Cherish The American Classical Orchestra Presentation Of “Revisit: The Chaconne Project” At Harlem Parish

The American Classical Orchestra (ACO) returns to the historic Harlem Parish, the stunning location of its highly-praised 2020 digital production of The Chaconne Project.

For an intimate, creatively staged live performance of the program.

The Thursday, February 3, 2022, concert, led by ACO Founder and Artistic Director Thomas Crawford, features renowned Mexican mezzo-soprano, Guadalupe Peraza, in a lively program of Baroque repertoire featuring the chaconne, a musical genre that began as bawdy 16th-century dances in Spanish culture.

After Revisit, the Orchestra’s next concert is Remember, on February 26, 2022, featuring Mozart’s Requiem in D minor, coupled with the world premiere of Thomas Crawford’s Elegy for Strings. This concert marks the return to the stage of the acclaimed ACO Chorus.

Thursday, February 3, 2022, at 7 pm, Harlem Parish, 258 W 118th Street in Harlem, NY

Revisit: The Chaconne Project

• Karen Dekker and Chloe Fedor, Baroque violin
• Maureen Murchie, viola
• Arnie Tanimoto, viola da gamba and cello
• Charles Weaver, theorbo and Baroque guitar
• Guadalupe Peraza, mezzo soprano
• Thomas Crawford, harpsichord
• Juan Arañés: Chacona a la vida bona
• Nicola Francesco Haym: Ciaccona in E Major
• Barbara Strozzi: L’Eraclito amoroso
• Marin Marais: Chaconne in A Major, from Pièces de Viole, Book 4
• Santiago de Murcia: Marionas
• Arcangelo Corelli: Trio Sonata, Op. 2, No. 12
• Johann Sebastian Bach: Chaconne from Partita for Solo Violin, BWV 1004
• François Couperin: La Favorite
• Claudio Monteverdi: Lamento della Ninfa
• Henry Purcell: Chaconne from King Arthur

The title of this salon concert—Revisit­—refers to the ACO’s much-praised fall 2020 digital release of The Chaconne Project, filmed at one of the City’s prime examples of Neo-Gothic architecture, the Harlem Parish.

With Revisit, the original cast of musicians reassembles in the same gorgeous setting and performs the program live.

This vibrant concert offers ten examples of the chaconne—a musical genre characterized by its repeating bass line—and sheds light on its evolution as it passed from street to salon to concert hall.

Thomas Crawford leads the chamber ensemble comprised of strings and plucked instruments, with voice and percussion.

It showcases Mexican mezzo-soprano Guadalupe Peraza, who appeared as featured soloist with the New York Virtuoso Singers and at the majestic Teatro de la Ciudad Esperanza Iris in Mexico City.

Tickets, priced at $35 and $55, are available at aconyc.org or by calling ACO at 212.362.2727, ext. 4. Ticket holders will need to follow the venue’s guidelines and show proof of full vaccination against COVID-19 in order to enter the building.

Thomas Crawford

The American Classical Orchestra’s Artistic Director and Founder Thomas Crawford is a champion of historically accurate performance styles in Baroque, Classical, and Early Romantic music.

He founded two Connecticut orchestras: the Fairfield Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Old Fairfield Academy, the period-instrument offshoot of the Fairfield Orchestra, renamed the American Classical Orchestra in 1999.

With the Fairfield Orchestra, Crawford commissioned numerous works by composers, including John Corigliano and William Thomas McKinley, and collaborated with artists such as Joshua Bell, John Corigliano, Vladimir Feltsman, Richard Goode, Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, André Watts, and Dawn Upshaw.

He also conducted the world premiere of Keith Jarrett’s Bridge of Light at Alice Tully Hall, subsequently recorded on the ECM label. An accomplished composer, organist, and choirmaster, Crawford won the prestigious BMI composition award for his organ work Ashes of Rose, premiered at the American Guild of Organists.

A passionate activist determined to bring the beauty of period music to a wider audience, Mr. Crawford’s educational activities with the Orchestra received a Learning in the Arts for Children and Youth award from the National Endowment for the Arts, recognizing the ACO’s dynamic music outreach to New York City schoolchildren. A Pennsylvania native, he holds degrees in organ performance and composition from the Eastman School of Music and Columbia University.

American Classical Orchestra

Founded in 1984 as the Orchestra of the Old Fairfield Academy, the ensemble was renamed the American Classical Orchestra in 1999.

Founder and Artistic Director Thomas Crawford established its new and permanent home in New York City in 2005.

It is now the City’s only full-scale orchestra dedicated to performing 17th, 18th, and 19th century music on period instruments.

Described as “simply splendid” by The New York Times, ACO players are the foremost in their field, consisting of artists who also perform with such major New York ensembles as Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Handel and Haydn Society, and the New York Philharmonic.

Its principal players are Faculty members at The Juilliard School, and the ACO works closely with students enrolled in the School’s Historical Performance Program. The American Classical Orchestra Chorus, comprised of professional vocalists from the New York metro area, joins ACO for larger productions.

By playing music on original instruments and using historic performance techniques, ACO strives to recreate the sounds that audiences would have heard when the music was first written and performed.

The Orchestra and its “supremely skilled musicians” (Theater Scene) have won critical praise for its recordings, educational programs, and concerts, including appearances at Alice Tully Hall and on Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and for a sold-out 25th-anniversary performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

For more information, visit aconyc.org

Photo credits: American Classical Orchestra with Guadalupe Peraza performing The Chaconne Project, Nov. 2020 at Harlem Parish, courtesy of ACO.