treble viol & lyra-viol (bas viol) carlos nÚÑez · viola caipira (brazilian guitar of baroque...

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presents…

CELTIC UNIVERSENorth and South of Europe: Ireland, Scotland, Brittany, Galicia and the Basque CountryA Dialogue Between Ancient, Historical and Modern Traditions

JORDI SAVALL Treble viol & lyra-viol (bas viol)

CARLOS NÚÑEZ Galacian bagpipes, pastoral pipes (Baroque ancestor of the Irish uilleann pipes) & whistles

PANCHO ÁLVAREZ Viola caipira (Brazilian guitar of Baroque origin)

XURXO NÚÑEZPercussions, tambourins & Galician pandeiros

ANDREW LAWRENCE-KINGIrish harp & psalterium

FRANK McGUIREBodhrán

Carlos Núñez & Jordi Savall Direction

Thursday, May 3, 2018 | 7:30pmHerbst Theatre

INTRODUCTIONAir for the BagpipesCarlos Nuñez, Galician pipes (gaita)

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THE CALEDONIA SETArchibald MacDonald of Keppoch Traditional IrishThe Musical Priest/Scotch Mary Traditional IrishCaledonia’s Wail for Niel Gow Captain Simon Fraser (1816 Collection)Sackow’s Jig Traditional Irish

CELTIC UNIVERSE IN GALICIAAlaláEn QuererMaruxiñaDiferencias sobre la Gayta

THE LORD MOIRA SETAbergeldie Castle Stratspey Dan R. MacDonaldRegents Rant—Lord Moira Traditional ScottishLord Moira’s Hornpipe Ryan’s Mammoth Collection (Boston, 1883)(Lyra-viol, the bag-pipes tuning & Bodhrán)

FLOWERS OF EDINBURGHThe hills of Lorne Charlie HunterThe Flowers of Edinburg ReelLament for the Death of his Second Wife Niel Gow (1727–1807)Fisher’s HornpipePeter’s Peerie Boat Tomas Anderson

INTERMISSION

THE DONEGAL SETTuttle’s Reel Traditional IrishLady Mary Hay’s Scots Measure Traditional ScottishCarolan’s Farewell Turlough O’CarolanGusty’s Frolics Donegal Tradition Jimmy Holme’s Favorite


CAROLAN’S HARPAne Groundel Duncan Burnett (Duncan Burnett’s Music Book, Scotland c. 1610)Dumbarton’s Drums beat bonny Anonymous Scottish

(Oswald Caledonian Pocket Companion, 1783)The Reel of Tullochgorum Traditional Scottish(Irish harp & psaltery)

CELTIC UNIVERSE FROM BRITTANY TO BASQUE COUNTRYO Soñjal Gwerz bretonKunplitzekoaAurtxo txikia negarrez Basque LullabyBiribilketa

IRISH LANDSCAPESThe Lamentation of Owen Roe O’Neill Turlough O’CarolanThe Hills of IrelandThe Morning DewApples in the WinterThe Rocky Road to DublinThe Kid on the MountainMorrison’s Jig

Conception of the program: Jordi Savall & Carlos Núñez

The presentation of Jordi Savall is made possible through the generous support of George & Camilla Smith and Amanda Nelson.

Jordi Savall performs on a treble viol by Nicholas Chapuis, Paris c. 1750 and a lyra-viol (bas viol) by Pelegrino Zanetti, Venice 1553.

Jordi Savall is represented by Alliance Artist Management5030 Broadway, Suite 812, New York, NY 10034allianceartistmanagement.com


be elitist, but that it can appeal to increas-ingly diverse and numerous audiences of all ages. As the critic Allan Kozinn wrote in the New York Times, his vast concert and recording career can be described as “not simply a matter of revival, but of imagina-tive reanimation.”

Savall has recorded and released more than 230 albums covering the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and Classical mu-sic repertories, with a special focus on the Hispanic and Mediterranean musical heri-tage, receiving many awards and distinc-tions such as the Midem Classical Award, the International Classical Music Award and the Grammy Award. His concert pro-grams have made music an instrument of mediation to achieve understanding and peace between different and sometimes warring peoples and cultures. Accord-ingly, guest artists appearing with his ensembles include Arab, Israeli, Turkish, Greek, Armenian, Afghan, Mexican and North American musicians. In 2008 Jordi Savall was appointed European Union Am-bassador for intercultural dialogue and, together with Montserrat Figueras, was named “Artist for Peace” under the UNES-CO Goodwill Ambassadors program.

He has played a seminal role in the re-discovery and performance of Una cosa rara and Il burbero di buon cuore by the composer Vincent Martín i Soler. He has also conducted Le Concert des Nations and La Capella Reial de Catalunya in performances of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, Viv-aldi’s Farnace, Fux’s Orfeo ed Euridice and Vivaldi’s Il Teuzzone.

