Whidbey Island Music Festival | Spanish Nights with Sherezade Panthaki & Pacific MusicWorks

Whidbey Island Music Festival and Pacific MusicWorks

Sunday, July 16, 2023 @ 3:00pm – 5:00pm (PDT)

St. Augustine's in-the-Woods Episcopal Church, Freeland, WA, United States

$30 (student free)

Sherezade Panthaki, soprano
Tekla Cunningham, baroque violin
Christine Wilkinson Beckman, baroque violin
Rocío López Sánchez, baroque cello
Stephen Stubbs, baroque guitar & lute
Maxine Eilander, baroque harp
Henry Lebedinsky, harpsichord

José Plà / Joan Batista Plà — Trio Sonata V in G minor
Luigi Boccherini — "Grave assai – Fandango" (Introduction and Fandango) from Quintet No. 4 in D major for guitar and string quartet, G. 448 "Fandango"
Juan Francés de Iribarren — Prosigue acorde Lira
Arcangelo Corelli — Trio Sonata in D major, Op. 3, No. 2
Antonio Soler — Keyboard Quintet in A minor, R. 225.4
George Frideric Handel — Almira, HWV 1 (selected arias)

Star soprano Sherezade Panthaki returns to the Whidbey Island Music Festival singing arias from Handel's first opera, Almira. Written when Handel was just 19 years old, Almira was a roaring success, and enjoyed 20 performances in Hamburg when it opened. Pacific MusicWorks performs the most beautiful, most thrilling arias from this early masterwork. Spanish composer Irribaren's thrilling cantata "Prosigue acorde Lira" rounds out the program along with instrumental works by Corelli, Boccherini, Soler, and Pla.

This program will receive 2 performances: Saturday, July 15 at Cultus Bay Gardens; and Sunday, July 16 at St. Augustine's in-the-Woods Episcopal Church. Both performances will take place at 3pm. Please note, the July 15 performance is an outdoor concert!

About Tekla Cunningham, baroque violin

Baroque violinist Tekla Cunningham delights in bringing the music of the baroque, classical and romantic eras to life with vivid and expressive historically informed performances.

Praised as "a consummate musician whose flowing solos and musical gestures are a joy to watch", her performances have been described as "ravishingly beautiful" and "stellar". Her greatest musical love is music of the baroque and chamber music of all stripes, though she can’t seem to quit Johannes Brahms. She is co-artistic director of Pacific MusicWorks in Seattle, artist-in-residence at the University of Washington and founder and director of the Whidbey Island Music Festival.

Tekla plays regularly as concertmaster and principal player with the American Bach Soloists. Her new release 'Stylus Phantasticus' with Pacific MusicWorks is delighting critics. "Tekla is a marvel…an endlessly songful bird". Early Music America describes the recording as "played with verve, the music presented here reaffirms the old notion that instrumental music can have the flair of any theatrical spectacle. … a stellar vessel for the boldest showmanship".

Tekla plays on a violin made by Sanctus Seraphin in Venice in 1746.

http://www.teklacunningham.com/