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Heralded as "a musical tour-de-force" at the Spoleto Music Festival, Galileo's Daughters have been bringing their unique combination of musical scholarship, drama, opera and jazz backgrounds to the early music scene since their formation in 2001, offering a musical experience from the past that comes to life through word and song.
Joining forces with the New York Times best-selling author Dava Sobel, and award-winning lutenist Ronn McFarlane, Galileo's Daughters have added a few layers to their performance by combining a narrative of writings from the past and present (courtesy of Ms. Sobel) and music from the 17th century with video images of space and nature to inspire a direct and personal experience to the distant past.
Sarah Pillow, founder of Galileo's Daughters, is originally a jazz singer. After attending Oberlin Conservatory, she moved to New York City and took an immediate liking to the vocal shadings and elaborate ornamentation found in 17th-century Italian repertoire. Coming from a different musical discipline than most classical singers, Sarah has always looked for a different way to present what is generally known as "early music", as is evident on two of her recordings with Buckyball Records, "Nuove Musiche" and "Remixes", where Sarah takes 17th-century texts and re-arranges them with jazz, rock and world music accompaniment. Besides being featured on "New Sounds", John Schaefer's show at WNYC, Sarah has toured throughout the U.S. in over 20 cities with her Nuove Musiche band.
"I was fortunate enough to experience the 'Tristan Project' last May at Lincoln Center, where the video artist Bill Viola presented a double narrative to the L.A. Philharmonic's 'Tristan und Isolde'. It was very inspiring to me, as the early Baroque repertory is so colorful, and while opera and monody were being born, discoveries in science and astronomy were changing the way people viewed the world around them. It seemed a natural occurrence to put together a film of images that correspond in a detached way with the music and Dava's words." The images come from a high-definition camera and space probes, where sunlight on water segues into a star clusters, the desert becomes Mars, and the sun sets to the accompaniment of Henry Purcell's 'Evening Hymn'. "What is most prevalent today," Pillow continues, "is how people cannot easily comprehend the level of darkness at night in Galileo's time, and therefore how bright the stars. The Milky Way was a large white streak across the sky, and the moon actually lit a dark path. In the smallest of light, from billions of miles to three inches away, is a visual beauty that music recreates with sound."
Bios:
Sarah Pillow
Sarah Pillow has built a unique career by drawing on her equal
expertise in jazz and classical repertoire. She began her professional singing
career as a jazz vocalist and church musician, became a graduate of Oberlin
Conservatory and started exploring early music upon her arrival in New York
City. Her jazz festival appearances include the Montreux Jazz Festival in
Switzerland, where she received an award for excellence in performance by
Downbeat Magazine. Her work as a classical musician casts a wide net: from
Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 (Andrew Parrott and the New York Collegium) to
Sweeney Todd (Andrew Litton and the New York Philharmonic) at Avery Fisher Hall.
Sarah performs regularly as a solo recitalist in several venues in Europe and
the United States, performing repertoire from the 17th century to modern
music.
Her work in early Baroque repertoire is
extensive. Sarah performed in the 1990's in Ireland, England, and the United
States with historical harpist Jan Walters. Their collaboration resulted in
three compact discs of the music of Giovanni Felice Sances for ASV Records and
BBC Radio 3 in the U.K. In 2001 Sarah formed her own group, "Galileo's
Daughters", which has been active in performance of 17th-century secular
and sacred music at venues throughout the United States.
Sarah's recordings also attest to her
diversity in vocal styles, and she can be heard on such varied recordings as
Henry Purcell's opera "Dido and Aeneas" and "An
Afterthought", where she has written lyrics to Marc Wagnon's progressive
jazz compositions. Her recording entitled "Nuove Musiche" is a
jazz-rock album based on 17th-century melodies and texts, and features guitarist
John Goodsall and bassist Percy Jones, founders of the progressive jazz-rock
band Brand X. "Remixes", her latest recording, consists of two discs
and two interpretations (one historical, featuring Galileo's Daughters; the
other a modern twist with jazz-rock musicians) of one set of 17th-century songs.
Jennifer Peterson
Born in Anchorage, Alaska, American conductor, pianist and
harpsichordist Jennifer Peterson is respected for her informed and spirited
interpretations in a wide range of musical styles, including opera, early music,
new music, chamber music and art song repertoire. She is the Chorus Master with
the Des Moines Metro Opera and has also held positions in both the United States
and internationally with numerous opera companies, including the New York City
Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Florida Grand Opera, Austin Lyric Opera,
Opera Memphis, Connecticut Opera, and the International Vocal Arts Institute in
Tel Aviv. Ms. Peterson has also collaborated extensively with living composers
on new works, and is currently the Music Director for the ‘Composers &
the Voice’ Workshop Series with American Opera Projects in Brooklyn, New
York.
