Arts Listings
Women’s Antique Vocal Ensemble Celebrates 10 Years
The Women’s Antique Vocal Ensemble (WAVE) will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a concert and party at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Montclair Presbyterian Church in Oakland. The 19 musical selections, all from performances over the past decade, include medieval works from Spain, England and France. The 14-member ensemble will be led by founder and director Cindy Beitman, and will feature special guests Joyce Johnson-Hamilton and Alta Sonora playing cornetto, sackbut, slide trumpet, dulcians and shawms.
The program moves from anonymous compositions of the 13th and 14th centuries, to pieces of the 14th century composed by Johannes Ciconia and Guillaume Dufay, to 16th century pieces by Thoinot Arbeau, Andrea Gabrieli, Cipriano de Rore, Tomas Luis de Victoria, Claude Le Jeune, Jacques Arcadelt, Adrian Willaert, Orlando di Lasso and Alessandro Striggio.
WAVE was founded in September 1999 as an outgrowth of a class under the aegis of the San Francisco Early Music Society, of which WAVE is now an affiliate. Cindy Beitmen, who had come to the Bay Area hoping to develop an early music ensemble after leaving her position as voice and diction teacher at Northern Arizona University (“After learning a viola de gamba with a few strings missing was the only early music instrument in town, I felt Flagstaff might not be the best place to start.”), recalled that a dozen women came to sing, “and at the end I popped the big question: who would like to keep going on with this and be part of such an ensemble?”
Five current members of WAVE were part of that initial class. Dedicated to promoting and performing music of the medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods “in as authentic and skilled a manner as possible,” WAVE performs concerts in the greater Bay Area, as well as public service concerts and outreach programs for hospitals and senior citizens. Beitmen recalls singing the Vivaldi Gloria in February 2007, “accompanied by a full baroque orchestra for inmates at the Santa Rita Jail ... We were delighted that our music inspired them to dance on the gym bleachers.”
After a recent interview with Berkeley pianist Sarah Cahill, best known for her interpretation of modern and avant-garde works, WAVE was invited by Cahill to participate in this year’s Winter Solistice program at Oakland’s Chapel of the Chimes.
“Most of us proudly refer to ourselves as ‘old chicks with glasses,’” Beitmen remarked, “But as with good wine, the women of WAVE only get better with age.” She referred to the concert as a celebration, “a concert of fine medieval and Renaissance music followed by a party where we will eat, drink and be merry!”
WOMEN’S ANTIQUE VOCAL ENSEMBLE
10th anniversary concert, 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Montclair Presbyterian Church, 5701 Thornhill Road, Oakland. $5-15.
233-1479. www.wavewomen.org.
