Tallis Scholars February 16, 2012

Full details at http://www.ums.org/s_current_season/artist.asp?pageid=678
The Tallis Scholars add a new dimension to UMS’s 11/12 focus on artistic renegades, presenting music of the wealthy Italian prince Carlo Gesualdo. Gesualdo’s infamy relates to his obsessive double murder of his wife and her lover, but he was also a maverick Renaissance composer whose eccentric approach to creating music — and whose colorful life story — inspired both Nadia Boulanger and Igor Stravinsky several hundred years later. His music contains wild gesticulations and abrupt surprises, and contemporary Renaissance scholars now regard him as perhaps the most forward-thinking, expressive, and sensual composer of his time. Consumed by guilt after murdering his wife, Gesualdo devoted himself to composing church music. At the centerpiece of this program is the Tenebrae Responses for Holy Saturday, part of the liturgy for the final three days of Holy Week. Works by other “maverick” Renaissance composers round out the program.