Eastman playing on Memorial Art Gallery organ. May 2005.
By John Fatuzzo
The Eastman School of Music will be celebrating the tenth anniversary of the installment of the Italian Baroque Organ at the Memorial Art Gallery this weekend. Performing History, a four-day festival of performances, masterclasses and lectures, will take place at the gallery, begins this Thursday, October 22, with a keynote address from Nancy Norwood, the gallery’s Curator of European Art. The address will be followed by a performance from the internationally renowned Italian organist, Roberto Antonello. The festival is sponsored by the Humanities Project, a program of the University of Rochester Humanities Center.
The second and third days of the festival showcases will showcase the music and influence of two widely renowned Baroque Italian musicians: Girolamo Frescobaldi and Domenico Zipoli. Friday’s festival schedule explores the music of Frescobaldi, including a Baroque performance practice master class by Armando Carideo, a paper session on the composers contributions to the arts in Baroque Rome and a concert by Edoardo Bellotti featuring several of Frescobaldi’s organ and harpsichord works. On Saturday, Eastman students will perform organ works by Zipoli in a morning masterclass led by Roberto Antonello and the evening’s concert will feature the rarely performed Zipoli Missa a S. Ignacio.
Eastman playing on Memorial Art Gallery organ. May 2005.
The three concerts on the concluding day of the Performing History festival are given as part of the Going for Baroque Sunday concert series. All three performances will feature the Italian Baroque Organ. The first program is a 25-minute recital and presentation by Eastman organ students, and the second is a performance by Eastman alumna Annie Laver. Finally, the closing performance of the festival features the three organ professors at Eastman at the time at the Italian Baroque Organ was installed in 2005.
The Italian Baroque Organ at the Memorial Art Gallery is the only full-sized Baroque organ in North America. It was originally built around 1770 in the region of central Italy and still features the original pipework. The organ was installed in 2005 in the gallery’s Fountain Court after it was restored in Germany. (You can see a video depicting the organ’s reconstruction in the Fountain Court here.) The accessibility of this instrument enriches both organ students at Eastman and the Rochester community seeking to hear the authentic sounds of the past. Performing History is not only a commemoration of the organ’s installment at the gallery but a celebration of the music that was written for the instrument, the composers who utilized its sounds and the music’s place in history and modern culture.
Eastman playing on Memorial Art Gallery organ. May 2005.