Piffaro, the Renaissance Band
Sunday, October 16, 2011 | 4:00pm
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Piffaro, the nation’s finest Renaissance wind band, originally called "The Philadelphia Renaissance Wind Band", is a Philadelphia-based early music ensemble with a world-wide reputation. The group was founded in 1980, and performs music of the late Medieval and Renaissance periods on a variety of early wind instruments, augmented by percussion and strings.
Piffaro’s ever-expanding instrumentarium includes shawms, sackbuts, recorders, krumhorns, bagpipes, lutes, guitars, harps, and a variety of percussion — all careful reconstructions of instruments from the period. Piffaro’s Directors are very involved in researching model historic instruments and working with the finest instrument makers to realize beautiful and accurate reproductions that give way to authentic Renaissance sounds. Indeed, Piffaro is known by players and listeners in the USA and across the globe for its role in redefining the Renaissance shawm sound. Piffaro recreates the rustic music of the peasantry, as well as the elegant sounds of the official, professional wind bands of the late Medieval and Renaissance periods. The group is modeled after the official civic, chapel and court bands that were the premier professional ensembles from the 14th into the early 17th centuries.
Of Piffaro’s Latest CD, Waytes: English Music for a Renaissance Band, the magazine Chamber Music America (May-June 2010 edition) said: [You don’t] really expect a great deal of subtlety from shawms and crumhorns and sackbuts and dulcians and bagpipes and the like…. Piffaro blows away that idea. Certainly they display penetrating tone and serious carrying power, but Piffaro also plays with elegance.
In addition to its concert and recording efforts, Piffaro is active in the field of education. Members of the ensemble perform regularly throughout the year for elementary, middle and high school students, and hold master classes and workshops for college students and adult amateurs, pre-professionals and professionals alike. The group has also been involved in weeklong residencies, working with small groups of students on recorders, or their modern band instruments, and teaching Renaissance dance. Piffaro was awarded Early Music America’s annual “Early Music Brings History Alive” award in 2003.
Under the direction of Artistic Co-Directors Joan Kimball and Robert Wiemken, Piffaro appears globally, having debuted at Tage Alter Musik in Regensburg, Germany in 1993. They performed there again in 1996 as part of a tour of summer music festivals in Austria, Germany, France, Belgium and Italy, and in 1997 and 1998 appeared at festivals in Hamburg, Berlin, The Czech Republic, Belgium, Spain and Colombia, South America. Between 2000 and 2003, they returned to Regensburg for a third time, performed two summers in a row at the Spoleto Festival in Italy, made their English debut at the York Early Music Festival, and performed at the Utrecht Early Music Festival. The group continues to have a strong global presence with two recent returns to Regensburg, making them one of the most frequently invited groups there, Barcelona, a return to Utrecht, NDR Studios in Hamburg, and Southern Austria. Piffaro’s most recent and enlightening performance in 2010 in Bolivia during that country’s prestigious cultural event, the 22-town International Renaissance and Baroque Festival. Their experiences, especially with the talented youth of the country, are the point of departure for an upcoming recording in 2011.
Piffaro has a significant discography, beginning with two recordings for Newport Classics in the early 1990’s. The ensemble’s European debut in Regensburg in 1993 caught the attention of the director of the prestigious label Deutsche Grammophon/Archiv Produktion, who promptly signed Piffaro to a recording contract. The four Archiv discs, Canzoni e Danze (1995), Chansons et Danceries (1996), Los Ministriles (1997), and A Flemish Feast (2000) helped garner the group’s international reputation, and led to the many European engagements in the following years. In 2000, Piffaro returned to the USA for its next recording projects, and signed with Dorian Recordings in Troy, New York, which released a succession of three CDs: Stadtpfeiffer (2001), Music from the Odhecaton (2002), and Trionfo d’Amore e della Morte (2003).
PROGRAM
The program will include works by several composers, some anonymous, active in the 16th and 17th centuries in Portugal, Spain and the New World. The program is the result of much scholarly detective work on the part of Piffaro's members.
RECORDINGS
Click on any of the recordings below to purchase them from Amazon.com.
