The Wayward Sisters

continued

As for the music, it was a mixture of Italians Giovanni Fontana, Tarquinio Merula, Dario Castello, and Salamone Rossi and Englishmen Matthew Locke and Henry Purcell. Some works featured the recorder, others the violin, and some both--and those were the best, because listening to Wenstrom and Timberlake trading lines above Steinhoff and Lenti's supple but solid rhythm section was enough to make me forget all about how beautiful it was outside.

On September 30, the Wayward Sisters will be back to open the Academy of Early Music concert season at St. Andrew's Church. This time, they're bringing a program as distinctive as their last one: featuring some of the composers from the plague program along with composers such as Handel and Nicola Matteis, it's titled "The Naughty List: Music of Braggarts, Snobs, Curmudgeons and Jerks."

"Another [naming] option for the same program had been 'Copper-Nos'd, Sparrow-Mouth'd, Goggle-Ey'd: The Music of Difficult Men," explains cellist Steinhoff. "But we decided that Difficult Men might be off-putting to some guests."   

[Originally published in September, 2011.]