Bourbon Baroque
Encyclopedia
Founded in the summer of 2007 by harpsichord
ist John Austin Clark and baroque violin
ist Nicolas Fortin, Bourbon Baroque is a period instrument ensemble centered in Louisville, Kentucky
that specializes in the performance of the music of the 17th and 18th centuries. John Austin Clark holds a Masters of Music degree from McGill University
in Montreal
, Quebec
, and studied earlier at Oberlin Conservatory. Nicolas Fortin also holds a Masters in Music degree from McGill University. Since 2003, he has collaborated with noted cellist and gambist Susie Napper at the Festival Montréal Baroque.
Bourbon Baroque performs regularly throughout the year in a variety of venues, often collaborating with performing arts organizations such as Moving Collective, the Choral Arts Society of Louisville, the Kentucky Opera
, the Louisville Youth Choir, and Musica Toscana
.
Based on a given program, Bourbon Baroque changes in size and can be heard in chamber, orchestral, and choral/operatic settings.
Bourbon Baroque in the press:
BOURBON BAROQUE & MOVING COLLECTIVE COLLABORATION DEFIES EXPECTATIONS | February 12, 2011
". . .As the evening progressed, this shifting focus continued, the dance transforming the music, the music transforming the dance, each informing and fueling the other. The members of Moving Collective performed with energy and kinetic force, the dancers’ bodies moving with requisite abandon, yet always lighting to the stage with precision. The early pieces were characterized by a serious, almost self-conscious sensibility that resulted in vivid and sharply defined profiles expressing psychological motifs. After the intermission, a lighter, more satirical tone took over. A Shot of Tea, choreographed by Erin Clark and Katie Scott and set to music by Antonio Vivaldi, was particularly memorable for its depiction of white-faced dancers, sporting powdered wigs and moving in a facetious manner that mimicked stereotypical images from the 17th century, effectively reconnecting and shifting the emphasis back to the origins of the music being performed.
Bourbon Baroque performed with finesse, in arrangements characterized by their good taste. They were joined by countertenor John T. Holiday, jr. for several pieces. Mr. Holiday’s singing was simply breathtaking, provoking gasps of appreciation from many in the audience and warm, ecstatic applause during curtain calls. Beginning with a magnificent reading of Strike the viol from Come ye sons of art away, and through several other pieces, his performance was most impressive.
In the end, both groups benefit tremendously from the collaboration, but inevitably the work onstage tends to make the more dominant impression, so that Bourbon Baroque strikes me as perhaps generous in allowing the spotlight to rest on Moving Collective as much as it does.
In any event, the performance of both companies was of a high caliber and a splendid example for other groups searching for similar opportunities to team up and deliver something as extraordinary as what was on display Saturday night at the Ursuline Arts Center."
ALCINA FULFILLS ITS IMPERATIVE | May 7, 2010
"What mattered most was the quality of the singing in the numerous arias. Here, fortunately, there was plenty to enjoy. With a young, eager cast of principals hailing from around the country, the collective musicianship was admirable. Mezzo-soprano Kristen Leich was an altogether splendid Ruggiero, bringing a big, creamy sound to a trouser role of a sorcery-seduced lover. Set against her protagonist, Megan Hart's clarion voiced, I-dare-you-to-cross-me Alcina, the contrast of alto and soprano colors was striking.
Among their colleagues, I was especially taken with soprano Teresa Wakim's lusty Morgana - who prattled around in a kind of comic daze. Kudos as well to Evan Prizant's costume designs, which were both sumptuous and sassy.The expanded Bourbon Baroque orchestra, led by harpsichordist John Austin Clark and violinist Nicolas Fortin, played with heady fortitude. Seated at the rear of the stage in full view, the musicians became participants, not accompanists. No arguments there."
AUTHENTICITY BLENDS WITH INTERPRETATION | October 13, 2009
"To its continuing credit, Bourbon Baroque has managed to maintain a sense of idiomatic style without losing sight of what counts the most: involved, vigorous interpretations. After all, without those elements, all else shrinks into irrelevance."