Jordi Savall’s prolific musical career has brought him the highest national and inter-national distinctions, including honorary doctorates from the Universities of Evora (Portugal), Barcelona (Catalonia), Louvain (Belgium) and Basel (Switzerland), the or-der of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (France), the Praetorius Music Prize award-ed by the Ministry of Culture and Science of Lower Saxony, the Gold Medal of the Gen-eralitat of Catalonia and the prestigious Léonie Sonning Prize, which is considered the Nobel prize of the music world. “Jordi Savall testifies to a common cultural in-heritance of infinite variety. He is a man for our time” (The Guardian).

Carlos Núñez is one of the world’s top bagpipers and an internationally ac-claimed headliner on the Celtic/World Music scene.

As a teenager he was discovered by Irish legends The Chieftains in his native Gali-cia, the Celtic region in North West Spain.

He even became an honorary member of the band and they recorded a Grammy Award winning CD together, Santiago.

Sony Music (formerly BMG Classics/RCA Victor) has released his 10 albums to date, which have sold one million copies since his debut in 1996, accumulating several Platinum and Gold CDs and DVDs, as well as two Latin Grammy nominations. They feature a wide variety of artists such as The Chieftains, Ry Cooder, Jackson Browne, and many more.

Carlos Núñez’s open view of Celtic Music includes a historical perspective, that is, an Early Music one, so that in his third album he invited his long time friend Jordi Savall to duet with him in a Breton Baroque piece.

Although this is the first Savall tour with Núñez, both have performed together in Eu-rope on special occasions—most recently in Galicia’s Santiago de Compostela Cathe-dral, leading a 24- piece Medieval orchestra and playing repertoire from the Way to San-tiago pilgrimage. They were joined by Hes-pèrion XXI, as well as folk musicians or a Fado singer, heirs of a Galician-Portuguese Medieval Cantigas tradition. They used re-productions of the instruments sculpted in the Cathedral’s gate to such as perfection, that were recently compared by a US luthier to “12th century 3D prints.”

Carlos Núñez is also classically trained on the recorder and often plays with or-chestras around the world, having per-formed at Carnegie Hall, Boston Sympho-ny Hall, Musikverein in Vienna, and the Royal Albert Hall in London.

According to the BBC, “Carlos Núñez is one of the world’s most exciting, and most serious, musicians.”

Pancho Álvarez is one of Galicia’s leading folk music artists and has been a member of Carlos Núñez’s band for over two decades.

He has recorded several solo CDs de-voted to the music of which he is Galicia’s

ARTIST PROFILES

Tonight is the San Francisco Performances de-but of Jordi Savall, Carlos Núñez, Pancho Ál-varez, Xurxo Núñez, Andrew Lawrence-King, and Frank McGuire.

For more than 50 years, Jordi Savall, one of the most versatile musical personalities of his generation, has rescued musical gems from the obscurity of neglect and oblivion and given them back for all to enjoy. A tire-less researcher into early music, he inter-prets and performs the repertory both as a gambist and a conductor. His activities as a concert performer, teacher, researcher and creator of new musical and cultural proj-ects have made him a leading figure in the reappraisal of historical music. Together with Montserrat Figueras, he founded the ensembles Hespèrion XXI (1974), La Capella Reial de Catalunya (1987) and Le Concert des Nations (1989), with whom he explores and creates a world of emotion and beauty shared with millions of early music enthu-siasts around the world.

Through his essential contribution to Alain Corneau’s film Tous les Matins du Monde, which won a César for the best soundtrack, his busy concert schedule (140 concerts per year), his recordings (six al-bums per year) and his own record label, Alia Vox, which he founded with Montser-rat Figueras in 1998, Jordi Savall has proved not only that early music does not have to


main exponent: that of the blind singers self-accompanied on fiddle or hurdy-gurdy in Medieval style, that survived in rural Galicia until the 1970s, and actually goes back to Homer or Celtic bardic times.

Pancho lives in the South of Galicia, by the Portuguese border, so has always been interested in exploring the ancient Gali-cian-Portuguese shared heritage. Both Galicia and Portugal are named after the Celtic tribe of the Galicians and were once the same kingdom until they separated and Galicia became part of Spain. That common culture went on to live in Brazil and Pancho has brought back to Celtic mu-sic the Brazilian viola, a folk instrument of medieval origin, perfect for accompanying modal music.

Recently he has also taken to play some of the medieval reproductions of Santia-go’s Porch of Glory that perfectly fit his tra-ditional music background.

Xurxo Núñez is Carlos Núñez’s younger brother. He started playing traditional Galician percussion as a child while Carlos played the pipes. He went on to study clas-sical percussion at the Conservatoire.

