THREE NEW CD’S COMING OUT THIS YEAR! MORE FUN CONCERTS WITH GREAT ARTISTS YOUNG AND OLD!!  AND WE JUST CALL IT...

the 2024-25 SEASON!

In trying to express how much joy goes into making all this happen, it may get lengthy, but we want you to share in these feelings!?

First of all, we are releasing three world-class recordings on UK labels in the upcoming season. Next month, it will be Les Arts Florissants, the amazing chamber opera of Marc-Antoine Charpentier, which we performed in the Moody Concert Hall with the New York Baroque Dance Company. Starring Haley Sicking as Peace, with Kara McBain as Music, Dianna Grabowski as Architecture and Matthieu Peyregne as Painting, it is of course the return of Peace which leads to the Flourishing Arts. Discord, villainously performed by Patrick Gnage, led the forces of darkness strongly but to no avail – although we are reminded in the text that Discord is also immortal and we must be eternally vigilant.

The second release, coming in November, will be the original Messiah of Handel (the 1741 version) with the chorus, soloists and orchestra of DBS, augmented by boy soprano Hayden Smith of the St. Mark’s School of Dallas, who is himself a direct descendant of G.F. Handel’s half-brother!?

Finally the complete harpsichord works of Jean Philippe Rameau, performed by Artistic Director James Richman, will be released in February in conjunction with his recital in the Aldredge House.

The second announcement is our official welcome of Arash Noori, invited by the Board to be Associate Artistic Director for 2024-25. From Teheran to Toronto to Yale to DFW – sounds like our kind of guy! This amazingly talented and interesting fellow was playing with us before Covid, as indeed he was Playing With Everybody before Covid, up and down the Coasts and everywhere in between. Then something weird happened…he lost all his prime concert work (as did everyone), and he was FORCED to teach little kids for a living… and HE LOVED IT!! He loves it here, at the Chesterton School…what could be better! He’s going to be on almost all our concerts, including a recital, and we’ve asked him to curate something new – and like a laser beam he focused in on the English Baroque which we’ve managed to short-change in recent seasons…Bravo!

So, two of the Aldredge House concerts this year will be Arash, so you can formally meet him, and ME, in celebration of my completion of recording the complete harpsichord works of Jean-Philippe Rameau, which will come out at the same time. The third concert will open our season on September 21 at Aldredge House with three of the fabulous young ladies who just seem to fall out of the heavens to lighten up our concerts. First it was Kara McBain, who, on two days’ notice brought Vivaldi’s and Charpentier’s Christmas histories to life for us two years ago. Then Taylor Fenner, who sang a couple of Bach Arias as a Get-To-Know-You on last seasons’ opening night BACH AND THE DANCE (was that just last season?!), when our friends from the New York Baroque Dance Company showed us how Bach’s Cello Suites (played with such grace by Sydney ZumMallen) evoke the dance both Baroque and New. This year we add Lauren Salazar on alto for our version of IL CONCERTO DELLE DONNE – the Three Ladies of Ferrara, who were so important in the amazing transition from Renaissance to Baroque led by Claudio Monteverdi, with Luzzaschi, Strozzi, and company. Don’t miss this show – three voices perfectly matched in freshness, sound, beauty, and expression – before they inevitably go their own ways, singing incomparable duets and madrigals together – Tell me, is a Handel Duo a Madrigal or is a Monteverdi Madrigal a Duo? Tell them YOU WERE THERE!

MESSIAH AT THE MEYERSON – on December 16, and then the MESSIAH SING-ALONG at ZION LUTHERAN on the 17th. Soloists this year are David Grogan, Dann Coakwell, Dianna Grabowski, and Kara McBain.

FOR NEW YEAR’S EVE this season we offer all-VIVALDI – first, the familiar GLORIA, and then THE FOUR SEASONS, the amazing set of violin concertos he called IL CIMENTO DELL’ARMONIA E DELL’INVENTIONE, featuring the brilliant Texas violinist Stephanie Noori.  (She and Arash tied the knot in 2019 - Happy 5th Anniversary!)

A new artistic exploration for the Society comes on March 16, 2025, courtesy of the New York Baroque Dance Company, who were invited last season to perform with The Silambam Houston Dance Company which is the performing wing of Silambam Houston. Comprised of stellar performers trained to professional level in various Indian classical dance forms, the Company represents the fruition of collective decades of effort and dedication. The NYBDC dancers had a great time joining Silambam last season in Houston for The Baroque-Carnatic Connection, a cross-cultural exploration of the commonalities and distinct flavors of Western baroque and South Indian classical music and dance traditions, and reported that the audience was rapt, as the two companies traded dances as it were. The violin proved perfectly suited for Carnatic  music, as the gamakas (glides and oscillations through the notes – the lifeline of Carnatic music) were not only possible, but natural and intuitive on the violin.   The footwork of these totally distinct styles of dance, especially between the Indian and Baroque Period European practice, was completely captivating and, especially in the opera’s final-act Contest, was revealing and inspiring.

The final program of the year will be the Passion According to Saint John, of Sebastian Bach, where we will complete the recording we started two years ago.

Last but not least, we will have a benefit concert by flutist Taya Tarasevich, who so delighted us with her playing a few years back. Taya will play a grand concert of J.S.Bach, with the 5th Brandenburg Concerto, the Ouverture #2 in B Minor, as well as the solo Partita for Flute, and the Sonata with Harpsichord in A Major. Ms Taresevich is making us a present of this concert, so it’s a BENEFIT CONCERT, at Zion Lutheran. It will be on the regular season as the opener on October 5, 2024 at regular prices, but we propose that the DBS side of the benefit would be a voluntary doubling (deductible) of the price for those who would like to, and we’ll have a gathering with this most gracious artist afterward with some champagne. After all, how often can you meet with one of the leaders of the post-Soviet generation of Russian artists!

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