Barefoot Chamber Concerts (“an enterprise noted for both its quality and informality” – San Francisco Classical Voice) presents really good music in the right acoustic and without the formality of most classical music events.
Barefoot’s April 14 concert features the West Coast’s legendary viol consort, Wildcat Viols (Joanna Blendulf, Julie Jeffrey, Annalisa Pappano and Elisabeth Reed), playing music by Purcell, Locke, and Legrenzi.
The Wildcats have been playing together for many years, and some things just get better. This program is centered on the sunset years of the viol consort repertoire, the bold and dramatic music of Matthew Locke and Henry Purcell, with a leavening of unusual consort music by Giovanni Legrenzi (doubly unusual because Italy produced very little music for viol consort, leaving the field largely to the English).
The English had developed the repertoire since the early 1500s, but by the 1650s and 1660s, when Locke and Purcell were writing, the popularity of the form was in decline. However, these two extraordinarily inventive composers both paid magnificent tributes to the genre in their own ways. In the lovely acoustic of St. Mary Magdalen’s parish hall, you will hear how they breathed new life into consort music with chromaticism and angular melodies that would have shocked the listeners of Byrd’s generation, but only serve to delight us.
Masks are recommended, but not required. A variety of seating is available.