Seraphic Fire presents the highest quality performances of historically significant and under-performed music and advances art through the professional development, refinement, and documentation of our musicians’ talents while promoting community connectivity through educational programs.
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Table of Contents
4. Welcome
5. Artist Roster
9. Music History 101
10. A (Very) Brief History of (Western) Music
12. Contemporary Jewish Music
14. The Capilla Flamenca
16. Choral Music in the Age of Romanticism
18. Musical Queens
21. Angels Behind Walls
24. Interview: Anthony Trecek-King
25. Interview: Amanda Quist
26. High School Professional Choral Institute
27. Education Concert Premiere at the Arsht Center
28. Season in Review: A Look Back at Season 21
30. Season in Review: Season by the Numbers
32. Season in Review: Testimonials
35. Our Donors
37. Administration and Board
38. Patron Highlights
I am delighted to welcome you to Seraphic Fire’s 20242025 season, Music History 101. This season offers a rich exploration of over a millennium of music, combining timeless classics with rare treasures. To deepen your experience, we’ve partnered with leading music historians to provide insightful articles, lectures, and enhanced program notes and podcasts. From medieval tunes to Romantic works by Schubert and Baroque motets by cloistered nun composers, each performance will invite you to engage with music in new and enriching ways. Thank you for your continued support, and I look forward to seeing you at our concerts.
Patrick Dupre Quigley Founder and Artistic Director Seraphic Fire
Welcome to Season 22! Seraphic Fire has increased its emphasis on patron education this year, and we’re kicking off that initiative with in-depth, exclusive articles written by our musicologists for this magazine; dive in starting on page 10. In addition, these music experts will conduct free online lectures prior to each concert (see SeraphicFire.org/Education for the schedule).
Seraphic Fire has a deep and wide-reaching commitment to music education, in the local school systems as well as to our patrons. In these pages, you can read more about our investment in our comprehensive elementary program (pg 27) and our newest venture – the High School Professional Choral Institute (pg 26). In their interviews for this magazine, I was struck by the fact that both guest conductors Amanda Quist and Anthony Trecek-King attribute their career decision to a music educator who took a personal interest in their talent and challenged them to further hone their skills. This underscores why our music education programs are so important: it only takes one interaction to change the trajectory of a child’s life.
We are so appreciative of our patrons, our donors and sponsors, and the community that loves and supports our artists and the music they share. Thanks for being an important part of the Seraphic Fire family.
Lauren Schiffer Leger Interim Managing Director Editor, Seraphic Fire Magazine
Artist Roster
As of August 15, 2024
Soprano
Elisse Albian
Brooklyn, NY 6th Season
Jessica Beebe
Philadelphia, PA 4th Season
Julie Bosworth
Baltimore, MD 2nd Season
Chelsea Helm
New York, NY
8th Season
Michele Kennedy
Oakland, CA 2nd Season
Robyn Lamp
Amelia Island, FL 3rd Season
Jane Long
Mount Vernon, WA 6th Season
Elijah McCormack
New Haven, CT 3rd Season
Rebecca Myers Philadelphia, PA 9th Season
Molly Quinn Chapel Hill, NC 13th Season
Nola Richardson
New York, NY 8th Season
Deborah Stephens Ansonia, CT 3rd Season
Addy Sterrett
Los Angeles, CA 3rd Season
Maia Sumanaweera
San Jose, CA 1st Season
Andrea Walker Cleveland, OH 1st Season
Artist Roster Continued
As of August 15, 2024
Alto
Luthien Brackett
London, UK 11th Season
