Voices of Music is one of the fastest-rising of the Bay Area’s huge number of early music groups. In part, this is because of its popular YouTube channel: Their video of the Pachelbel Canon has three-and-
a-half million views, Air on a G String more than one million. But a more important reason is that its founders, husband and wife team David Tayler (lute/ theorbo) and Hanneke van Proosdij (keyboards/recorder), are longtime members of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra who have deep connections in the relatively small early music community. They work with the best artists in a truly collaborative way.
VOM’s upcoming concerts are a case in point. Dominique Labelle, a frequent guest of Philharmonia
Baroque is one of the soloists. She was the Donna Anna in Peter Sellars’ wild, landmark Don Giovanni,
won the Handel Prize in 2002, had a long association with legendary choral director Robert Shaw,
and has recently received critical love letters for her work in starring roles with New York’s Opera
Lafayette. If she’s singing, you don’t ask questions, you buy a ticket.
Meanwhile, Labelle’s counterpart in this concert, mezzo-soprano Meg Bragle, has recently been
touring as a soloist with John Eliot Gardiner’s English Baroque Soloists in the Bach B Minor Mass,
and has seemingly appeared everywhere in her young career – the Leipzig Bach Festival, Aldeburgh
Festival, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Tafelmusik, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Apollo’s
Fire, Mark Morris Dance Group, to name just a few. And of course the pair are backed by the
instrumental virtuosity of a core of Philharmonia Baroque’s spectacular string players.
If you’re quick, you can score a ticket to see this performance of the gorgeous Pergolesi Stabat Mater
live. Or you can catch it a few months from now on YouTube through your crappy computer speakers.
Your choice.