Mary Anne Ballard
Mary Anne Ballard, viola da
gamba, also tours and records with the Baltimore Consort, and is a member of the
Oberlin Consort of Viols and of Brio, a medieval/Renaissance quartet based in
Charleston, SC, as well as of Fleur de Lys, a baroque ensemble in Indiana. She
also performs in recital and has appeared with groups such as the Philadelphia
Classical Symphony, the Bethlehem Bach Festival, and the Smithsonian Chamber
Players. Formerly active teaching viol and directing early music at the Peabody
Conservatory and Princeton University, Ms. Ballard founded the University of
Pennsylvania Collegium Musicum, which for fourteen years explored the music of
the Middle Ages and Renaissance, including the Play of Daniel and several other
liturgical dramas, which she edited. Ms. Ballard currently teaches at
Oberlin’s summer Baroque Performance Institute. She is a graduate of
Wellesley College and holds an M.A. in Musicology from the University of
Pennsylvania.
Guest artists
with Galileo's Daughters:
Dava Sobel, a former New
York Times science reporter, is the author of Longitude (Walker 1995 and 2005,
Penguin 1996), Galileo's Daughter (Walker 1999, Penguin 2000) and The Planets
(Viking, 2005, Penguin 2006). In her thirty years as a science journalist she
has written for many magazines, including Audubon, Discover, Life and The New
Yorker, served as a contributing editor to Harvard Magazine and Omni, and
co-authored five books, including Is Anyone Out There? with astronomer Frank
Drake.
Ms. Sobel received the 2001 Individual
Public Service Award from the National Science Board “for fostering
awareness of science and technology among broad segments of the general
public.” Also in 2001, the Boston Museum of Science gave her its
prestigious Bradford Washburn Award for her “outstanding contribution
toward public understanding of science, appreciation of its fascination, and the
vital role it plays in all our lives.” In October 2004, in London, Ms.
Sobel received the Harrison Medal from the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, in
recognition of her contribution to increasing awareness of the science of
horology by the general public, through her writing and lecturing.
She based her book Galileo's Daughter on 124
surviving letters to Galileo from his eldest child. Ms. Sobel translated
the letters from the original Italian and used them to elucidate Galileo?s life
work. Galileo's Daughter won the 1999 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for science
and technology, a 2000 Christopher Award, and was a finalist for the 2000
Pulitzer Prize in biography. The paperback edition enjoyed five consecutive
weeks as the #1 New York Times nonfiction bestseller. A sequel, Letters to
Father, containing the full text of Galileo's daughter's correspondence in both
English and Italian, was published by Walker in 2001. An English-only edition, a
Penguin “Classic,” followed in 2003.
Ms. Sobel is currently working on a stage
play about sixteenth-century astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.
One of the most outstanding
lutenists performing today, Ronn McFarlane is largely responsible for bringing the
transcendent charm and timeless quality of the lute into the musical mainstream
and making it accessible to a larger audience.
Born in West Virginia, Mr. McFarlane spent
most of his early years in the neighboring state of Maryland where he developed
an interest in music at an early age. As a teenager, he taught himself to play
on what he describes as a “cranky sixteen dollar steel string
guitar.” He went on to develop his talent, and combined blues and rock
music on the electric guitar with studies on the classical guitar. He graduated
with honors from Shenandoah Conservatory and continued studies at Peabody
Conservatory before turning his full attention and energy to the lute in 1978.
The following year, Mr. McFarlane performed his first solo recitals on the lute
and became a member of the Baltimore Consort. Since that time, he has toured
extensively throughout the United States, Canada and Europe with the Baltimore
Consort and as a soloist.
Mr. McFarlane was a faculty member of the
Peabody Conservatory from 1984 to 1995, teaching lute and lute-related subjects.
In 1996, Mr. McFarlane was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music from
Shenandoah Conservatory for his achievements in bringing the lute and its music
to the world. He has numerous recordings on the Dorian label including six solo
recordings, four lute song recordings with Julianne Baird, soprano and Frederick
Urrey, tenor, ten CDs with the Baltimore Consort and three ballad recordings
with Custer LaRue and members of the Baltimore Consort.
Recently, Ronn McFarlane has been engaged in
composing new music for the lute, building on the tradition of the
lutenist/composers of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This
new music will be the focus of his next solo CD.
Press:
"Soprano Sarah Pillow's
renditions were intense, and she simply overwhelmed her audience with a searing
account of Monteverdi's Lamento D'Arianna." Early Music
America
"Ms. Pillow has a lovely,
natural-sounding tone and a versatile gift for interpretation..." The
New York Times
"...the concert was a
musical tour-de-force. Pillow, who demonstrated a rapt dramatic involvement with
the material, sang with clear tonal purity and her diction in Latin and Italian
was impeccable. Most importantly, she added the trills, vocal shadings and
elaborate ornamentations that give music from the baroque period its
subtlety."
Post and Courier Review, Charleston,
South Carolina
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