Alexandra Colaizzi
Miami, FL 5th Season
Amanda Crider
Miami, FL 15th Season
Doug Dodson
Atlanta, GA 11th Season
William Duffy
Montréal, QC 6th Season
Virginia Kelsey Branford, CT 10th Season
Kimberly Leeds
Boston, MA 6th Season
Sylvia Leith
New York, NY 1st Season
Gabriela Linares
New York, NY 2nd Season
Emily Marvosh
Minneapolis, MN 10th Season
Karen Neal Miami, FL 5th Season
Gabriela Solís
Philadelphia, PA 4th Season
Elisa Sutherland
New York City, NY 6th Season
Tenor
Steven Bradshaw
Philadelphia, PA 12th Season
Aaron Cates
Washington, DC 4th Season
Derek Chester Fort Collins, CO 10th Season
Brad Diamond Sterrett, AL 12th Season
Andrew Fuchs
New York, NY 5th Season
Haitham Haidar
Montréal, QC 2nd Season
Michael Jones
Los Angeles, CA 3rd Season
Bass
Nickolas Karageorgiou
Brooklyn, NY 6th Season
David Pelino
Gainesville, FL 2nd Season
Rohan Ramanan Irvine, CA 1st Season
James Reese Philadelphia, PA 8th Season
Eric Alatorre San Francisco, CA 6th Season
James K. Bass
Associate Conductor
Los Angeles, CA 22nd Season
John Buffett Los Angeles, CA 13th Season
Steven Eddy Collingswood, NJ 9th Season
Jared Jones
Los Angeles, CA 2nd Season
Luc Kleiner
Los Angeles, CA 3rd Season
Edmund Milly
New York, NY 3rd Season
Lovell
Rose
Miami, FL
1st Season
Christopher Talbot
Philadelphia, PA 3rd Season
Paul Max Tipton
New York, NY 7th Season
Jonathan Woody
Brooklyn, NY 3rd Season
Artist Roster Continued
As of August 15, 2024
Violin
Edson Scheid
Concert Master
New York, NY
Susannah Foster
New York, NY
Viola
Renée Hemsing
Boston, MA
Katie Hyun
New York, NY
Cell0
Laura Lutzke
New York, NY
To read full artist bios, visit SeraphicFire.org/Artists
Annie Garlid
New York, NY
Stephen Goist
New York, NY
Kyle Miller
New York, NY
Sarah Stone Queens, NY
Nathaniel Chase
New York, NY
Jessica Powell Eig
Chevy Chase, MD
Flute Oboe
Keyboard
Joseph Monticello
Miami, FL
Margaret Owens
New York, NY
Anna Marsh
Tacoma, WA
Aya Hamada
New York, NY
Leon Schelhase Philadelphia, PA
Bassoon
Bass
Music Hıstory 101
Artistic Director Patrick Dupre Quigley shares the story behind
the theme of Season 22
By Beth Braswell and Lauren Schiffer Leger
Patrick Quigley listens to feedback from Seraphic Fire audiences. In fact, comments from patrons are what inspired a whole season of music. “As we were designing the season for this year, we had just conducted a patron survey to find out what they liked so much about Seraphic Fire,” says Quigley. “In addition to the awesome artistry of our amazing musicians and the incredible repertoire, we also found out that learning more about the music was important to our audience members. So, when we created this season, Music History 101, we wanted to lean into that idea.”
Concerts in the season span the history of classical music, with each exploring the unique characteristics of a pivotal creative era. Quigley will open up the season by conducting a concert titled A Brief History of Western Music: a sort of thesis to be expounded on in the rest of the season. “This program illustrates, in 75 minutes, what the evolution of music has been over 1,000 years,” says Quigley of the October concert. In addition to highlights from a millennium of music, the concert will follow the evolution of one tune in particular, Alma Redemptoris Mater. “That work shows up a few times in the show,” Quigley explains, “first as its original Gregorian chant. It also shows up as an eight-voice double choir motet by Tomás Luis de Victoria, and then we finish the show with a contemporary work by Cecilia McDowall that's also the same tune. I am excited to demonstrate the evolution in music history that allowed that piece of music to transform, over time, from
what it was initially to what it ended up sounding like in the 21st century.”
