TEMP Proudly Announces Its 2013-2014 Season

Sephardic music is beautiful, haunting, and poignant. These songs and dances of love, jealousy, loss, myth, and dreams reflect the daily lives of the Sephardim after the Diaspora and resettlement in the Middle East, the Balkans, and Europe. International recorder player Annette Bauer will join us for this concert, as will the Bay Area’s Peter Maund, specialist in early and ethnic percussion. Please see the Noches, Noches page for more detailed program information and links to audio samples of Sephardic music on our Night and Day CD.

Join us as we explore Christmas traditions from as many diverse European cultures as we can within one concert. (You might think you need a passport, but you don't!) Many of the musical traditions we hold dear at Christmas time originated in Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and the British Isles. We will create a musical postcard of Christmas to delight your hearts and ears. Please see the Noel page for more detailed program information and links to audio samples from our Stella splendens CD. See also our new CD, Swete was the Songe, here!

Scottish ballads and dances have long been a part of TEMP’s core repertoire; in the last few years, we’ve also embraced Irish and Breton music, the two other great spokes of the Celtic wheel. Our sources date from the 16^th–18^th centuries and help to give wonderful insight into the cultures, social traditions and lifestyles of the people who created this very popular and accessible music. Our special guest artists are harpist Therese Honey and Gaelic singer Abby Green.

The poetry, music, and culture of the troubadours of southern France informed and inspired musicians and poets all over Europe for generations. Even now, a thousand years later, cultures around the globe refer to favored singers as troubadours. We will present some highlights of this extraordinarily influential genre as well as some of its musical offshoots in Iberia. Our special guest artists are Mary Springfels (Medieval fiddle and citole) and Joel Nesvadba (tenor).

For many centuries, it was usually considered unsuitable behavior for women to be involved in composition, acting, or musical performance. Women composers usually worked in secret in convents and courts. Even so, there is a sizable amount of wonderful music, sacred and secular, composed by women for women to perform. Join us for these delicious and soulful gems for female soloists & chorus with a small period instrument orchestra.