'A wealth of music': Baroque music ensemble combines scholarship and performance

The ornate melodies of Baroque music performed by the TENET Vocal Artists filled the Moeser Auditorium on Sunday for a show that was well attended by local music enthusiasts.

Attendees gathered to enjoy the New York-based ensemble’s renditions of 16th and 17th-century Baroque compositions, written by Claudio Monteverdi, Biagio Marini, Henry Purcell and Dario Castello. 

Named “TENET On Tour: Double Take”, the two-hour performance had free admission for UNC music students, faculty and staff, and is part of the ensemble’s southern tour which included three previous stops throughout Virginia.

Jolle Greenleaf, the artistic director and one of two soprano vocalists in the ensemble, alongside Clara Rottsolk, emphasized the beauty of Baroque music as a genre and the linguistics of their chosen pieces.

“This marriage of English and Italian music, they seem like they would be very different but they have some real common threads which are quite wonderful between glorious poetry and well set text,” Greenleaf said.

Both sopranos sang composition solos, like Rottsolk’s rendition of Purcell’s “Tell me, some pitying angel tell,” to showcase their individual talent. Alongside their solo performances, Greenleaf and Rottsolk also duetted songs like “Chiome d’oro” and “O dive custos.”

Barbara Pringle, a retired nurse and Chapel Hill resident attended the concert with her husband and said her favorite part of the show was the violins.

“There was so much harmony, but it was beyond words,” she said. 

Nicholas DiEugenio and Kako Boga were the two violinists of the ensemble who alternated between duets and solos alongside theorbist Daniel Swenberg and harpsichordist Jeffrey Grossman.

DiEugenio, who is also an associate music professor at UNC, said that the ensemble thoroughly prepared and researched to put together their performance, specifically with the violins Boga and he used.

“The two bows that we're using are actually from a bow maker located in the UK, specifically based on a model from 1595,” he said. “So, we started doing our homework about the program, even the summer before the season started.”

Retired string and classical instrument maker John Pringle attended TENET’s performance with his wife. Pringle is a long-time baroque music enthusiast and he loved the ensemble’s rendition of the classic pieces, specifically the instruments they brought together. 

“They don't use the harpsichord [sometimes] because it's too loud, and so they just have the theorbo instead as the continuum instrument,” he said. “And so I love small groups where you can really hear every instrument, and when they played that well, it's just terrific.”

The program was successful, in part, due to the music department’s William Newman series which showcases various concerts celebrating “the alliance of scholarship and performance,” according to the program’s website. The Durham-based Mallarme Music chamber also hosted the concert.

Collaboration is an important part of TENET as a group, since there is not set membership. Rather, the group consists of different musicians who are brought together for themed projects, according to Greenleaf. Overall, they were grateful for how well this project came together.

In their performance, TENET was able to showcase a section of baroque music, but they also acknowledged that the genre is too broad to contain in one concert.

“The good news is that this repertoire is vast and has lots of amazing composers,” Greenleaf said. “So, we could do, I don't know, 10 or 15 or 20 concerts — full concerts — with repertoire that would include all of the other wonderful people that were composing in that time. It's just such a wealth of music.”

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