BOURBON BAROQUE OPENER A HEADY DELIGHT | September 22, 2008
"Every good concert needs a conceit, a theme, an irresistible hook. For Bourbon Baroque, the Louisville period-instrument orchestra that opened its new season Saturday night at the Water Tower, that come-on was the potent melding of music and dance intrinsic to early 18th-century life."
RECENT CONCERTS PROVIDED SHEER BLISS | April 20, 2008
"This recently organized ensemble, specializing in authentically styled performances of pre-Classic repertoire, demonstrated how attention to period details need not suck the life out of a given score. . .Such has been the goal of BB founders John Austin Clark and Nicolas Fortin, young guys who believe (no, insist) that Baroque music should never sound fussy and academic."
SPRIGHTLY PLAYING APT FOR LEAP DAY | March 2, 2008
"From the opening phrases, Clark and Fortin played with a sensitive and assured command of the baroque idiom."
BACH IS BEAUTIFUL AT CHRIST CHURCH CONCERT | November 4, 2007
"...beauty is timeless, and this production was fraught with drama and filled with intricate beauties: . . .the disciplined continuo contributions of Austin Clark. . .stitching the harmonies and rhythms with unending grace."
Bourbon Baroque is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization. The Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, supports Bourbon Baroque with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
House of Bourbon
Historically informed performance
Baroque music
Baroque dance
List of early music ensembles
Harpsichord
A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...
ist John Austin Clark and baroque violin
Baroque violin
A baroque violin is, in common usage, any violin whose neck, fingerboard, bridge, and tailpiece are of the type used during the baroque period. Such an instrument may be an original built during the baroque and never changed to modern form; or a modern replica built as a baroque violin; or an...
ist Nicolas Fortin, Bourbon Baroque is a period instrument ensemble centered in Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...
that specializes in the performance of the music of the 17th and 18th centuries. John Austin Clark holds a Masters of Music degree from McGill University
McGill University
Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...
in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, and studied earlier at Oberlin Conservatory. Nicolas Fortin also holds a Masters in Music degree from McGill University. Since 2003, he has collaborated with noted cellist and gambist Susie Napper at the Festival Montréal Baroque.
Bourbon Baroque performs regularly throughout the year in a variety of venues, often collaborating with performing arts organizations such as Moving Collective, the Choral Arts Society of Louisville, the Kentucky Opera
Kentucky Opera
The Kentucky Opera is the state opera of Kentucky, located in Louisville. The operas are accompanied by the Louisville Orchestra. Founded in 1952 by Moritz von Bomhard, it is the twelfth oldest opera company in the United States and has a more than $2 million budget. The Kentucky Opera is an...
, the Louisville Youth Choir, and Musica Toscana
Musica Toscana
Musica Toscana, Inc., is a nonprofit cultural, educational, and musicological organization located in Louisville, Kentucky, that promotes the musical heritage of the Tuscan region of Italy. It was founded in 1999 under the leadership of the musicologist Robert L. Weaver, a retired faculty member...
.
Based on a given program, Bourbon Baroque changes in size and can be heard in chamber, orchestral, and choral/operatic settings.
Bourbon Baroque in the press:
BOURBON BAROQUE & MOVING COLLECTIVE COLLABORATION DEFIES EXPECTATIONS | February 12, 2011
". . .As the evening progressed, this shifting focus continued, the dance transforming the music, the music transforming the dance, each informing and fueling the other. The members of Moving Collective performed with energy and kinetic force, the dancers’ bodies moving with requisite abandon, yet always lighting to the stage with precision. The early pieces were characterized by a serious, almost self-conscious sensibility that resulted in vivid and sharply defined profiles expressing psychological motifs. After the intermission, a lighter, more satirical tone took over. A Shot of Tea, choreographed by Erin Clark and Katie Scott and set to music by Antonio Vivaldi, was particularly memorable for its depiction of white-faced dancers, sporting powdered wigs and moving in a facetious manner that mimicked stereotypical images from the 17th century, effectively reconnecting and shifting the emphasis back to the origins of the music being performed.
