Events
Sukin Series
SCHENKMAN & FRIENDS (now known as Sound Salon): SWEETER THAN ROSES
Thursday
May 16, 2024
7:00PM
St. Patrick Co-Cathedral
215 N 31st St
$25 - $42
Grace Srinivasan, soprano
Pablo O’Connell, oboe
Adaiha MacAdam-Somer, viol
Byron Schenkman, harpsichord
St. Patrick Co-Cathedral provides a resonant yet intimate setting for an evening of English Baroque love songs. Seattle-based harpsichordist Byron Schenkman and friends present music by Henry Purcell, George Frideric Handel, and other composers in Handel’s circle: Elisabetta de Gambarini, John Stanley, and Ignatius Sancho.
To get tickets:
English Baroque love songs for voice, oboe, viol, and harpsichord, featuring soprano Grace Srinivasan and oboist Pablo O’Connell, with Adaiha MacAdam-Somer on viol and Byron Schenkman on harpsichord. Music by Henry Purcell, George Frideric Handel, Elisabetta de Gambarini, and Ignatius Sancho.
Guest artists
GRACE SRINIVASAN | SOPRANO
Praised for her “beautiful vocalism” (San Francisco Gate) and engaging presence, soprano Grace Srinivasan has established herself in the Baltimore-Washington area as a performer of a wide spectrum of repertoire ranging from medieval chant to contemporary compositions. A graduate of Peabody Conservatory and a Washington, D.C. area native, Grace sings professionally as a cantor and soprano at St. Stephen Martyr Catholic Church in D.C., section leader at Temple Sinai, and at Washington National Cathedral as a staff soprano. Grace has sung with ensembles throughout the region including the Washington Bach Consort, Cantate Chamber Singers, Cathedra, and Chantry. Grace is a co-founder and director of the early music duo Musica Spira, which highlights music by early modern women. Music Spira has performed at festivals across the country including IEMF, and BLEMF, and been presented by concert series at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Peabody Library, and many others throughout the Baltimore-Washington area. Grace also serves as resident music director for the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company in downtown Baltimore. An occasional screen actor, she appeared in the PBS docudrama, Enemy of the Reich, as Noor Inayat Khan.
PABLO O’CONNELL | OBOE
Highly in-demand as an early musician, Pablo O’Connell performs with the Trinity Wall St Baroque Orchestra, Carmel Bach Festival, Mercury Chamber Orchestra, Berkeley Cantata Collective, New York Baroque Incorporated, and Musica Angelica. He is passionate about contemporary music and performs regularly with SEM Ensemble and the Metropolis Ensemble, where in 2022 he curated a series of pop-up concerts as part of the Biophony festival. Pablo’s dynamic and varied musical life also includes writing and recording original folk music, and in 2021 he released his debut EP, Still You Answer, with a full-length LP to be released in fall of 2023. Pablo maintains a private teaching studio of baroque and modern oboists and he holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in modern and historical oboes from the Juilliard School (‘20, ‘22).
ADAIHA MACADAM-SOMER | VIOLIN
Multi-instrumentalist Adaiha MacAdam-Somer is highly sought after as a teacher, chamber, and orchestral musician across the United States and Europe. She splits her time and passion equally between cello, baroque cello, and all branches of the viola da gamba family. From her home base in Portland, Adaiha performs with a variety of ensembles including Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, 45th Parallel, Sound Salon, Gallery Concerts, Voices of Music, Voice of the Viol, Eugene Opera, and various other chamber and vocal ensembles across the states. As an educator she maintains a studio of private students, coaches the Bridgetown Baroque Ensemble, Trillium Baroque Orchestra, substitute teaches for youth orchestras and chamber ensembles across the Pacific Northwest, and is a regular guest instructor of workshops nationwide.
Miss MacAdam-Somer holds degrees from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her principal teachers include Jean-Michel Fonteneau, Elisabeth Reed, Uri Vardi, and Laszlo Varga. In the summer you can find her performing with various festivals and teaching chamber music and cello at Kinhaven Music School. Adaiha is forever grateful to Indre Viskontas and Adam Bristol for facilitating the acquisition of her bass viol, made by master luthier Francis Beaulieu.
BYRON SCHENKMAN | HARPSICHORD
Byron Schenkman (they/them) is a Queer Jewish keyboard player and scholar with a background in Historical Performance and a passion for connecting people through music. In addition to performing live on piano, harpsichord, and fortepiano, Byron can be heard on more than forty CDs, including recordings on historical instruments from the National Music Museum, Vermillion, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. They can also be heard in numerous online performances with Sound Salon. A founding director of the Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Byron received the Erwin Bodky Award from the Cambridge Society for Early Music “for outstanding achievement in the field of early music” and they were voted “Best Classical Instrumentalist” by the readers of Seattle Weekly. Their piano playing has been described in The New York Times as “sparkling,” “elegant,” and “insightful.” In recent seasons Byron has been a featured artist at the Boston Early Music Festival and the Vancouver Bach Festival, and they have premiered new works by Damien Geter, Caroline Shaw, and Jonathan Woody. Caroline Shaw’s Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings was dedicated to Byron. Their 2023 tour of Chile, including concerts and masterclasses in six cities, was sponsored by the Education and Culture program of the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. government and administered by Partners of the Americas. Byron is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music and received a master’s degree with honors in performance from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
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