The theme of Music History 101 extends beyond the concerts themselves into experiences that offer opportunities for patrons to become music scholars. Quigley describes a new feature of 2024-2025 programming, “A truly exciting part of this season is the incorporation of top American music historians and professors from institutions across the United States, who are advising both me and our guest conductors about the music we're going to perform.” Readers can find in-depth articles from these scholars later in this magazine (starting page 10). According to Quigley, the features “provide a greater understanding about how this music fits into the larger bits of history that surround it.” The scholars will also present lectures on Zoom two weeks before each concert. “The musicologists will talk about the music that we're going to be performing, and they will take patron questions,” describes Quigley. “It’s exciting that our patrons can interact with some of the greatest musical minds in the United States.”
As opening night draws closer, Seraphic Fire’s Artistic Director is eager to share what he sees as a stellar lineup: “This season is going to be the best yet, giving our audiences not only great entertainment and music, but also knowledge for the rest of their lives.”
To learn more about lectures with music scholars this season, visit SeraphicFire.org/Education.
A (Very) (Western) Music Brıef History of
By Honey Meconi
Choral singing has played the largest role of any kind of music-making across the entire history of Western art music, especially when it comes to sacred music. The human voice, after all, was the first musical instrument, and the practice of group singing can be traced back thousands of years.
During the Middle Ages, from the late fifth century up to the fifteenth century, almost all of the music performed in the Catholic Church was plainchant (sometimes called “Gregorian Chant”), a single melodic line sung by a choir in unison in free rhythm. Both the texts and melodies of plainchant have continued to inspire musicians up to the present day, as we can see with one of the most popular chants of the time, the anonymous Alma Redemptoris Mater in honor of the Virgin Mary.
Composers scarcely restricted themselves to a single melodic line. In a work such as the anonymous Stella splendens, a medieval pilgrimage song, the texture expands to two voice parts, each of which now has a distinct rhythm. Choral expansion is a hallmark of the Renaissance (the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries). Guillaume Du Fay’s motet for the consecration of the Florence Cathedral in 1436, Nuper rosarum flores, now has four parts, with the bottom two using a plainchant melody for the consecration of a church. Tomás Luis de Victoria’s setting of Alma Redemptoris Mater is even fuller, with eight voices divided into two choirs, a “polychoral” texture beloved of the high Renaissance and later years.
The succeeding Baroque period (from 1600 to the earlier eighteenth century) saw the invention of opera, whose dramatic tone soon influenced all other vocal music as well. Claudio Monteverdi’s Lauda Jerusalem, a setting of a psalm text from the Vespers service published in 1610, shows this through its use of seven voices that juxtaposes two three-voice choirs against tenors singing a plainchant melody. Another spectacular example of dramatic writing appears in the Miserere mei Deus, a psalm setting by early Baroque composer Gregorio Allegri. Here the choral singing is again split between two choirs; it alternates between writtenout melodic lines and repeated-note chanting of the psalm text. A recurring refrain features an otherworldly soprano line that soars far above the supporting voices. The young Mozart heard this work in Rome during one of his childhood tours of Europe. However, as a composer of the Classical period (from the earlier eighteenth century to its end), Mozart emphasized balance and symmetry in his choral music, in keeping with the eighteenth century’s veneration of the architectural proportions of classical antiquity. We see this in Mozart’s Ave verum corpus, written just six months before his death in 1791. This outwardly simple but deeply moving work for the feast of Corpus Christi was probably the test piece for his appointment as Kapellmeister Designate of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna.
Liturgical music continued to be important in the nineteenth century, often known as the Romantic period. Works by Felix Mendelssohn and Anton Bruckner represent two contrasting examples. Mendelssohn’s gentle psalm setting Laudate pueri is for three-part women’s voices and organ, composed for a community of Roman nuns in 1830. Completely different is Bruckner’s Os justi, written in 1879. This eight-voice motet reflects a compositional movement called Cecilianism (after the patron saint of music) whose goal was to restore the use of medieval and Renaissance sacred music, and to write new pieces in older styles. Consequently, Os justi is for eight-part unaccompanied chorus (since most sacred works before 1600 did not use instruments) and uses the Lydian mode for its harmonies; Lydian was one of the medieval modes used before major and minor keys developed during the Baroque. The early music influence is especially unmistakable in the final “Alleluia,” sung in plainchant rather than in parts.
The twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the modern/ contemporary period, adopts an almost “anything goes” philosophy when it comes to choral music. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s “choral rhapsody” Sea Drift (1908) for eight voices, narrates an evocative poem of a young woman on a storm-drenched shore, while Igor Stravinsky’s Ave Maria (1934), for four voices, sets the famous Marian prayer in shifting meter, a hallmark of modernism. And Cecilia McDowall’s six-voice Alma Redemptoris Mater (2010) is both of its time (in its use of dissonance and sustained sonorities) and of the past, as it sets the age-old text with reference both to the original plainchant melody and the varied textures of the Renaissance.
Honey Meconi is the inaugural Arthur Satz Professor at the University of Rochester, where she is also Professor of Musicology at the Eastman School of Music.
Listen
to the concert playlist
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Cecilia McDowall
Contemporary Jewish Music
By Mark Kligman
Contemporary Jewish Music consists of a wide range of music in a variety of styles from folk and popular to art and the sacred. There is no universal form of Jewish music as musical styles are drawn from their surroundings. Most American Jews have heritage from Europe, while Jews from the Middle East draw from a different musical environment. Jewish melodies for Americans with European heritage contain modes and phrases that emerge to form a recognizable sonic landscape forming a tradition. Like the music from other cultures and religions, Jewish composers balance tradition (through words and music) with innovation to create contemporary music.
This program of contemporary Jewish music by Seraphic Fire presents many new works by various composers. Established Jewish folk melodies presented in a contemporary style provide a fresh approach to fuse tradition and innovation. Stacey Garrop’s Lo Yisa Goy is a Hebrew text taken from a passage in Isaiah 2:4: “May no nation rise up in war against another nation.” Garrop draws upon a melody from her childhood, a well-known melody by Shalom Altman, sung in Hebrew along with variants of the melody. She also
includes English words in this work from Micah 3:3-4 to complement the message of not waging war. This is a contemplative tune that fits the texts as a prayer for peace.
Drawing upon known melodies is one approach of Jewish composers, another is writing music anew. The program will include the works by Julia Wolfe and Shulamit Ran, both accomplished composers. Guard My Tongue from Speaking (2009) by Julia Wolfe is set to a passage in Psalm 34:14: “Guard your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking guile.” The Jewish concept of “Lashon Hara” [guarding the evil tongue] is a religious practice to only speak kindly of others. Wolfe’s setting repeats the words “guard my tongue” with a percussive sound in the choir which emphasizes the importance of this Jewish concept. Shulamit Ran, a Pulitzer Prizewinning composer who was born in Israel and developed her career in the United States, wrote Shirim L’yom Tov – 4 Festival Songs for the Bar Mitzvah occasions of her two sons; she sets four biblical passages in Hebrew. The lyrical music conveys the festive and joyous nature of the texts.
Also represented in this program is the experience of Jewish Americans as Americans. Meredith Monk, a
multi-talented artist known for treating the voice as an instrument, explores science fiction themes in her vocal music. Her Astronaut Anthem is a representation of this effort as the evocative sounds of another world are heard with the choir creating various ambient sounds. For Jews, America is seen as a place for artistic exploration since access to creative arts, through exposure or training, was not possible in prior generations for Jews born in Europe. As a land of opportunity, America provides an artist like Meredith Monk ways to express her ideas.
