In our culture, "old" is often associated with "decrepit", "inferior", "out of fashion" or "irrelevant". As someone who is about to enter my second half-century, I increasingly find evidence to the contrary. Women and wine come to mind immediately in this regard. An excellent well-aged vintage or a beautiful lady whose appeal has been finely honed by experience are considerably more desirable than their young, fresh and eager yet unseasoned equivalents. Sometimes, if we look far enough into the past, we discover something that, to us, is completely new and fresh because it's been forgotten. This "freshness from the past" is exactly the phenomenon that has characterized the resurgence of the early music movement over the past few decades. Musicians and their audiences are rediscovering just how vibrant music from the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical eras really was.
There are two notable groups in town that bring this "freshness from the past" into the performing arts sphere: (1) Ars Lyrica and (2) Mercury Baroque. The more recently formed of the two, Mercury Baroque, came together in 2000 when three grad students at Rice University pulled together a small chamber orchestra. These founding members, Antoine Plante (director and Viola da Gamba), Jonathan Godfrey (Concertmaster), and Ana Treviño-Godfrey (soprano), have seen their germinal concept blossom into a full Baroque orchestra that supports a subscription series at Wortham Center's Cullen Theater.
Antoine Plante is a French Canadian who brings a sense of French refinement to the group's performances. As a choral singer, I recently performed with Mercury Baroque in Handel's Messiah and loved the lilting sense of dance he brought to the work.
As refreshingly relevant as groups like Mercury Baroque are, they need to be discovered by a broader audience base. Until that time arrives, the musicians in this ensemble divide their time between performing with a number of groups including Mercury Baroque's fine counterpart, Ars Lyrica. read more
