Artifex Consort | Chamber Concert | Athenaeum Music & Arts Library | La Jolla

Monday, May 4

7:30 p.m.

Specializing in the rich and varied “sound-world” of the late 17th century, the Artifex Consort (Malachai Komanoff Bandy, Rebecca Landell, and Eva Lymenstull, bass viols; John Lenti, theorbo; Ian Pritchard, keyboards) closes our season with works showcasing the viola da gamba as an ensemble instrument outside of the English consort tradition, during the height of its later flourishing in parts of England and Germany. The program features virtuosic music for two bass viols by Christopher Simpson and Johannes Schenck, alongside lush and ingenious—though little-known—works for three bass viols by Benjamin Hely and Johann Michael Nicolai.

An ensemble dedicated to mediating theory and practice in spirited performance, Artifex Consort shares its name with the 17th century alchemical adept hard at work in both the library and the laboratory, the perennial student whose rigorous craft centers on cultivating and sharing knowledge through Nature’s artful imitation. This mission lends itself particularly well to reanimating lesser-known works of the 17th century Hamburg school of contrapuntists (Johann Theile, Johann Adam Reincken, Dieterich Buxtehude, and their circle), but the ensemble finds an equal home in the rich viol repertories of the French baroque and English consort traditions.

Artifex's base in Claremont, California invites blended inspiration from the cultural riches of metro Los Angeles and the rugged foothills of the San Gabriel mountains.

Program:

TBD

Malachai Komanoff Bandy is Assistant Professor of Music at Pomona College. He holds a PhD in historical musicology from the USC Thornton School of Music, supported by Provost and Oakley Endowed Fellowships. In 2019, Bandy received both the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music’s Irene Alm Memorial Prize and the AMS Pacific Southwest Chapter’s Ingolf Dahl Award in Musicology. As a historical string and wind player, Bandy has performed with ensembles including Ars Lyrica Houston, Bach Collegium San Diego, Voices of Music, Tesserae, and Ciaramella, and as a viol soloist with the Los Angeles Opera and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. In TV/film recording, Bandy’s solos are featured in Outlander, The Rings of Power, Percy Jackson, Foundation, and more. Bandy’s written scholarship concerns Christian mysticism in German Baroque repertoires, as well as viol technique and iconography. Recent articles can be read in the journal Early Music and the volume Explorations in Music and Esotericism (University of Rochester Press). He is a founder and artistic director of the viol ensemble Artifex Consort.

Violist da gamba and cellist Rebecca Landell’s “luminous” (Cleveland.com) and “notable” (New York Times) sound elicits a range of expression “from classically evocative to Hitchcock horrifying” (Washingtonian). As an undergraduate, Landell studied cello with Darrett Adkins and Baroque cello and viola da gamba with Catharina Meints at Oberlin Conservatory. She later incorporated classes in acting and education as a master’s student of Norman Fischer at Rice University, before moving to Holland to study with Steuart Pincombe. Today, she pursues a varied professional career, performing and acting in Studio Theatre’s An Iliad, developing educational programs for Early Music Explorations (produced by Les Délices), and creating multimedia collaborations with visual artists and poets. Solo appearances include performances with Apollo’s Fire, the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, Three Notch’d Road, the Columbus Symphony, and Batzdorfer Hofkapelle. She can be heard on recordings with Les Délices, Three Notch’d Road, and Apollo’s Fire, including the Grammy Award–winning "Songs of Orpheus." Landell resides in Ohio, where she teaches cello and viola da gamba at Oberlin Conservatory.

Los Angeles–based Baroque cellist and violist da gamba Eva Lymenstull enjoys a diverse career that has taken her across North America and Europe as a soloist, chamber musician, continuo player, and orchestral musician. She has performed as a concerto soloist and principal cellist with the Lyra Baroque Orchestra and guest principal cellist of the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire, and Musica Angelica, and she has appeared with Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Voices of Music, Tesserae, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and Holland Baroque Society. She has performed at the Carmel Bach Festival, the Utrecht; Boston, and Berkeley Fringe Festivals; and on the Gotham Early Music and Academy of Early Music series. As winner of the 2017 Voices of Music Bach Competition, Lymenstull recorded Bach’s D Minor Cello Suite for VoM’s online video archive. Recent recordings can be heard on the Brilliant Classics and Violet Ear labels. In addition to performing, Lymenstull teaches Baroque cello and viola da gamba as a regular guest artist at the University of Michigan. She holds degrees from the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, Rice University, and University of Michigan and a doctorate in historical performance practice from Case Western Reserve University.

John Lenti specializes in music of the 17th century and has made basso continuo improvisation on lute, theorbo, and Baroque guitar the cornerstone of a career that encompasses Baroque and modern orchestras, chamber music, recitals, and opera. He plays for the Metropolitan Opera, Seattle Symphony, Seattle Opera, and many other orchestras both modern and Baroque. He has recorded albums with several ensembles that can be found on streaming services. His primary artistic influences are Vladimir Horowitz and T.S. Eliot, though he doesn’t really write poetry or play the piano and nothing he’s ever done would remind anybody of either of those guys. He studied lute with Nigel North, Jacob Heringman, and Elizabeth Kenny. His favorite authors are Jorge Luis Borges and Nancy Mitford, though he has recently become a devotee of Mona Awad and E. Lily Yu. When Lenti’s not on the road he is mostly a stay-at-home dad in Seattle. He likes cheap wine, fancy sausage, and mid-level cheese.

Ian Pritchard, harpsichordist, organist, and musicologist, is a specialist in early music and historical keyboard practices. A Fulbright scholar, Pritchard earned his PhD in musicology from the University of Southern California; his research interests include keyboard music of the late Renaissance and early Baroque, improvisation, notation, compositional process, and performance practice. As a continuo player, he has worked with the Academy of Ancient Music, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the LA Philharmonic, and Florilegium. As a chamber musician, he has collaborated with Monica Huggett, Elizabeth Blumenstock, Elizabeth Wallfisch, and Rachel Podger and performed under Christopher Hogwood, Christophe Rousset, Emanuelle Haïm, Nicholas McGegan, and Laurence Cummings. He has won prizes in the Broadwood Harpsichord Competition, London (first prize), the P. Bernardi Competition, and in the Bruges Competition. Pritchard is based in Los Angeles, where he serves as Chair of Music History and Literature at the Colburn School Conservatory of Music and directs the ensemble Tesserae. In 2015 he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.

All concerts are preceded by a pre-concert talk at 6:45 p.m. and are followed by a reception with the artists in the Sharon & Joel Labovitz Entry Hall.

Athenaeum Music & Arts Library on Facebook / Instagram