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Greetings to All for a Safe, Happy, Healthy and Musical New Year

Wendy Powers Leads the NYRG on January 28th

Wendy is well-known to all NYRG players for her terrific musical work with us over the years. She is a historical musicologist specializing in music of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, particularly in Italy and France and currently an adjunct assistant professor at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, CUNY. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1994, submitting a dissertation on The Music Manuscript Fondo Magliabechi XIX.178 of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence: A Study in the Changing Role of the Chanson in Late Fifteenth-Century Florence.

She has written about musical instruments for the Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History (www.metmuseum.org). With Patricia Ann Neely, she co-directed Sag Harbor Early Music, a small spring concert series on Long Island, and she has sat for more than a decade on the Board of Directors of the New York City series Music Before 1800. She is teaching as an adjunct and co-directing the Collegium Musicum (with Susan Hellauer) at Queens College of the City University of New York.

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NYRG Season will continue on February 25th when Rotem Gilbert will lead us from California; on March 25 Adam Gilbert, also from California, will lead us; on April 29 we will welcome Larry Lipnik; on May 20 Valerie Horst will be our conductor.
Season Finale on June 17 will be led by Deborah Booth.

7:00 PM, set-up & social, 7:15 PM downbeat, 8:30 PM last cut-off;
fifteen minutes additional social time for those who want to stay on and chat with other attendees.

All Meetings will be held via Zoom until further notice.
All necessary links will be provided on a timely basis once you have registered for a session.

Visit our Archives Page for Listing of the Session Music

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Participants will need to have the Zoom application installed on the device being used to participate and position themselves either near their modems or connected directly with an ethernet cable for best results. An external microphone and speaker or headphones also improves the experience. Sign up, it's free. For more information and to install Zoom, visit their website: https://zoom.us

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MEMBERSHIP DUES Yearly dues: $40
MEETING FEES: Members: $15 per meeting; Non-members: $20 per meeting
EARLY BIRD DISCOUNT (payable at season beginning) is $140 includes dues and a full season of meetings (save $5 per meeting!)

STANDARD PAYMENT

Zelle is NYRG's Preferred Method of Receiving Payment
Click here to pay using Zelle to NYRG treasurer Judith Wink jwink@nyc.rr.com.

PAYMENT RATES

Membership Meeting Fee: $15.74; Non-member Meeting Fee: $20.88; Early Bird (at season beginning): $144.36
Click here to pay using Pay Pal

If you are paying for individual meetings (not using "Early Bird Discount"),
you must pay electronically through Zelle or PayPal, not by check.

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                                             Greetings to New York Recorder Guild Participants!

                                                                       From Music Director Deborah Booth

I hope that you are all in good health and reasonably positive spirits. These are indeed difficult times for everyone, especially New Yorkers. I'm thinking of each one of you, and wishing the best luck for you and your families. Music is a great solace at times like this, and I think we could all say that we feel very lucky to be musicians. It provides us inspiration and distraction from the harsh realities of the daily News.

Please allow me to recommend that you consider playing your instruments and practicing as much as you have energy to do. It really does help raise the spirits. This may be a good time to explore and organize your sheet music files. Who knows what you may find! I'm always surprised when I delve into the backs of filing cabinet drawers. Often many surprises! You could also do some exploring online for available music - through the ARS site or Imslp or CPDL or many others. There is a wealth of material out there.
Another thought for being productive in these isolated times would be to carefully oil all of your recorders. As this is a time of seasonal weather change, it's a perfect time to moisturize the wooden instruments. You will make them happy and they will sound better and last longer. I'm sure the thing that we miss the most is being able to play together in groups. Let's join together in hoping that we will be able to be together soon and share our music!!!

Very Best Musical Thoughts!
Deborah

View Deborah Booth's bio and professional background on our Board page

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AEM ONLINE Saturdays and Sundays: classes scheduled each weekend

Visit the AEM website for more information and to register: www.amherstearlymusic.org

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Join a Virtual Recorder Class with the American Recorder Society

For schedule and information, visit their website at: americanrecorder.org

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For more information on other workshops, visit our Workshops page for dates and registration information.

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Special New York Music Concerts and Events

(additional events and concert series are listed on our Events page: check websites for schedules and changes for the upcoming season)

GOTHAM EARLY MUSIC SCENE (GEMS) is dedicated to the promotion and advancement of early music in New York City and serves professional and amateur performers and ensembles, church organizations, audiences and enthusiasts.

2020-2021 Season: Watch live Thursdays at 1:15 pm on Facebook or YouTube. Midtown Concerts is pleased to present a full schedule of concerts for the 2020-2021 season. The opening concerts will be live-streamed until it is safe for audiences to gather once again. As safety allows, they will reintroduce in-person events. Get on their mailing list and receive On the Scene which features current New York performances of early music. Call: 212-866-0468 or E-mail info@gemsny.org. For more information and concert links, visit their website: https://gemsny.org/midtown-concerts

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Contact an instructor for an online lesson via Skype or other video software. Here is a partial list of teachers offering online lessons:

Rachel Begley   Deborah Booth   Larry Lipnik    Daphna Mor    Wendy Powers    Nina Stern