At 12 he played for the first time with The

Chieftains and since he has recorded or performed with Celtic music’s biggest acts as well as artists from every genre with whom his brother has collaborated.

He is also a self-taught multi-instrumen-talist. Apart from all sort of percussion such as bodhrán and several skin drums, marim-ba, vibraphone, and so on, he plays acoustic and electric guitars, piano and keyboards, accordion, and even does orchestral ar-rangement and electronic programming.

Technically gifted, after so many years re-cording with different artists, he has become one of Celtic Music’s top engineers and a nat-ural pupil of living legend Brian Masterson from Windmill Lane studios in Dublin.

He is also a stage animal whose energy shines in a rock stadium context, but who also has the subtlety for a classical music venue.

Baroque opera and orchestral director, Early Harp virtuoso, continuo-wizard, spe-cialist in baroque gesture and Historical Ac-tion, Andrew Lawrence-King is one of the world’s leading performers of Early Music and the most recorded harpist of all time.

He has directed opera and chamber mu-sic at La Scala, Milan; Sydney Opera House; Casals Hall, Tokyo; Berlin, Vienna and Moscow Philharmonics; Carnegie Hall; and Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes. This season he directs a new production of the earliest surviving Spanish baroque opera, Celos aun del aire matan, in Moscow.

Accolades include UK Gramophone Award; German Echo Prize; Dutch Edison Award; US Noah Greenberg Prize for musicology/performance collaboration; a Grammy and Australia’s Helpmann Award together with Jordi Savall; and as opera director, the Golden Mask, Russia’s highest music-theatre award.

Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Centre for the History of Emotions from 2011–2015, Professor at London’s Guildhall School, and Director of Baroque Opera for the Moscow State Theatre Natalya Sats, Dr.

Lawrence-King investigates and teaches early harps and continuo, medieval music-drama and baroque opera, baroque ges-ture and Flow. His ensembles, The Harp Consort and Il Corago, combine state-of-the-art research and period detail with stylish improvisation and entertaining stage presentation.

Andrew holds the RYA’s coveted Ocean Yachtmaster certificate, and spends most of his free time aboard his boat, ‘Continuo’ or sea kayaking. This nautical passion is expressed in his recording of Guernésiais traditional music, Les Travailleurs de la Mer: Ancient Songs from a Small Island. Andrew is a marathon runner and trains in modern Epee, 17th-century Rapier, Tai Chi and Wing Chun. He is also a qualified Hypnotist.

Frank McGuire has been playing music since he was old enough to hold onto an in-strument, having had a father and grand-father who both played traditional music. He played in pipe bands and later fell into traditional music himself.

In the early days Frank played in various bands and the formed Gaelum with Kevin Allison from Hot Toddy fame. For many years he has played and taught in Rus-sia, playing in many festivals and appear-ing on TV and radio, playing the first ever live broadcast of Radio Nan Gael from the Irish Embassy in Moscow along with Sean O’Rourke and Maggie MacInnes. In 2007 he was invited as the guest of honour to the Kremlin, to the first ever Kremlin Zoria (the Russian equivalent of the Edinburg Tattoo).

In 2001 he formed the highly success-ful band Lyra Celtica with the wonder-ful Sean O’Rourke and Chuck Flemming, both from the incredible JSD Band. Later to be joined by Lynn Tocker, wonderful ac-cordion player from Northumbria and the first ever winner of the Young Traditional Musician of the Year and ex-member of the


Katherine Tickel Band, and Mark Canning, outstanding trad guitarist from Glasgow.

Frank has spent years studying all styles of percussion and percussion instruments. This has resulted in him having had the opportunity to play with some truly out-standing musicians from the world of folk, blues, old time Americana, bluegrass, soul, gospel and now even classical.

He has had the privilege of working and playing alongside incredible musicians such as Brian Bowers, the wonderful Amer-ican Autoharp master, Professor Louis, the incredible Blues musician and ex-keyboard player of The Band, Scott Ainsleigh, Sule Greg Wilson, Guy Davis, Tam White, the legendary Scots blues singer and old friend Fraser Spiers, to name only a few.

Frank has played all over the world and has performed many times at the Celtic Con-nections Festival with banjo maestro Alison Brown and The Alison Brown Quartet. In 2011 he was privileged to be asked to perform at Glastonbury with the old time style Amer-ican fiddle and banjo player Kate Lasaure.

Over the years Frank has been involved with many projects, working on TV and ra-dio with Maggie McKinnes on various al-bums and the TV series Oran na Mna along with some of the finest traditional singers and instrumentalists on the Traditional music scene. They also performed A Wom-an’s Song at Celtic Connections 2005.

