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Sample Track 1:
"Ashir Shirim (I Will Sing Songs to God)" from Ancient Echoes
Sample Track 2:
"Rannanu (Sing with Joy)" from Ancient Echoes
Sample Track 3:
"Abwoon (O Father-Mother of the Cosmos) [The Aramaic Lord's Prayer]" from Ancient Echoes
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Ancient Echoes
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Battleboro Reformer (VT), Concert Preview >>

Music which has largely been lost for nearly 2,000 years will be heard for the first time by a Vermont audience when one of the nation's leading early music ensembles visits town next Thursday, Oct. 14, at 8 p.m.

The San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble [SAVAE] will perform their "Ancient Echoes" program at the First Baptist Church on Main Street.

"Ancient Echoes" reconstructs music from the time of Jesus and Jerusalem's Second Temple. The concert is a special event in the 39th season of Friends of Music at Guilford.

General admission advance tickets are $10, and are on sale at Maple Leaf Music Co., 23 Elliot St. Remaining tickets will be $12 at the door.

Founded in 1989, SAVAE has been praised for mastering Medieval and Renaissance vocal music, the contemporary vocal repertoire and pop standards; and for its "trademark smooth sound and simpatico sense of ensemble."

As a complement to its vocal work, SAVAE accompanies its performances with reproductions of ancient wind, string and percussion instruments.

SAVAE Artistic Director Christopher Moroney had long wished to recreate the music of the time of Jesus. The sacred music of the Second Temple maintains a legendary status among scholars. According to the Bible, the temple was a holy site of ancient Jerusalem that was built around 540 B.C. and featured music that many religion scholars and musicologists believe directly influenced chant and other early Christian music. Both the music and the temple, however, were lost for centuries.

SAVAE members devoted themselves to rediscovering the sounds and prayers of that period, spending hundreds of hours --including time in the Middle East -- studying ancient languages, learning to play traditional Middle Eastern instruments and tracking down rare musical manuscripts. Original religious texts from a variety of Middle Eastern sources, including portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest known biblical manuscript, and selected prayers written in the ancient Semitic language Aramaic are set to music recreated by Moroney from ancient melodic phrases.

Instruments such as the oud, an ancient lute, and the shofar, a priestly horn instrument from biblical times, accompany lyrics performed in Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew.

The program includes prayers, wedding songs, a chant from the Dead Sea Scrolls, a psalm, sounding of the shofar, and "Abwoon," a rendition of the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic, among other pieces.

Moroney notes that even with thorough scholarship and all the information available to us, it is impossible to know exactly how the prayers were sung, how the instruments sounded. Thus, the title of the program, which hopes at least to "echo" the music over two millennia.

The performers are: Kathy Mayer, soprano, harp, kemanche, lyre, def, little bells; Tanya Moczygemba, alto, kinnor, davul, def, dumbek, little bells, riqq; Christopher Moroney, baritone, harp, rabbabah, shofar, davul, dumbek, jingles, riqq; Covita Moroney, alto, chatzotzera, guimbri, mijwiz, oud, def, tziltzal, zils; Jody Noblett, tenor, kinnor, mijwiz, shabbabah, davul, dumbek, little bells, tziltzal; Lee P'Pool, tenor, chatzotzera, kinnor, def, dumbek, riqq; Sonya Yamin, soprano, kinnor, davul, dumbek, little bells, zils.

Because the ensemble has produced the first performing versions of this music, World Library Publications of Chicago is issuing octavo editions of the music, so that church groups and synagogues throughout the world may also perform this liturgical music. In 2005 the group will tour the Western U.S. It is this fall's Eastern tour which brings them to Vermont, their only stop in northern New England.

In addition to the public performance, SAVAE will provide a free workshop/demonstration to Brattleboro Union High School music students.

 10/14/04
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