Another example is David Lang’s protect yourself from infection. Lang, also a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, is recognized as a leading musical innovator. His work on this program was a contribution to the Philadelphia-based Mütter Museum’s exhibition of the infamous parade during the great Spanish flu epidemic of 1918/1919. During the Covid pandemic, Lang wrote this work in 2020 to specifically commemorate the loss of thousands of individuals who, against medical advice, marched in a parade in Philadelphia on October 12, 1918. Philadelphia had the highest death rate during that pandemic. David Lang writes that
he was named after his father’s cousin, Daniel Abraham Leibowitz, who, at 18, died during the Spanish flu epidemic. In the Jewish tradition, naming a child after a deceased relative is a way to acknowledge the life of the deceased. Lang’s composition is not connected to a Jewish text or melody but is connected to the memory of his deceased relative. Like Monk, Lang’s composition is a work by someone who is Jewish, and the context provides an opportunity for personal creative expression.
The works on this program showcase contemporary Jewish
music by composers who are famous, others less well known and, in the case of Yoni Fogelman, just starting their careers. Drawing from Jewish texts in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English provides an intimate connection to the Jewish past. Sonically, some composers draw from known melodies allowing for innovation of the past. Other composers express their experiences as Americans who are Jewish through the personal encounters that are deep and significant; these musical works provide an entrée to that experience.
Mark Kligman is the inaugural holder of the Mickey Katz Endowed Chair in Jewish Music at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music where he is a professor of Ethnomusicology and Musicology, and is the Director of the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience.
Listen to the concert playlist
Shulamit Ran
Stacey Garrop
Julia Wolfe
David Lang
Meredith Monk
Yoni Fogelman
Photo by Darrell Hoemann
Photo by Peter Serling
Photo by Jesse Fromancolor
Photo by Valerie Booth
Photo by Peter Serling
By Honey Meconi
Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula in Brussels, Belgium where the Capilla flamenca likely performed.
Photo credit: Luc Viatou
The Capilla flamenca (Flemish chapel) was the private chapel choir of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500–1558). At the time that Charles was elected emperor, in 1519, he ruled more territory than anyone since the time of the Roman Empire. This came about more by accident than design: Charles's grandfather, Maximilian I of Austria, had married Mary of Burgundy, only child and heir of Charles the Bold, the last Duke of Burgundy. Although Burgundy proper reverted to the French crown upon the death of Charles the Bold in 1477, Mary was still the ruler of the remaining Burgundian territories (the Burgundian Netherlands), which included what is now Belgium (both Flanders, where Flemish was spoken, and Wallonia, where French was the language), parts of northern France, and portions of the southern Netherlands. Maximilian brought his own considerable Habsburg territories in Germany, Austria, and Eastern Europe to the marriage.
Seeking to increase his family's power, Maximilian married his two children, Philip the Fair and Margaret of Austria, to Juan and Juana of Spain, daughter and son of Ferdinand and Isabella. With the deaths of Juan, heir to the Spanish throne, and both of Juan's parents, Ferdinand and Isabella, the young Charles became the ruler of Spain and its territories through his mother, Juana. Thus, Charles was now sovereign of the Burgundian Netherlands, all the Habsburg lands, Spain, and the massive holdings of the Spanish New World— an empire of staggering size.
Charles came from a long line of passionate music lovers going back to the first Duke of Burgundy in the fourteenth century. This love manifested itself most conspicuously in the employment of a large number of professional singers. In the time of Charles’ parents, they would have had both a grande chappelle and a petite chappelle, the former including up to thirty-eight musicians. This was notable at a time when many churches had just a handful of professional singers. The chapel was kept busy; their daily church services, including the performance of the mass, typically included not just plainchant (a single melodic line, sung in unison and popularly known as Gregorian Chant,) but also the most up-to-date and complex polyphony for up to eight voice parts. We know this because of surviving manuscripts from the court as well as inventories of music books owned.
The chapel accompanied Charles (and his predecessors) everywhere. This was important because in the days
before media such as newspapers or photography, a ruler wished to display himself (and his power) to his subjects on a regular basis. He needed to be seen to be believed, and a ruler who could command such a massive musical force was especially impressive. And because their territories were far-flung, HabsburgBurgundian rulers were typically on the move.
