The Élan Concert Series closes their season with an intimate evening of music, poetry and refreshments in the museum gardens. 

This open air concert will feature NYC's Early Music troupe, Anglica Antiqua. Join us for wine and merriment as they bring to life music of 17th century England through exciting interpretations of dramatized sung recitation of poetry.

Elissa Edwards & Catherine Hancock, sopranos
Michael Conwill, baritone
Christopher Baum, lute

In this program we explore songs, dialogues, and ensemble pieces by Henry Lawes and John Wilson, the two most important English song composers of the mid-17th century. These men lived and worked during a transitional time, when the lute-song tradition epitomized by John Dowland had long since fallen out of fashion, but the Baroque masterpieces of Henry Purcell still lay some time in the future. Lawes, Wilson, and their contemporaries knew and worked with some of the greatest poets of their day -- which is to say, some of the greatest poets in the history of the English language -- so it is no surprise that they cultivated the "declamatory song," a uniquely English genre that aimed for the clearest, most expressive treatment of the text, but in a manner quite distinct from the more well-known Italian style of the period. Lawes, in particular, was widely praised for his "tunefull and well-measur'd song," as his friend the poet John Milton put it, while Wilson enjoyed a reputation as a brilliant lutenist, singer, and tunesmith. Join us as we celebrate this rich and unjustly neglected repertoire!