Sweet Swan of Avon – Series of Words and Music Concludes

THE MUSICIANS IN ORDINARY CELEBRATE SHAKESPEARE

ON ACTUAL 400^TH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS DEATH, APRIL 23

ENGLISH-LANGUAGE AUTHORITY & AUTHOR SETH LERER

READS IN ORIGINAL PRONUNCIATION

Four centuries to the day after his death, The Musicians In Ordinary celebrate William Shakespeare (1564-1616) with the last of three special performances, Sweet Swan of Avon, Saturday, April 23, 8 p.m. at the Heliconian Hall, 35 Hazelton Avenue in Yorkville (Bay subway).  

The series has featured readings from the plays and poems of the writer whom his contemporary Ben Jonson praised as “the Swan of Avon”.  Complementing the words are airs or madrigals “apt for voices or viols” and consort music, along with lute solos from the age of the Tudors and Stuarts.  

Seth Lerer, distinguished American author (Prospero’s Son and Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language) and scholar of English language and literature (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Lerer;http://literature.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/slerer.html), will read excerpts from Pericles, Hamlet, Macbeth and other works in the original pronunciation. Lerer made his MIO debut in 2015, reading the poetry of John Donne.

In the program, titled Shakespeare’s Sorrows, soprano Hallie Fishel and lutenist John Edwards perform airs by John Dowland (1563-1626) and his contemporaries. Christopher Verrette leads MIO’s violin band in Dowland’s completeLachrimae or Seven Tears.

Tickets, $30, $20 for students and seniors, are available at the door.  More information is available fromwww.musiciansinordinary.ca or http://musiciansinordinary.blogspot.ca,
by e-mailing musinord@sympatico.ca
or by calling 416-535-9956. 

Deanne Williams (www.deannewilliams.com) is special consultant for the series.  Williams is author of Shakespeare and the Performance of Girlhood (2014), co-editor of The Afterlife of Ophelia (both published by Palgrave Macmillan), and an associate professor of English at York University.

John Edwards notes, “Shakespeare has been called ‘one of our first and greatest psychologists.’  Four hundred years after his death, his insights and penned portraits of the inner workings of heroes and villains continue to teach – not only actors who express themselves onstage, but also all of us – how to perform in the hour we spend strutting and fretting upon the stage.”

The Musicians In Ordinary are supported in part by the Spem in Alium Fund of the Toronto Community Foundation.  

THE MUSICIANS IN ORDINARY PRESENT

Sweet Swan of Avon: Shakespeare’s Sorrows – Last of three programs celebrating Shakespeare

Hallie Fishel, soprano; John Edwards, lute; violin band led by Christopher Verrette.

Seth Lerer, reader

Saturday, April 23, 2016, 8 p.m. at the Heliconian Hall

PROGRAM:

Readings from Pericles, Hamlet, Macbeth and other works.

John Dowland: Lachrimae

Music by other composers of the Tudor and Stuart eras.

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