Cantabile is a self-directed vocal ensemble based in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts that specializes in a cappella performances of vocal chamber music from the European Renaissance of the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. We have also performed 18th and 20th century music by special invitation.

In the beginning:  Cantabile was founded as an octet in 2001 and made its concert debut in January 2002 at the Wistariahurst Museum in Holyoke, Mass. with a program of a cappella Venetian Renaissance works that we later performed for other enthusiastic audiences in western Massachusetts and New York. In October 2002 we collaborated with actress/reader Doris Abramson and pianist Gregory Hayes in a program of Emily Dickinson songs and readings, presented in conjunction with the Emily Dickinson World Weekend held in Amherst, Massachusetts.

2003, a full year: In February 2003, Cantabile was featured at the Amherst Club’s annual "Love Notes" benefit concert. In June and July, we presented a program of Renaissance music from Spain, entitled "Love, Shipwrecks, and the Virgin Mary," at several concerts in western Massachusetts and New York. We again collaborated with Gregory Hayes in July as part of the Mohawk Trail Concert series, presenting choruses, solos, and duets from Handel’s oratorio L’allegro, Il Penseroso, ed il Moderato.  In September 2003 we participated along with several other area vocal ensembles in a project of the Grace Church Center for Sacred Music: Spem in alium nunquam habui, a 40-voice motet by Thomas Tallis. On November 4 we performed works by Victoria, Josquin, Schütz, Monteverdi and Flecha for the Tuesday Morning Music Club of Springfield MA, sharing the program with organist Grant Moss. Our final performance of 2003 was as guest professional vocal ensemble at the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Choral Spectrum '03 on November 8.

In December of 2003 Catherine L. Bowers, mezzo-soprano and founding member of Cantabile, was diagnosed with advanced cancer. She died on March 8, 2004. Individually and as a group we were hit hard by this grievous loss of a beloved friend and colleague.

2004:  When the surviving members of Cantabile convened in April after a hiatus of nearly five months, we decided that what Cathy had fervently wished was also what we most deeply needed:  to continue to feed our souls and those of our listeners with beautiful music.  Our sadness was inextricably mixed with a joyful sense of how we had been blessed by Cathy's inimitable musicianship, talent, warmth, honesty and enthusiasm.  In August and September the seven of us presented the music of Josquin des Prez, sung in Cathy's memory, at King’s Chapel, Boston, Massachusetts (August) and at Pacem in Terris, Warwick, New York (September).  In November, we invited Dorie Goldman to join us in our music making.

2005: On Sunday, March 13 Cantabile performed a concert entitled Saints and Sailors: Sacred, Sad and Silly Songs of the Sixteenth Century, including works by Josquin Desprez, Mateo Flecha, Gaspar Fernandes, Juan Vasquez and Tomas Luis da Victoria on the Music at First concert series, First Church of Christ, Congregational ("Old First Church"), Court Square, Springfield MA.

On Sunday, June 26, 2005 we  performed Mediterranean Madrigals in Spanish, French and Italian, featuring Luca Marenzio's madrigal cycle Baci soavi e cari at Arcadia Players' New Season Celebration at the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies, Amherst MA. We repeated the Marenzio cycle at the "March the Music Back" benefit for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. John M. Greene Hall, Smith College, Northampton MA on Friday, September 20, 2005.

In the fall of 2005 two of our members had to leave the group for personal reasons, and we decided to continue Cantabile as a sextet.

2006: Cantabile’s 2006 spring concert "From Venice to Padua" was sung in Holyoke and Northampton, and featured Marenzio’s madrigal cycle Baci soavi e cari and a complete performance of a madrigal comedy by Adriano Banchieri. We also taped this program for Amherst Community Television’s Public Access Channel 12. See the ACTV website for cablecast schedule information. We did a short program of Dutch Baroque music by Jan P. and Dirck J. Sweelinck and Jan Baptist Verrijt for the Arcadia Players' New Season Celebration in June at the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies, Amherst MA. We repeated the Dutch program twice in August 2006. On August 20 it was paired with Bach's Cantata 106 and we were joined by instrumentalists Gregory Hayes, Alice Robbins and friends, at Pacem in Terris, Warwick NY, in a concert dedicated to the memory of Frederick Franck, recently deceased artist, writer and Pacem co-founder. On August 30 the Dutch music was followed by an encore performance of Banchieri's madrigal comedy Barca di Venetia per Padova (A Boat Ride from Venice to Padua) on the Watermelon Wednesdays concert series in West Whately, MA.

