Savannah Baroque

12/29/2024

Join Savannah Baroque January 31st, 2025 in “Music for a While: 200 Years of English Music” at St. Andrew’s Anglican Church, 608 Hampton St., Savannah, GA 31405! 7 p.m.

03/21/2024

This Saturday! Featuring Anne Acker, fortepiano; Tina Zenker Williams, voice; and Jeana Melilli, early flute! We are thrilled to be welcomed with open arms by the people of the Live Oak Library System and especially the Bull St. Library!

01/23/2024

Coming March 23rd, 2024! Savannah Baroque will be presenting a FREE TO THE PUBLIC program of The Music of Jane Austen at Savannah's Bull Street Library featuring Jeana Melilli, flute; Tina Zenker Williams, voice; and Anne Acker, fortepiano. Details to follow.

07/21/2023

Fantastic concert and lively audience on Nantucket last night with Savannah Baroque members Marcy Brenner and Anne Acker joining Nantucketer and fabulous viola da gamba player Molly Glazer!

07/16/2023

Savannah Baroque members Marcy Brenner and Anne Acker are excited to be on Nantucket! We are joining marvelous viola da gamba player and Nantucketer Mollie Glazer for a concert on July 20 at 7 p.m. I

04/30/2023

One week from today two Savannah members, Anne Acker and Erika Andres performing at St. John’s Church Savannah for prelude for Choral Evensong for Eastertide.

07/11/2022

"Our" baritone Kyle Siddons has been making these amazing videos!

Sacred Songs in Sacred SpacesHarry T. Burleigh - Deep RiverSkidaway Island United Methodist ChurchKyle Siddons, baritonePaul Chant, pianoSkidaway Island's We...

05/22/2022

Concert today! 3 p.m. at The Collegiate Church of St. Paul the Apostle, 1802 Abercorn St. Savannah

We have had such a fun time preparing this material and are excited to share it!

with Jeana Melilli, Anne Beetem Acker, Marcy Brenner, Ann Cafferty, Erika Skye Andres and Tina Zenker Williams

04/20/2022

Our next great woman composer is Maria Hester Park (born Reynolds) (1760-1813). She was a British keyboard player, composer, singer and highly regarded teacher. Nothing is known of her early life or training...as yet... Her first public appearance was at the age of 22 as Maria Hester Reynolds in the Hanover Square concert series with a concerto on harpsichord. She played in 3 other public events, on piano and harpsichord, but after her marriage to Thomas Park, an antiquarian, engraver, and man of letters, as was typical, she ended her performance career. She became quite well known as a teacher and composer, teaching music to various members of the aristocracy. Her surviving compositions include solo keyboard sonatas, some with optional violin accompaniment (a common form), short vocal works (aka glees), a keyboard concerto with strings, a waltz, and a divertimento for piano and violin. Additional works including for harp and piano and piano duet have been lost.

The Sonata II in Eb that will be on our concert program was dedicated to the Duchess of Devonshire, one of her pupils.

04/09/2022

Continuing our introduction to the great women composers featured in our next concert: Into the Light, May 22, 2022, I give you Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704). Anna Isabella Leonarda was born into a noble family of Novara, Italy. She joined the Convent of the Order of Ursula at the age of 16 where she spent the remainder of her life and a long prolific and vital artistic life, publishing over 200 works in 20 collections, the last published when she was 80 years old. Many of her published works come from her later years as those spent as Mother Superior were extremely busy with administrative and spiritual matters. We look forward to presenting to you one of her instrumental sonatas and two of her vocal motets. Her compositions show tremendous musical knowledge and experimentation, all to great effect. Her published works were widely known. In 1724, the Parisian theorist and music collector Sébastien de Brossard said "All the works by the famous and incomparable isabella Leonarda are so beautiful, so charming, so brilliant and at the same time so knowing and wise, that I regret not possessing all of them."

03/31/2022

For the next few weeks, we'd like you to meet our composers from our next concert "Into the Light" on May 22, 2022! They were all well known and highly regarded in their own time, but were relegated to the shadows and darkness until recently.

First up is Anna Bon (1739? 1740?- >1769). Anna's parents were employed by various royal courts. Her mother Rosa Ruvinetti Bon was a professional singer in comic operas, and her father Girolamo Bon, was a “versatile man of the theater”, working as a scene painter and designer, impresario, and writer and composer of opera and cantatas. Her parent’s work took them to the Russian court, to Dresden under Elector Friedrich August III, and then to Frederick the Great in Potsdam. As a young girl, Anna likely heard Hasse, CPE Bach, Graun, and Quantz. By 1755, the family settled at the court of Margrave Friedrich and his wife Wilhelmine, sister of Frederick the Great. Wilhemine’s musical establishment mirrored her brother’s. At 15 in her first two published works, Anna lists herself as being in the service of “His Most serene Highness Friedrick, reigning Margrave of Brandenburg Culmbach”. She composed keyboard solos, and sonatas for one or two flutes.

The program will include a delightful keyboard sonata, and a sonata for our two amazing baroque flutists, Jeana Melilli and Erika Skye Andres!

03/15/2022

Savannah Baroque will be presenting "Into the Light", featuring not only our return to live performance after the pandemic, but also bringing into the light works by superb women composers of the 17th and 18th century whose works were pushed aside by societal changes in the 19th century. We will include works by Anna Bon (her painted portrait shown here), Wilhelmine von Bayreuth, Isabella Leonarda, Francesca Caccini and more. Featuring Ann Cafferty, baroque violin; Marcy Brenner, viola da gamba; Tina Zenker Williams, soprano; Kyle Siddons, baritone; Jeana Melilli and Erika Skye Andres, baroque flutes, and Anne Acker, harpsichord.

The Collegiate Church of St. Paul, Episcopal
1802 Abercorn, St., Savannah, Georgia

May 22, 2022
3 p.m.

02/15/2022

"Into the LIght!" coming in a few months!

at The Collegiate Church of St. Paul's, Episcopal, Savannah, GA!

Our next and first fully staffed concert since the pandemic started will be in early May, date to be announced soon!

06/10/2021

Stay tuned! We will be getting back to live performance for a 2021-2022 season now that vaccinations are well under way. Anne kept busy making this Ruckers style Flemish Double manual for a church in Florence, South Carolina. Marcy and Anne played the debut concert and we plan to get us all back there next year as well as planning programs in and around Savannah.

04/17/2021

https://youtu.be/hACvqriUIiU

Savannah Baroque members Marcy Brenner, viola da gamba, and Anne Acker, harpsichord, present the inaugural concert featuring Central’s new harpsichord! An h...