Michelene Wandor

MUSIC
I organise two Early Music groups: SIENA and PIZZA BAROQUE. Siena specialises in music from the 14th-17th centuries, on reproduction Renaissance viols, recorders, voices and lute. The group has broadcast in my Radio 3 play, Orlando and Friends, and gives carefully created concerts which have a unique and seamless mix of words and music. Over the past decade we have performed the previously little-known music of Salamone Rossi, the early 17th century Jewish composer from Mantua, contemporary of Monteverdi. We have appeared at the Purcell Room in London, in Nottingham and at the Lincoln Early Music Festival. We have also produced our debut CD, Salamone Rossi Hebreo Mantovano (2002), the first CD produced in this country to contain a cross-section of Rossi's music. The CD was produced with the help of a Jewish Music Institute Millenneum Lottery Fund Award.

The CD weaves together a diverse selection of Rossi's sacred and secular vocal and instrumental music. The playing and singing is excellent and utterly compelling. Michelene Wandor links the music with an extended poem which draws the listener more closely into the experience. The result is both moving and enriching.

Early Music News, 2002

Siena Ensemble bring Rossi's music to life.

Radio 3

SIENA also has a programme called Plain and Fancy, a words/music mix based on the life, times and music of Benvenuto Cellini, with music from sixteenth-century Europe. This programme has toured round the country, and appeared at the Warwick Festival, 2002.

A new programme The Marriage of True Minds about Shakespeare and an Italian musician, with English music from the early 17th century, will be performed in 2003.

The Harlot, the Rake and London town: a words and music entertainment which weaves songs from John Gay’s ‘Beggar’s Opera’, with scenes from Upstairs and Downstairs life in late 17 th-early 18 th century London.

Music of the Prophets: the resettlements of the Jews in England, 1656 and all that. Original poem/text, with the music of John Hingeston, Cromwell’s Master of Musicke. Performed by SIENA ENSEMBLE. 2006.

PIZZA BAROQUE, includes recorders, viola da gamba, bassoon and harpsichord, and performs music from the 17th and l8th centuries, as well as the extensive repertoire for viola da gamba, and twentieth-century compositions for recorders. Particularly suitable for 'background' music - at any event which can be enhanced by mellifluous sounds and instrumental virtuosity.