Welcome from Carrie

It’s a tremendous thrill to share the offerings of our 2023-2024 Season! On the heels of last season’s release of our inaugural album, the unexpected publicity of our Six High Places adventures, dear moments with the renowned Rachel Podger, and the creative hilarity of our Voltaire program, we channel our muses towards a whole lotta of harpsichord moving, musical friendships, and new fruitful collaborations.

Our season opens with Intermountain Opera Bozeman’s production of Monteverdi’s “The Coronation of Poppea,” the first baroque opera staged in our region. It features a fabulous band of 9 BaMM musicians who specialize in the unique, open language of the early Baroque – with one foot in the Renaissance and exquisite vocal style. I last played this in Belgrade (Serbia!!), and it’s a dream to bring it to Bozeman. Don’t tell Bach, but Monteverdi may be my favorite composer…

In November, BaMM favorite John Lenti returns for the next chapter of our unique Sonata Tramontana collaboration. We’ll be exploring sumptuous, stylized, wonderfully tuneful French music from the 17th century in seven intimate concerts, ending with a tour more far afield – BaMM’s inaugural foray to the Northwest.

Bozeman’s beloved choir, Roots in the Sky, joins forces to present our first in-person holiday program, “The Waking Sun,” with a premiere of said titled work by Kyle Smith for period instruments along with achingly beautiful works by those after-my-heart Germanic composers Schutz, Buxtehude, and Bach, performed by fantastic local players.

February welcomes the return of London violinist Davina Clarke with her dear friend, the famed soprano Mary Bevan in celebration of their new Handel album. We celebrate these lovely ladies, BaMM’s own Handel’s Heroines, along with a BaMM debut of harpsichordist Ian Pritchard, who teaches at the Colburn School (the Juilliard of the West) and our neighbor in Laramie, cellist Beth Vanderbrough, known for her captivating stage presence. Nothing beats the “tune Queen,” Mr. George Freidrich H.

Heading into March, pianist Julie Gosswiller and I present our annual “Beyond Baroque” recital, exploring contemporary and romantic repertoire. One would never guess the tremendous LGBTQ presence amongst our favorite composers (including Corelli, Lully, Rosenmuller, Handel and…and…). “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” illuminates these composers’ vast contributions through works by Tchaikovsky, Barber, Poulenc, Schubert and Paganini.

We all know Canon, if you’ve ever been to a wedding EVER, but most don’t know that everything Pachelbel wrote was brilliant and gorgeous. This program features Pachelbel’s scordatura collection entitled “Musical Delights” with two ‘mis-tuned’ violins along with theorbo and harpsichord to stunning expressive effect.

When one thinks of an improvisatory musical tradition, jazz comes to mind but here we illuminate the baroque through the use of improvisation and ornamentation. Our past January tour debuted young violinist and composer Manami Mizumoto, who I asked to design this program for us to feature her speciality, Lands of the Free: Languages of Improvisation. Rounding it out, Kieran Campbell, cellist, takes time away from his gig with Tafelmusik, North America’s only full time baroque ensemble, to help us illuminate the lovely Isabella Leonarda, the first woman to write sonatas for violin and continuo, known as “the Novarese Muse par excellence.”

We’re thrilled to launch the extension of our subscription series to our wonderful Helena audience, programming all four Signature programs in Lewis and Clark County.

And lastly, we’re tremendously grateful for our collaborators, including Intermountain Opera Bozeman, Roots in the Sky, the Big Sky Arts Council, Music from the Beartooths, American Prairie Reserve, Sweet Grass Arts Alliance, Musikanten Montana, the Main Stope Art Gallery, the Lewistown School of Music, Montana State University School of Music, the University of Missoula School of Music, and the Meagher County Arts Council. And our season sponsors Drs. Dennis & Anne Wentz and Judy Tsiang.