Meetings in 2024-2025
Upcoming Meeting Dates
We meet monthly in-person on Saturdays at 2:00-4:30 pm, October-March. Our meetings are usually held in libraries in the Greater Seattle area, in the King County, Snohomish, and Seattle Public Library systems. The meeting locations will be announced as they become available. This year we will have two special guests, Larry Stark and Laura Kuhlman, joining Music Director Laura Townsend in leading the meetings.
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2024-25 MONTHLY MEETING DATES:
October 12, 2024, Shoreline Library, 345 NE 175th St., Shoreline.
November 9, 2024, Mountlake Terrace Library, 23300 58th Ave. W, Mountlake Terrace
December 14, 2024, Shoreline Library, 345 NE 175th St., Shoreline. The meeting will be led by guest director Larry Stark.
Director Larry Stark’s December meeting notes:
This season of the year always brings a great deal of music. Some forgettable but much of it fabulous. So many cultures celebrate a festival of lights, and composers through the ages have responded with a great variety of sounds to cheer us in these times of diminished light.
I have chosen, for the December meeting, music by composers with ties to Germany. Of the European peoples the Germans may be the most enthusiastic at celebrating the season. Certainly they have contributed much wonderful music to it.
I like to begin playing sessions with a chorale by J. S. Bach. I chose Jesulein Süß for purely sentimental reasons. When I was in high school our women’s choir would sing this every year. It always brings back those times for me. But I decided that it would be interesting to see what other composers have done with this tune. It was written, as far as I can tell, by Samuel Scheidt. Others have used this tune as a basis for new settings. Max Reger is known, in these times, as an organist. Heinrich Kaminski taught at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin, and is known as a mentor and teacher of Carl Orff.
Michale Praetorius is known to many recorder players for his dance music. He published volumes of liturgical music, much of it settings for Christmas. He set the words “Puer Natus in Bethlehem” many times, in pieces ranging from two to eight parts. We will do a duet setting, and then one that accumulates voices as it goes; it starts with two and ends with six.
To end the day, I’ve looked again at a festive seasonal chorale – Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr. We will play several choral settings by Mendelssohn and Crüger, and a polyphonic setting by J. Gottfried Reiche. Reiche was a minor composer who worked in Leipzig in the first third of the 18th century. He is best known though as a trumpeter. Not a run of the mill trumpeter, but as the one for whom Bach wrote so many amazingly brilliant parts.
January 11, 2025
February 15, 2025
March 15, 2025, led by guest director Laura Kuhlman
Annual Northwest Recorder Meet, April 19, 2025, 10-5 pm, co-presented by the Moss Bay and Seattle Recorder Societies, led by Laura Kuhlman, Peter Seibert, Laura Townsend
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If you know in advance please email Music Director Laura Townsend at beginbaroque@gmail.com with your intent to come and desired part. A link to the music will be sent to participants in advance of the meeting. Let Laura know if you would like to have music printed and brought to you. A few extra copies will also be available at each meeting.
We traditionally have a break with snacks and drinks in the middle of the meeting.
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In Person Health Protocols:
- Email Laura your intent to come and desired part, if known.
- No blowing mouthpiece condensation outward; “sucking” is OK!
- We prefer that you are up to date with your COVID vaccinations but do not require it.
- We prefer that you test for COVID within 24 hours of attending the meeting, if feasible, but do not require it.
- Please stay at home if you are coughing, feeling ill, or suspect you have been exposed to Covid or the flu.
Email Laura Townsend: beginbaroque@gmail.com
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