Seattle: hotbed for early music

A visit from the Oberlin Baroque Trio to Town Hall Monday night underscored a strength of Seattle's musical scene as an "early music" city. Probably only Berkeley and Boston are the equals of Seattle in this regard, with Portland also a strong contender. One wonders why more is not made of this distinctive excellence. More evidence of Seattle's vitality in this regard came two nights earlier, when the Seattle Academy of Baroque Opera mounted at St. James Cathedral a rarity that is very nearly the oldest opera we have, Emilio De'Cavalieri's The Portrayal of the Soul and the Body. I couldn't get to the show, but those who went raved about it and here's a fine review by Richard Campbell of The P-I. Stephen Stubbs, an early music heavyweight and lutenist, recently moved from Boston to Seattle and is busy putting on this and other shows. The program at Town Hall was produced by its new music director, cellist Joshua Roman, who studied at Cleveland Institute for Music and came to greatly admire the cellist and viola da gamba player Catharine Meints, a mainstay of the Oberlin group. She is indeed a marvelous player, and her performance of a famous Bach sonata for gamba and harpsichord (BWV 1027) was a lovely display of beautiful tone and the kind of calm, untense repose that Roman himself gets into his playing. The trio has a mature mastery, and the program was full of wonderful pieces, known and unknown. The concert had an enthusiastic bunch of musicians in the audience, always a good sign, as well as many Oberlin alums. Oberlin, the venerable Ohio college, has a distinguished music conservatory with a Baroque Performance Institute. It made me wonder why the UW School of Music has mostly turned up its nose at early music (basically music before 1800), given Seattle's excellence in the field. Others, such as the Symphony and Opera, have also snubbed the movement. The main reason early music has flourished in Seattle is the Early Music Guild, which for 31 years has not only put on a wonderful series presenting some of the finest groups in the world, but has incubated many other ensembles and helps other groups by sharing mailing lists and other tips. EMG has also caught the early opera bug, and does ambitious productions every other year. Their next program brings the amazing Trio Mediaeval, a Norwegian vocal trio, to Town Hall on November 30. Be warned: If you haven't heard an early music and Trio Mediaeval is your introduction, you are in danger of becoming a violent convert. The curious paradox of early music is how "contemporary" it sounds. That's because much of the music is being unearthed and performed for the first time in centuries. Stubbs' performance, for instance, was of a work that was first performed 400 years ago and only revived in the US in 1966, and of course never before heard in Seattle. More than that, these works come completely unencrusted with a performance tradition, so the musicians have to figure out what to do, getting deeply engaged in the work. Most classical music is so overlaid with the performance discoveries of generations of great artists that there is little room for freshness. Oddly, the older the work, the fresher it sounds.