Vermeer's "The Concert"
In 1664 Johannes Vermeer painted a domestic music scene in which a singer is joined by a harpsichordist and a lutenist, with a viola da gamba on the floor and a bandora or a cittern on the table. (The painting was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990 and has never been recovered.) This concert will be a reproduction of the music these musicians might have played, sampling from works widely available in Rotterdam in the 1650s, including then-popular Roman cantatas written for the instruments and voice depicted in the painting.
Sophie Michaux – voice
Douglas Kelley – viola da gamba
Nathaniel Cox – lute and cittern
Andrus Madsen – harpsichord