Concerts
Shir Levi’im: A Song of Levites
Shir Levi’im traces the thread of Jewish community, resilience, and creativity from medieval Spain and Portugal to baroque Amsterdam. This program offers a window into the musical life of the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam, framed with two new settings of mystical poems by the 11th-century poet Yehuda Halevi. Shir Levi’im (a long of Levites) refers both to the ancient Levites who sang psalms of worship in the Temple, and Yehuda Halevi, whose surname evokes this musical heritage. The program concludes with a new setting of the Kaddish Shalem, a central prayer of thanksgiving and praise.
In person June 18-20 and online 6/28 at 7:30 pm.
About the ensemble
Photo Credit: Alex Koppel
MIRYAM was founded in 2016 by Lev DePaolo and Ari Nieh in order to bring Jewish early music to New England audiences. Since then, our music has reached communities across the country and worldwide, from Jerusalem, to Amsterdam, to Montreal. Our ensemble members are critically acclaimed performers and scholars of renaissance and baroque music who have a passion for connecting with audiences. Many of our programs bring well-loved composers such as Monteverdi, Bach, and Schütz into Jewish spaces, other houses of faith, and concert halls, celebrating the Jewish texts upon which their compositions are based and opening a fruitful inter-religious dialogue. Other programs highlight Jewish composers, such as Salamone Rossi and Abraham Caceres and feature music from baroque Jewish communities ranging from Amsterdam, to Mantua, to Bayonne.
In every space we enter, we set the intention of celebrating the beauty and richness of intersecting identities and musical languages. We hope you will join us for one of our concerts this season!
Listen
Roster
Lev DePaolo, Director and Co-Founder
Lev DePaolo (they/them) has received critical acclaim for their “perfect combination of clarity and warmth” (Harmonia Early Music). A specialist in historical performance, they have a versatile career as a composer, soloist, chamber musician, and ensemble singer. They have appeared with Tafelmusik, American Bach Soloists, Amherst Early Music, Society for Historically Informed Performance, Bloomington Early Music Festival, Gotham Early Music Scene, Washington Bach Consort, and the choir of the National Cathedral. As the director of MIRYAM, Lev is dedicated to bringing Jewish baroque music to new audiences. They have been featured in Washington Jewish Week for their work, and in 2019 they produced the East Coast premiere of Lidarti’s Esther, a recently-rediscovered Hebrew-language oratorio. Lev holds degrees from Indiana University, Hebrew College, and Smith College; they currently study at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.
Juan A. Mesa, organ
Juan Mesa began piano, organ, and composition studies in his native city of Puerto Montt, Chile. He moved to the US in 2001, and graduated from Western Connecticut State University in 2005 earning degrees in organ performance and composition. He studied choral conducting with Kevin Isaacs, instrumental conducting with Fernando Jimenez, and voice pedagogy with Margaret Astrup. He completed his Master of Music degree in organ performance and early music at Indiana University in 2008, studying organ with Christopher Young, harpsichord and continuo with Elisabeth Wright, and improvisation with Todd Wilson and Jeffrey Smith. Juan won first prize in the Region I Competition for Young Organists organized by the American Guild of Organists, and in 2017 was one of five semi-finalists to compete in the National Competition in Organ Improvisation in Montreal. Juan has performed solo recitals across the US, as well as in Chile and Argentina. He has collaborated with many groups, including the Indiana-based Exordium Baroque Ensemble, the Crescendo Period Orchestra in western Connecticut, the Choirs of Trinity Episcopal Church in Indianapolis, and in 2017 he performed as the organ soloist and accompanist of the award-winning University of Notre Dame’s Children’s Choir in their second national tour. Juan is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Music Theory department at Indiana University, and he is the Music Director at Roslindale Congregational Church.
