Beverly Au Archives - TheaterScene.net

Beverly Au

Parthenia: The Art of Persuasion, An Afternoon and Evening of Rhetoric, Music and Poetry

May 13, 2015

In both concerts, eight artists played and performed together in the sort of flexible, happy collaboration which is possible only among colleagues of equal discipline, excellence and experience on the one hand and extended, mutually respectful friendship on the other. The Parthenia quartet members – Rosamund Morley/treble viol, Lawrence Lipnik/tenor viol, Beverly Au/bass viol and Lisa Terry/bass viol – were joined by theorbist Richard Stone, soprano Amy Burton, actor Paul Hecht and conductor Gary Thor Wedow. [more]

Parthenia Viol Consort: Harp & Viols – Early Works, Plus a World Premiere by Eleonor Sandresky

March 31, 2015

Eleonor Sandresky is not the first composer to be attracted to Parthenia's affinity for collaboration with contemporary music-writers. Her new piece, “John Donne Songs Without Words,” was written for and with Parthenia and Patton, as Sandresky herself explained in her brief introduction of the piece to the March 22 audience. Sandresky builds on these musicians' ability to make their instruments accomplish everything that Baroque composers expected them to as well as much that their seventeenth century sensibilities would never have imagined. Sandresky assumes, as well, these musicians' wide-ranging intellectual literacy, their willing ability to stretch their performance skills and purposes, and their exceptionally good-willed, down-to-earth lack of pretense. [more]