Saturday, January 17, 2009 — Workshop with Daniel Meyers
[due to scheduling conflicts, our Handel Celebration will be merged with our Purcell Birthday Party in March.]
Sweet Commotions: approaches to playing 16th & 17th-century dance music.
Daniel Meyers will lead this workshop for intermediate & advanced players, focussing on techniques for accompanying English & Italian social dance music, with a focus on variation and improvisation. Advanced players will do some reading from original notation; all players will be expected to improvise. Participants will learn how to read chord symbols, vary a melody & create countermelodies/harmony lines “on the spot”. They will also learn how to provide a steady yet exciting foundation for dancers (all participants will do some dancing themselves).
Musical sources will include Arbeau’s “Orchesographie”, Zannetti’s “Il Scolaro”, Playford’s “Dancing Master” & the modern dance collections of Peter Barnes.
- This program begins at 9:30 AM and finishes at 1 PM.
- Please RSVP by Thursday, January 15.
- $20 visitors; R/EMM members $10
- Participants limited to 15.
Daniel Meyers holds degrees from the Longy School of Music and Whitman College. He has performed with the Utah Shakespearean Festival, and at early music venues in the UK and Ireland, where he received a Watson Fellowship for ethnomusicology studies. In Boston Dan is a founding member of Seven Times Salt and the 7 Hills Renaissance Wind Ensemble. He has a strong interest in dance music and improvisation.