Over the last year or two he has been working with the fantastic American blues/gospel singer Lea Gilmour, on a fu-sion of her music, and Trad music to form the project Umoja Gaelica, playing in the UK and America.

In 2010, Frank was asked to record with the legendary viol de gamba player and composer Jordi Savall from Catalan and harpist Andrew Lawrence-King, resulting in them being awarded one of the highest awards in music for the Album Celtic Viol Vol. 2—the Premios de la Música, judged by members of the Spanish Academy of Mu-sic, Arts and Knowledge, Academia De Las Artes Y Las Ciencias De La Musica.

Since the recording of the album he now tours as part of the trio with Andrew and Jordi playing festivals and concerts all over the globe.

PROGRAM NOTESIn this program, Jordi Savall wishes to

celebrate once again the Celtic musical tra-ditions by playing with musicians of great talent in tribute to the Celtic world from the North and South of Europe, especially

Ireland, Scotland, French Brittany and Galicia. With the great musician Carlos Núñez, accompanied by two magnificent musicians, Pancho Álvarez and Xurxo Núñez, Jordi Savall will establish a sur-prising dialogue, together with his usual accomplices: the famous harpist Andrew Lawrence-King with the Irish harp or the psaltery and Frank McGuire, one of today’s best players of bodhrán.

This music, full of life and happiness is extremely modern, keeping all its great ex-pressive and poetic power. As long as there are musicians who will make those pieces relive, they will continue to be a valuable witness of their essential function of iden-tity and social, political and cultural cohe-sion. They also become a universal mes-sage of harmony and beauty. Our concert is a fervent tribute to the art of transmission thanks to the talent of all those musicians who, throughout history, have created this wonderful heritage. Here is the homage to all of them, who were able to pass this marvelous music on from generation to generation and keep it fully alive.

Worldwide, Carlos Núñez is considered to be an outstanding musician. His cha-risma, his energy, his pioneering spirit have made him a very popular musician of Celtic music. His style and the sound of his flute or his gaita (bagpipes) are famous ev-erywhere. After a first collaboration, a few years ago, when Carlos Núñez contacted Jordi Savall to play in his compilation re-cord Un Gallego en Bretaña (“A Galician in Brittany”), Jordi Savall invited him to play in a tour throughout the United States. Their concerts should remain engraved in the memories. These dialogues between Celtic historical traditions and oral heri-tage, between the old and the modern, be-tween the Galician and Britton ballads, as well as Irish and Scottish folk songs (creat-ed in Europe or in America), will be the cel-ebration of a true merger. Both musicians, Carlos Núñez and Jordi Savall will honor Celtic music around the world, putting to-gether in the spotlight oral traditions and historical sources.

Referring to the foggy Northern lands of Ireland, Scotland, Brittany and Galicia, the musical anthology of these concerts represents the atmosphere of people and community lives. It is sometimes sug-gested by slow and moving accents or a certain sadness and nostalgia; sometimes by the grace of traditional dances such as the frenzied jigs and reels, the joy and vi-tality of all these peoples. These concerts will give tribute to these men and women

who since ancient times, have been able to withstand the forces of Nature and all the many difficulties and tragedies of Life it-self, thanks to their ability to stay faithful to their origin and their culture.

The immense repertoire of Celtic music comes from various origins in time and space. Each element of it brings very inter-esting information to us about its charac-ter, technique, ornamentation, style and ways to play it. The Celtic repertoire is currently kept in very different ways and throughout different patterns of interpre-tation. Written or oral, it mostly remains in the oral tradition. Unlike some East-ern cultures that developed above all in a space of oral transmission, in the Western world the passage between musicians is usually written. However, there is a signif-icant exception with the traditional, popu-lar or folk music, because this music has been able to continue thanks to these same mechanisms of unwritten transmission.

All transmitted and orally preserved music is the result of a happy survival, following a long process of selection and synthesis. However, this process uses dif-ferent paths of evolution and innovation: it is the result of a transformation when they undergo influences of other musical foreign styles, sometimes more modern or even far apart, but always leading to a new and legitimate way to interpret them.

These so varied origins make possible eco-friendly versions of interpretations respecting the historical context as well as innovation. In addition, we know that in Music as in any Art, there is evolution and development but not necessarily real progress. Tradition and innovation are in-trinsically united in performances made by groups who have taken new paths. Each time, Celtic music is remodeled and made syncretic on every concert stage and venue.

—Notes provided by Alliance Artist Management

Celtic Universe tours with the support of the Departament de Cultura of the Gen-eralitat de Catalunya and the Institut Ra-mon Llull.

treble viol & lyra-viol (bas viol) carlos nÚÑez · viola caipira (brazilian guitar of baroque...

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