Hilary Anne Walker, lyric mezzo soprano, is an avid performer and supporter of early music in the greater Boston area. In concert, she was most recently featured as a soloist with the Miryam ensemble on the Boston SOHIP summer concert series and in the Lord Nelson Mass with the Church of the Advent choir. This fall she is looking forward to joining the Boston Baroque chorus and the roster of Musicians of the Old Post Road. Previous ensemble work includes Odyssey Opera, BMOP, Long and Away, the former Tramontana early music quintet of which she was a founder, Opera Boston, and Lorelei Ensemble. Past operatic roles include Jean de Morcerf in Massenet’s Le Portrait de Manon, Jacquot in Offenbach’s Pierette et Jacquot, Cupid, Orpheus in the Underworld, Cherubino, Hänsel, L'enfant in L'enfant et les sortilèges, and Betty Parris in The Crucible. A student of Michael Meraw, Ms. Walker earned her Masters from New England Conservatory, and her B.A. in music from Vassar College.
Marika Holmqvist, baroque violin
Marika, whose playing was hailed as “mightily impressive, tonally attractive and intellectually secure” (Philadelphia Inquirer) enjoys an active freelance career performing as concertmaster and or principal for ensembles as diverse as Trinity Wall Street Baroque Orchestra (NYC), Spire Ensemble (Kansas City), Handel Choir (Baltimore), and Barocco Boreale (Finland). She has toured 30 countries with distinguished European and American early music ensembles, led and coached operas at Harvard and Cornell, taught baroque string techniques at Rutgers, and guest lectured at the Novia University of Applied Sciences (Finland). Her 20 – odd recordings include the GRAMMY-nominated Handel’s Israel in Egypt with the Trinity Wall Street Choir and Baroque Orchestra. Marika holds two masters degrees (Baroque Violin Performance and Pedagogy) from the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.
Guest Artists
Emily Hale, baroque violin
Audiences have described violinist Emily Hale’s performances as animated, intuitive and elegant. Fueled by a sense of curiosity and discovery, Emily performs baroque and classical repertoire on period instruments and creates interactive performance experiences. Her credits include recording with the London-based Early Opera Company for a BBC Channel 4 series about life in the 18th century. She’s played chamber music and opera repertoire at the Valletta International Baroque Music Festival in Malta and at the London Handel Festival. In New York, she has appeared with the Four Nations Ensemble and The Sebastians, and in Boston with Emmanuel Music. From intimate house concerts to leading a pop-up baroque orchestra at Boston’s Roslindale neighborhood Porchfest, Emily is focused on connecting with audiences. Her Pajama Concerts have proved popular with family audiences at libraries and schools in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania. Pajama Concerts offer innovative “musical story-telling,” pairing classic children’s literature with chamber music in an open, inclusive format.
Dylan Sauerwald, harpsichord and conductor
Dylan Sauerwald is a distinctive historical keyboardist and conductor. At the keyboard, he has been praised for his “fleet fingers” and “sophisticated playing,” (Capriccio) and as a conductor, his productions have been called “heart-wrenching and self-reflecting” (OperaWire). Mr. Sauerwald has performed in venues from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art to Taipei's National Recital Hall, and his playing is featured in the BBC historical drama Poldark. As a recording artist, Mr. Sauerwald can be heard on the New Focus, Coro, and Urtext labels, as soloist and continuo player on the harpsichord, organ, fortepiano, and lautenwerck, performing works from the 16th century to the 21st. A champion of early opera, he has led productions of rarely-performed works acclaimed as “refined and flexible,” (Boston Globe) “fearless,” (Voce di Meche) and “a remarkable musical experience” (OperaWire). He is in demand as a guest conductor, appearing with Sunshine City Opera, the Cantanti Project, Dorian Baroque, Ensemble Musica Humana, and others. Mr. Sauerwald directs Polyphemus, an early music collective and concert series in lower Manhattan, and is Director of Music at the New Dorp Moravian Church.
Programs
Please contact us at miryam.ensemble@gmail.com to schedule a performance
King David Playing the Harp
Gerard von Honthorst
al naharot bavel
Psalm Settings of the Italian and German Baroque
This program explores the Jewish roots of sacred texts frequently set to music by Christian composers during the baroque period. Vocal and instrumental music by Claudio Monteverdi, Heinrich Schütz, and Johann Hermann Schein is interspersed by Hebrew readings of the original texts.