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NO NEED FOR GENIUS by Judith Wink In the olden days, when people played recorder in each other's living rooms, my group worked on a quartet by Gottfried August Homilius. No, we'd never heard of him either. His dates are 1714-1785. He spent his working life in and around Dresden, wrote mostly church music, and as far as we know never left Germany. The piece we played was genial instrumental music, not brilliant, not original but well crafted and fun to play. "Naive" music, our teacher called it. As I found out later, when I looked him up, Homilius was a busy man. He was organist at one church, cantor at another and music director at three different churches, all of them, luckily for him, in Dresden. He wrote more than 10 Passions; two oratorios; more than 60 motets; more than 150 cantatas; chorales, other choral works and 36 preludes for organ. In the 1820's people were still singing his music (as they would continue to do to the end of the century). At the same time, a teenage music student named Felix Mendelssohn was unearthing the works of Homilius's organ teacher, J. S. Bach. You can have a little fun by Googling "obscure German composers." They're a mixed bag, spanning four centuries. Here are the earliest ones. First is Johannes Eccard (1553-1611). He studied with Lassus. He worked for the rich and the powerful — the banker Jacob Fugger, the Margrave of Brandenburg-Anspach and the Elector of Brandenburg. He wrote only vocal music, including chorales for everything from four to nine voices. "Their polyphonic structure," says Wikipedia, "is a marvel of art and still garners the admiration of musicians." Time hasn't been quite as kind to Philipp Heinrich Erlebach (1657-1714). He was choirmaster to the Thuringian court for 33 years. He wrote orchestral and chamber music, operas, cantatas, masses and oratorios, more than 1,000 works in all, most of which burned to ashes in a house fire after his death. If you've never heard of Erlebach, this is probably why. And then there's Johann Ernst Eberlin (1702-1762). By age 47 he was at the same time court and cathedral chapel master in Salzburg. This, a rare achievement, was one of his claims to fame. Another was that he wrote fast. Leopold Mozart says he wrote as much and as quickly as Alessandro Scarlatti and Georg Philipp Telemann. Whether he wrote as well as they did is an-other matter. Leopold Mozart's talented son said that Eberlin's music was "far too trivial to de-serve a place beside Handel and Bach." To this observation I can only reply, "So what?" I'm going to quote the end of the Wikipedia article about Eberlin because it raises a point worth considering. "In general, Eberlin was greatly respected while he lived, composing industriously and playing at church concerts. After his death, though, his strict choral pieces in the stile anti-co faded from popularity and only his keyboard works were (to a limited extent) remembered." When J. S. Bach died, the Leipzig Chronicle ran a one-paragraph obituary. Pages of his manuscripts, stored in the vestry at St. John's Church, were used by the boys at the church school to wrap sandwiches. But after Mendelssohn, there was no looking back. Today Bach is among the immortals. Eberlin, too, was forgotten as soon as he died, and for the same reason: his music was old-fashioned. But while he lived, he seems to have done just fine. He was never out of work, and he provided music — "composing industriously," as Wikipedia puts it — that apparently satisfied his employers and his audiences. You don't have to be a genius to do that. Bach's music lives because he was a genius. Eberlin's music doesn't because he wasn't. As to Homilius and Eccard, their talent earned them success in life and modest niches in death. They're not altogether forgotten, and that's as much as most of us can hope for. The question is, what did they do while they lived? All of these men, Bach, Eberlin, Homilius, Eccard and poor Erlebach, supplied music on demand. They wrote cantatas, chorales, preludes, whatever was needed. They performed and conducted, bringing those writ-ten scores to life. They provided music that was at least competent and sometimes more than that. They worked hard at a worthy craft, and the towns and cities they lived in were lucky to have them. Judith's previous articles are archived on her special page. Click Here

In normal times the New York Recorder Guild meets at
Advent Lutheran Church

2504 Broadway (at 93rd Street)
Basement Fellowship Hall, side Entrance, corner of Broadway and 93rd Street

www.adventnyc.org  

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Visit our Events page for photos of recent playing sessions and events and last year's City Recorder.

Consort Finder The board and music director are pleased that you are attending New York Recorder Guild sessions to play with and meet other recorder players.  It is certainly a great place for this! You may also wish to enjoy playing recorders in a consort or smaller group setting, but it is often difficult to get the right players together for levels, geography, and temperaments.   If you are interested in being matched with other players, contact our music director, Deborah Booth, at: deborah@flute-recorder-deborahbooth.com explaining your thoughts, wishes, level, location, and years of experience.  Coaching is also available if desired. Deborah will attempt to put you in touch with others who match your skills. NYRG has had success with this program in starting consorts meeting in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Subscribe to the New York Recorder Guild Mailing List and get the latest news on NYRG happenings as well as keeping up to date on the Metro New York Recorder scene. Contact: newyorkrecorders@gmail.com

Visit our Events page for photos of recent playing meetings as well as listings of playing sessions of other local ARS Chapters, concerts and other early music and recorder events..

Visit our Archives Page to keep up with all of the music played at our Monthly Meetings. Music listings of workshops and other events will be added as they occur.

Our Workshops page has all the information on Recorder and Early Music Workshops taking place in the area.

Recorders need repairs; looking for music downloads? Visit our Resources page for information on everything recorder-related.

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The New York Recorder Guild is a member of the American Recorder Society