Cambridge Society for Early Music presents the highly-acclaimed ensemble for medieval music, Concordian Dawn, in a Medieval holiday program.
CSEM and Concordian Dawn celebrate the release of CD’s third studio album, Veni Redemptor Gentium, with a program of both rarely-heard repertoire and more traditional gems from the medieval Christmas and Advent holidays. The program also includes two new compositions by Australian-born composer, David Yardley, both of which were premiered by Concordian Dawn and recorded on the album. We warmly invite audiences to ring in the holiday season and celebrate the release with us!
Concordian Dawn, ensemble for medieval music, specializes in 12th- through 14th-century vocal repertoire, drawing on primary source material and focusing on socio-philosophical similarities between texts from centuries ago and the mindset of modern society. In doing so, the ensemble produces a musical experience accessible to contemporary audiences, relating the human condition of the past to the familiar experiences of the present. Concordian Dawn was founded in 2012 and performs regularly on the east coast, annually with Gotham Early Music Scene in NYC, and at venues across the country. Highlights of 2024-25 include a performance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Fall Festival in association with the museum’s exhibit Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-50; an Artist-in-Residence performance of Le Roman de Fauvel at UC-Davis; the debut of their program Vox Femina at the Grenta Music Festival; and performances for the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library’s Seven Floors Up Concert Series and the GEMS Midtown Concert Series. The ensemble’s “mesmerizing” (Early Music America) debut album, Fortuna Antiqua et Ultra (MSR Classics), was released in December of 2021 to critical acclaim. In July of 2022, Cornell University Press published a collaborative book-recording project between the ensemble and medieval studies scholar, Sarah Kay, entitled Medieval Song from Aristotle to Opera, and the ensemble’s “palpably enchanting” and “unforgettable” (Fanfare) second album based on this collaboration was released by MSR Classics in October of 2023. Concordian Dawn made its west coast debut in 2022 with the Santa Cruz Baroque Festival and at UC-Berkeley and UC-Davis, and the ensemble received a 2020 Ensemble Forward Award from Chamber Music America. Concordian Dawn and its director, Christopher Preston Thompson, have performed and led workshops and lectures for Princeton University, Stanford University, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Modern Language Association, the CUNY Graduate Center and the Medieval Academy of America, among others. Concordian Dawn is a fiscal project of Gotham Early Music Scene, Inc. Please visit www.concordiandawn.com.