Kaddish- Salamone Rossi
Lamentations
Music by Emilio de' Cavalieri, Tomás Luis de Victoria, and Salamone Rossi
Eicha, or The Book of Lamentations, describes in heartbreaking detail the destruction in 586 B.C.E. of the holy Temple in Jerusalem. This program offers an exploration of the myriad ways in which this exquisite text has been used throughout history, by Jews and Christians alike. Framed with a sublime setting of Eicha by Emilio de’Cavalieri, the program is interspersed with Hebrew liturgical settings by the Jewish Mantuan composer, Salamone Rossi.
Emanuel de Witte - Interior of the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam
Bo'i B'shalom
Music from Amsterdam's Portuguese Synagogue
Built in 1675, the Portuguese Synagogue was a cultural hub for Jews who fled from Portugal to Amsterdam to escape the Inquisition. The synagogue’s Eitz Chayim library contains a wealth of historical documents, including a collection of Hebrew-language musical scores spanning the late baroque and early classical eras.
Bo’i B’shalom features a selection of rarely-performed Hebrew liturgical settings for two voices, violins, and continuo, by the composers Cristiano Giuseppe Lidarti, Abraham Caceres, and Volunio Gallicchi.
Esther
A 1774 Hebrew oratorio commissioned by the Jewish Community of Amsterdam
Cristiano Giuseppe Lidarti’s oratorio tells the biblical story of how Queen Esther rescued the Jews of Persia from King Ahasuerus (Xerxes) and his scheming advisor, Haman. Lovers of baroque music may recognize the libretto from Handel’s 1718 Esther- the text for Lidarti’s oratorio is a direct translation into Hebrew completed by one of Lidarti’s contemporaries, Venetian Rabbi Jacob Raphael ben Simhah Judah Saraval.
BWV 199
Exploring themes of Teshuva in the music of Bach
J.S. Bach’s cantata, Mein Herze shwimmt im Blut, is a deeply moving portrait of a human being’s journey from despair and self flagellation to hope and humility. We offer this cantata as a meditation leading up to the Days of Awe.
Judith and esther
Biblical cantatas by Elisabeth Claude Jacquet de la Guerre
Jacquet de la Guerre’s vibrant cantatas paint a compelling portrait of two brave women: Esther, who rescued the Jews of Persia, and Judith, who cunningly defeated the Assyrian general, Holofernes.
Contact Us
Send us a message
DONATE
MIRYAM is a Fiscally Sponsored Project of Fractured Atlas, a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Your contributions are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law.
To donate by check, please make your check out to: Fractured Atlas
Please include "MIRYAM" on the memo.
Mail to: Alicia DePaolo | 3737 Seminary Rd, SM 204 | Alexandria, VA 22304
WHAT IS FRACTURED ATLAS?
Fractured Atlas is a national nonprofit organization based in New York City that "empowers artists, arts organizations, and other cultural sector stakeholders by eliminating practical barriers to artistic expression, so as to foster a more agile and resilient cultural ecosystem."
Their small but dedicated staff carries out this mission through fiscal sponsorship, insurance for artists, custom-built technological solutions, arts advocacy, and continuing education in business and technology for artists and creatives. Founded in 1998, they have helped over 250,000 artists and arts organizations to raise more than $127 million dollars. You can learn more about their amazing work on their website and access their current financial reports on GuideStar.
WHAT IS FISCAL SPONSORSHIP?
"A fiscal sponsor is a nonprofit organization that provides fiduciary oversight, financial management, and other administrative services to help build the capacity of charitable projects." — Fiscal Sponsorship: a 360 Degree Perspective, Trust for Conservation Innovation.
When you make a donation to support MIRYAM, your donation will be processed through Fractured Atlas. They handle the administration and keep a small percentage as an administrative fee to support more artists like us. In exchange, you get a tax deduction and MIRYAM gets more time to focus on making music! You can learn more about Fiscal Sponsorship from the National Council of Nonprofits here, and read about how Fractured Atlas runs their program here.