In the fall of 2006 one of our sextet, Sudie Marcuse, took a leave of absence to complete graduate work at Boston University, and we invited soprano Deanna Joseph to join us. Since then we have given several performances of madrigals, canzonets and Hebrew Psalm settings by Salamone Rossi, joined by an ensemble of superb instrumentalists, including Robert Eisenstein and Joe Jewett, violins, Laure Rabut, viola da gamba, and Margaret Irwin-Brandon or Gregory Hayes, harpsichord. This program was performed four times between April 2007 and January 2008 at the Jewish Community of Amherst, the National Yiddish Book Center in South Amherst, and as part of the Arcadia Players concert season in Deerfield and Holyoke MA. In November 2007 a selection from this program was performed, together with English madrigals from The Triumphs of Oriana, for the Tuesday Morning Music Club in Springfield MA.

In the spring of 2008 we started developing a new program called A Musical Feast (with guest artists Meg Pash, lute, and Laurie Rabut, viol) which consists of an assortment of delightful ensemble pieces and solo ballads depicting delicacies from hunt to market to table, savory herbs and their virtues, the miracle of the loaves and fishes, a lusty St. Martin’s Goose and much more, washed down with ample portions of wine, ale and coffee. A half-length preview of this program was presented on a joint concert with the UMass Madrigal Singers in April 2008 at All Saints Episcopal Church in South Hadley MA, and reprised the following month as part of the Arcadia Players Season Celebration at the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies.

Deanna Joseph returned to Eastman School of Music for doctoral studies in conducting in the fall of 2008, and was replaced by soprano Diana Brewer. In November 2008 we presented a program of Music for Evensong from the English Renaissance on the Arcadia Players concert series, collaborating with the Arcadia Players Consort of Viols, at Wesley United Methodist Church, Hadley MA. In June 2009 we presented the full-length version of our Musical Feast program (see above) at the 1794 Meetinghouse in New Salem, MA.

We returned to Arcadia Players' concert series for two events in early 2010. In January we presented two performances of Heartaches and Earthquakes in Longmeadow and Northampton. This was a program that included chansons and motets on love and loss by Gilles Binchois, Johannes Ockeghem, Josquin de Prez, and Antoine Brumel, and, as the featured work, Brumel's twelve-voice Missa "Et ecce terrae motus" (Earthquake Mass). Joining us were six guest vocalists for the mass, and in the chansons three viola da gambists - Bob Eisenstein, Laurie Rabut and Meg Pash. We also sang two madrigals by Don Carlo Gesualdo on the Arcadia Players Gala Anniversary Concert at Sweeney Concert Hall, Smith College, on March 20.

On February 5, 2011 Arcadia Players again presented Cantabile in a program of sacred and secular music on the themes of love and marriage by the great Renaissance composer Orlando di Lasso at Wesley United Methodist Church, Hadley MA. Joining us were four fantastic Renaissance wind players: Douglas Kirk, Mack Ramsey, Eric Schmaltz and Daniel Stillman. Our soprano Diana Brewer also plays sackbut and joined the other instrumentalists in several pieces. In addition to those selections, Cantabile's program included vocal works in four languages: Latin motets based on passages from the Song of Solomon, French chansons on love poetry by Pierre de Ronsard, Italian madrigals on sonnets by Petrarch, and German lieder, several of which focused on the more humorous and down-to-earth aspects of wooing and married life. 

"...thank you again for the stunning program that Cantabile presented as part of the series this season. Clearly the group
was carefully chosen; it is uncanny to have eight voices that complement each other so well. Your love for Renaissance music
permeates every nuance and phrase sung. And the joy of the singers is most apparent and adds so much to the transcendent
quality of the concert.

It is astonishing to me that such variety can be found in such a program.

I look foward to hearing more from Cantabile in the future."

• "A Splendid Salamone Rossi Sampler," November 2007, from Classical Voice of New England
  

"For the 2nd concert of its 19th season, four instrumentalists from Arcadia Players roster joined forces with the vocal sextet Cantabile to present a recital of music by violinist and composer Salamone Rossi in the Italianate Music Room added in the early 20th-century to the late-19th-century Empire-style Skinner mansion, Wistariahurst, here ... This was the perfect setting for the music by this Jewish composer of Mantua, contemporary of Cremonan Claudio Monteverdi, and to a degree heir of Venetian Giovanni Gabrieli of the previous generation, and the musicians exploited the venue magnificently" ... You may read the full text of this review at Classical Voice of New England.

 

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