Dear Friends,
On the heels of an especially robust 2024-25 season, it’s a pleasure to get back to our intimate roots in chamber music with a season featuring more the mellow colors of the viola da gamba and baroque viola. It’s a thrill we’re able to offer our Subscription Season in Helena and Billings, and in Bozeman, we’ve been invited to be Artists in Residence at Hope Lutheran Church for our subscription series.
- Our Subscription Season kicks off in November with ”…with concord of sweet sounds…” featuring two star players of this most difficult yet suave and gorgeous instrument, the viola da gamba in a program designed by John Lenti.
- In January our “I Melt Like Snow in the Sun of Your Beauty” ensemble returns for an album release tour. With our listeners, I can’t wait to share the expert editing of Jeremiah Slovarp and stunning acoustics of the Oliver Music Barn at the Tippet Rise Arts Center.
- June brings a return of our “Beyond Baroque” early romantic string quartet exploring the revered and cherished late string quartets of Beethoven. Upon recovery of a presumed-fatal illness, Beethoven wrote his “Hymn of Thanksgiving,” Op. 132 as a prayer to the deity.
- Our season closes with a banger of an ensemble with not one, not two, but three fabulous baroque violas—our first time to share this highly unstandard and experimental instrument—in luxurious five part writing. In “Baroque Quintessence!” we’re thrilled to be joined by two outstanding U.K. musicians (from possibly the world’s best early-music scene) who lend their insights into this sumptuous repertoire.
Non-subscription tours focusing on rural venues round out our season along with outreach in schools and retirement homes. In October, Sonata Tramontana rides again with Carrie & John, exploring a chapter for a perhaps third album with an all-too-serious program ”Earworms & Maggots Galore.” February brings “Gentle plucks: Bach & Beyond” with a charming Spanish harpsichordist in recital with Carrie; Julliard classmates reunite for revered sonatas of Bach. Our usual summer escapades commence with Bach at Trails, High Places 2026, and our annual Period Performance Workshop, which due to participant clamors, we’re thrilled to expand to five days of learning and experimentation.
Your support—whether attending concerts, words of encouragement, financial generosity, or helping hand—make this season and each of our seasons as if on eagle’s wings, and to you, we are eternally grateful. Thank you for joining us, and may earworms be forever your companion!
—Carrie