire festival." They have performed at festivals in Germany and Austria and have been heard on German National radio as well as on National Public Radio’s Performance Today and Harmonia.
Musica Pacifica's six CD releases--Bach Trio Sonatas and a 2-CD set of
Marais, Pièces en trio on Virgin/Veritas; Alessandro Scarlatti Concerti
da camera, Mancini Concerti da camera, Telemann Chamber Cantatas and Trio
Sonatas, and Vivaldi La Notte: Concerti per strumenti diversi , on Dorian--have
won national and international awards, including the highest ratings in
several CD magazines and each one being chosen as "CD of the Month"
by the early music journal Alte Musik Aktuell (Regensburg). Their Telemann
CD, described by Early Music America Magazine as "superbly elegant
. . . exemplifying the finest in historical performance today," won
Chamber Music America and WQXR's 2003 Record Award honoring the best chamber
music recordings of the year. The Mancini recording was cited as a "Noteworthy
Disc" in the 2000 International Antonio Vivaldi Awards for Italian
Early Music in Venice--the only CD that year by a North American ensemble
to receive the honor. Their latest recording, Fire Beneath My Fingers--Italian
solo concertos and chamber music has just been released by Dorian/Sono Luminus.