Free noonhour concerts Thursdays at Glenn Gould Studio

The October 22, 2006 broadcast of Music Around Us on Radio Two features Borys Medicky, harpsichord and organ in concert, with Katherine Hill, soprano, Christopher Verrette, violin and Lucas Harris, theorbo, lute and guitar.

The production will be taped live on Thursday October 12.

Antonio Cesti (1623-1669)

Aspettate! Adesso canto (soprano, harpsichord, lute)

Gregorio Strozzi (c.1615-c.1687)

Sonata di basso solo (harpsichord, lute)

Georg Muffat (1653-1704) Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (c.1620-1680) Luigi Rossi (c.1597-1653)

Passacaglia (solo harpsichord) Sonata IV (violin, harpsichord/organ, theorbo) La bella più bella (soprano, harpsichord, theorbo)

Giovanni Antonio Pandolfo Mealli (fl.1660-1669)

Sonata, Op. 3 No. 1 (La Stella) (violin, harpsichord/organ)

Nicola Matteis (d. c.1713) Virgilio Mazzocchi (1597-1640)

Diverse bizarrie sopra la vecchia Sarabanda ò pur Ciaccona (violin, harpsichord, guitar) Sdegno campion audace (violin, harpsichord/organ, theorbo)

Borys Medicky (harpsichord) and Lucas Harris (archlute) play music by Gregorio Strozzi
REALPLAYER   WINDOWS MEDIA   QUICKTIME
(runs 1:52)

Borys Medicky has appeared as solo harpsichordist and continuo player in the United States, Canada, and Europe, performing with groups such as The Publick Music, Early Music New York, the Tiffany Consort, Baroque Music Beside the Grange, Aradia, Tafelmusik, The Toronto Consort, Via Salzburg and the Grand River Baroque Ensemble. He has also appeared at the Amherst, Boston and Bloomington early music festivals. His scholarly interest in historical dance and its influence on instrumental music led him to study French Baroque dance for several years with noted dancer and teacher Elaine Biagi Turner and act as music director for the Toronto-based Baroque dance group La Belle Danse.

Recent projects have included intensive performance workshops in the basso continuo accompaniment of Baroque opera with renowned lutenist and opera director Stephen Stubbs, and co-directing (with lutenist Lucas Harris) the Toronto Continuo Collective, an all-continuo ensemble dedicated to fostering an increased interest in the stylish basso continuo accompaniment of seventeenth-century vocal and instrumental music. This season's performances included Claudio Monteverdi's Orfeo with Tafelmusik and Opera Atelier in Toronto and a concert of seventeenth-century wind and brass music with Ensemble Chiaroscuro at the Bloomington Early Music Festival. During the summer, he performed all six of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos at the Elora Festival.

After studying and living in the United States for a number of years, Borys recently returned to his home town of Toronto, where he freelances and teaches privately. He has just been appointed the Artistic Director of the Nota Bene Period Orchestra, a chamber orchestra based in Waterloo, Ontario, and is currently programming the next season's concerts for the ensemble, with whom he will also appear as a soloist and continuo player.

A native of Toronto, singer and Medieval fiddler Katherine Hill spends her life roaming around Canada and northern Europe, performing Medieval, early Baroque and Scandinavian traditional music with the likes of the sequentia ensemble for medieval music, Gabriel Garrido's Ensemble Elyma, and the Ars Choralis Coeln. She is also involved in several Medieval music fusion projects (both with experimental theatre and musical improv), and has appeared at alternative performance festivals in Germany, Poland and the Netherlands with Scivias (Berlin), Grotest Maru (Berlin) and ensemble nu:n (Thüringen).

Here in Toronto Katherine enjoys her collaborations with the Toronto Continuo Collective, the Sine Nomine ensemble for Medieval music, the Toronto Consort, and the illustrious arctic-fusion band Polaris. In her spare time, she likes to hang out with nuns, practice the Swedish art of cow-calling, and play electric vielle with her Kelprecords indie-rock friends in Ottawa.

Violinist Christopher Verrette is in his 14th season as a member of Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, with which he is a frequent soloist and leader both in Canada and abroad. He is a graduate of Indiana University, where he was awarded the first-ever Performer's Certificate for accomplishment on the Baroque violin and was a student of Stanley Ritchie. Since that time he has been committed to the growth of Early Music in the American Midwest as a founding member of both Ensemble Voltaire in Indianapolis and the Chicago Baroque Ensemble and has collaborated with numerous period instrument ensembles around North America. In the past season he has also been heard playing Renaissance violin, vielle, rebec, viola and viola d'amore.

Recent recording projects have ranged from old favourites like Beethoven and Mozart symphonies and Pachelbel's Canon, to unfamiliar instrumental music by Reinhard Keiser, new arrangements of Playford tunes on Throw the House out of the Windowe for Marquis records, John Welsman's score for the independent Canadian film The Limb Salesman, and the soundtrack of Touchstone Pictures' Casanova.

Lucas Harris, who gave a solo recital in this series last season, has been pleased to call Toronto home since January 2004. Originally from Phoenix, Arizona, he graduated from Pomona College in Claremont, California before going abroad to study early music in Italy and Germany. He then spent five years based in New York City during which he directed Common Ground Ensemble, took lessons with plucked-string guru Pat O'Brien, and traveled as a freelance continuo player. Lucas has worked with The Harp Consort, Apollo's Fire, New York Collegium, Smithsonian Chamber Players, Les voix humaines, the Boston Early Music Festival orchestra, and many other groups.

During breaks in his theorbo-playing schedule, Lucas delves into the sublime repertoire of the Baroque lute. His New Generation concert in 2005 featured music of the 'twilight' years in of the lute in 18th-century Germany. Lucas enjoys teaching during the summer at the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute as well as Oberlin Conservatory's Baroque Performance Institute, where he directs an opera scene project each summer. A former instructor for the New York Continuo Collective, he formed the Toronto Continuo Collective as a sister organization in 2005 together with harpsichordist Borys Medicky.