Bourbon Baroque performed with finesse, in arrangements characterized by their good taste. They were joined by countertenor John T. Holiday, jr. for several pieces. Mr. Holiday’s singing was simply breathtaking, provoking gasps of appreciation from many in the audience and warm, ecstatic applause during curtain calls. Beginning with a magnificent reading of Strike the viol from Come ye sons of art away, and through several other pieces, his performance was most impressive.
In the end, both groups benefit tremendously from the collaboration, but inevitably the work onstage tends to make the more dominant impression, so that Bourbon Baroque strikes me as perhaps generous in allowing the spotlight to rest on Moving Collective as much as it does.
In any event, the performance of both companies was of a high caliber and a splendid example for other groups searching for similar opportunities to team up and deliver something as extraordinary as what was on display Saturday night at the Ursuline Arts Center."
ALCINA FULFILLS ITS IMPERATIVE | May 7, 2010
"What mattered most was the quality of the singing in the numerous arias. Here, fortunately, there was plenty to enjoy. With a young, eager cast of principals hailing from around the country, the collective musicianship was admirable. Mezzo-soprano Kristen Leich was an altogether splendid Ruggiero, bringing a big, creamy sound to a trouser role of a sorcery-seduced lover. Set against her protagonist, Megan Hart's clarion voiced, I-dare-you-to-cross-me Alcina, the contrast of alto and soprano colors was striking.
Among their colleagues, I was especially taken with soprano Teresa Wakim's lusty Morgana - who prattled around in a kind of comic daze. Kudos as well to Evan Prizant's costume designs, which were both sumptuous and sassy.The expanded Bourbon Baroque orchestra, led by harpsichordist John Austin Clark and violinist Nicolas Fortin, played with heady fortitude. Seated at the rear of the stage in full view, the musicians became participants, not accompanists. No arguments there."
AUTHENTICITY BLENDS WITH INTERPRETATION | October 13, 2009
"To its continuing credit, Bourbon Baroque has managed to maintain a sense of idiomatic style without losing sight of what counts the most: involved, vigorous interpretations. After all, without those elements, all else shrinks into irrelevance."
BOURBON BAROQUE OPENER A HEADY DELIGHT | September 22, 2008
"Every good concert needs a conceit, a theme, an irresistible hook. For Bourbon Baroque, the Louisville period-instrument orchestra that opened its new season Saturday night at the Water Tower, that come-on was the potent melding of music and dance intrinsic to early 18th-century life."
RECENT CONCERTS PROVIDED SHEER BLISS | April 20, 2008
"This recently organized ensemble, specializing in authentically styled performances of pre-Classic repertoire, demonstrated how attention to period details need not suck the life out of a given score. . .Such has been the goal of BB founders John Austin Clark and Nicolas Fortin, young guys who believe (no, insist) that Baroque music should never sound fussy and academic."
SPRIGHTLY PLAYING APT FOR LEAP DAY | March 2, 2008
"From the opening phrases, Clark and Fortin played with a sensitive and assured command of the baroque idiom."
BACH IS BEAUTIFUL AT CHRIST CHURCH CONCERT | November 4, 2007
"...beauty is timeless, and this production was fraught with drama and filled with intricate beauties: . . .the disciplined continuo contributions of Austin Clark. . .stitching the harmonies and rhythms with unending grace."
Bourbon Baroque is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization. The Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, supports Bourbon Baroque with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
See also
Louisville, KentuckyLouisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...
House of Bourbon
House of Bourbon
The House of Bourbon is a European royal house, a branch of the Capetian dynasty . Bourbon kings first ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Bourbon dynasty also held thrones in Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Parma...
Historically informed performance
Historically informed performance
Historically informed performance is an approach in the performance of music and theater. Within this approach, the performance adheres to state-of-the-art knowledge of the aesthetic criteria of the period in which the music or theatre work was conceived...
Baroque music
Baroque music
Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
Baroque dance
Baroque dance
Baroque dance is dance of the Baroque era , closely linked with Baroque music, theatre and opera.- English country dance :...
List of early music ensembles