Sweet Sighs: Lute Song Recital

Event time: 
Saturday, September 30, 2017 - 3:30pm to 5:00pm
Location: 
Sterling Divinity Quadrangle (SDQ), Marquand Chapel See map
409 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06511
Open to: 
General Public
Event description: 

Guest artist

Jakob Lindberg, lute 

and Yale faculty

James Taylor, tenor

 

Songs and lute solos from Italy, England, and France. 

Works by Caccini, Danyel, Downland, Britten, Guédron, Boësset, Moulinié, and Ballard. Part of the Faculty Recital Series.


Jakob Lindberg was born in Djursholm, Sweden, and developed his first passionate interest in music through the Beatles. He started to play the guitar and soon became interested in classical repertoire. From the age of fourteen he studied with Jörgen Rörby, who also gave him his first instruction on the lute. 

After studying music at Stockholm University he went to London to attend the Royal College of Music, where he further developed his knowledge of the lute repertoire under the guidance of Diana Poulton. He decided toward the end of his studies to concentrate on Renaissance and Baroque music, and is now one of the most prolific performers in this field. Lindberg has made numerous recordings for BIS, many of which are pioneering in that they present a wide range of music on CD for the first time. He has brought Scottish lute music to public attention, demonstrated the beauty of the Italian repertoire for chitarrone, and recorded chamber music by Vivaldi, Haydn, and Boccherini on period instruments.

Lindberg is the first lutenist to have recorded the complete solo lute music by John Dowland, and his recording of Bach’s music for solo lute is considered to be one of the most important readings of these works.

An active continuo player on the theorbo and archlute, Lindberg has worked with many well-known English ensembles including the English Concert, Taverner Choir, the Purcell Quartet, Monteverdi Choir, Chiaroscuro, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the Academy of Ancient Music. He is in demand as an accompanist and has given recitals with Emma Kirkby, Anne Sofie von Otter, Nigel Rogers, and Ian Partridge. He assisted Andrew Parrott in the musical direction of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas given by the Royal Swedish Opera at Drottningholm Court Theatre in 1995, and also directed from the chitarrone the much-acclaimed performances of Jacopo Peri’s Euridice given there in 1997. 

It is particularly through his live solo performances that he has become known as one of the finest lutenists in the world today, with concerts all over the globe from Tokyo and Beijing in the East to San Francisco and Mexico City in the West. 

In addition to his busy life as a performer, Jakob Lindberg teaches at the Royal College of Music in London, where he succeeded Diana Poulton as professor of lute in 1979.

With an extensive repertoire ranging from the medieval period to the twenty-first century, James Taylor devotes much of his career to oratorio and concert literature. As one of the most sought-after Bach tenors of his generation, he has performed and recorded extensively with many of today’s preeminent Bach specialists, including Nicholas Harnoncourt, Philippe Herreweghe, René Jacobs, and Masaaki Suzuki. Since 1993, Taylor has maintained a close relationship with conductor Helmuth Rilling and the International Bach-Academy Stuttgart, performing and teaching master classes worldwide. On several occasions, he has been a juror and consultant for the International Bach-Competition Leipzig. In 2008 he debuted with the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Kurt Masur, singing the role of the Evangelist in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. As an oratorio specialist, Taylor’s career has taken him throughout the United States, South America, Japan, Korea, and Israel, and to virtually all the major orchestras and concert halls of Europe. He is particularly proud to have performed Britten’s War Requiem in the Munich Residence on the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II.

Taylor has recorded extensively on the Hänssler, harmonia mundi, Limestone, Naxos, and ArkivMusik labels. He joined the Yale faculty in 2005 and serves as coordinator for the voice program in Early Music, Art Song, and Oratorio.