Charles was raised in the Low Countries, mostly in Brussels and Mechelen. The first time he left his native region was to travel to his new kingdom of Spain in 1517. The chapel he brought with him, consisting of twenty-eight members, became known as the Capilla flamenca to distinguish it from the much smaller and less prestigious Spanish chapel that he inherited from his mother Juana and his Spanish grandfather, Ferdinand. The quality of musical training in the Low Countries meant that, for much of the fifteenth century and well into the sixteenth, most of the best performers and the best composers came from the North. From his own musicians and from the music they encountered on their frequent travels, Charles's Capilla flamenca drew on the riches of both sacred and secular music throughout his reign, performing compositions by Pierre de la Rue (the most significant composer in the chapel when Charles was growing up), Thomas Crecquillon (chapel master for Charles), Josquin des Prez (wildly popular throughout Europe, and richly represented in music manuscripts owned by Charles), and other leading composers of the day such as Clemens non Papa, Adrian Willaert, and Claudin de Sermisy. No other institution, not even the Papal Chapel, had a repertory as rich as that of the Capilla flamenca, and the music they performed represents the great riches of the sixteenth century, the "Golden Age of Polyphony." •
Honey Meconi is the inaugural Arthur Satz Professor at the University of Rochester, where she is also Professor of Musicology at the Eastman School of Music.
Listen to the concert playlist
Choral Music in theAge of Romanticism
By Andrew H. Weaver, Ph.D.
Ask a classical music enthusiast to think of Romantic music, and what probably comes to mind are operas and symphonies, or possibly small-scale genres like songs and piano works. Choral music, however, thrived during the Romantic era. As a philosophical and cultural movement, Romanticism sought to free the individual from the ills of modern life, encouraging people to unburden themselves of social conformity in favor of imagination, personal expression, and a critical approach to the world. The Romantic individual engaged in a process of interior self-cultivation, using the arts to better themselves, with the aim of rising above the everyday rabble of our broken world. Romantics were thus on a quest for wholeness and
redemption, which they sought through such avenues as spirituality, pure love (including the joy and suffering it wrought), the supernatural, the distant past, and especially the wonders and mysteries of nature.
Romanticism was a response to sweeping social changes taking place in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and thanks to these changes, the audience for Romantic music was vastly different from that in previous centuries. Whereas the fine arts had long been almost the sole province of the highest classes, there was now widespread cultivation of music by the middle class. Almost every bourgeois home had a piano and, in fact, most piano works and songs were intended, not for concerts, but for private performance among friends and family in the parlor. The song (in German, “Lied”) became a quintessentially Romantic genre, combining poetry on Romantic themes with sophisticated music that adds depths of meaning to the words.
But in addition to encouraging musical activities at home, Romantic composers wanted to bring people together in communal music-making, and choral music was ideal for this purpose. By setting for choir the same poems used for songs, Romantic composers extracted choral singing from the domain of the church and transformed it into an outlet for amateur musicians of all classes. During the nineteenth century, choral societies sprang up in almost every European city, and many famous composers were involved with them. Robert Schumann led choirs in Dresden before accepting a job directing a choir in Düsseldorf. Felix Mendelssohn’s early fame was due in part to directing
Sketch of violinist Joseph Joachim and pianist Clara Schumann by artist Adolph von Menzel.
choirs, and choral conducting formed an important part of his duties at his major posts in Leipzig and Berlin. Johannes Brahms spent much of his life as director of a choir in Vienna. Although Franz Schubert (who spent much of his career out of the public eye) never held a regular choral conducting job, thirty-five years after his death an amateur choral society bearing his name was founded in Vienna. In England, Charles Villiers Stanford conducted the Cambridge University Musical Society during and after his student years, and he was later conductor of the Bach Choir in London. Although Camille Saint-Saëns’s and Gabriel Fauré’s choral activities were mostly within the realm of church jobs, amateur choral organizations were an important part of musical life in nineteenth-century Paris.
While these choral organizations were run by men, Romanticism’s emphasis on nonconformity helped open doors for people who would have had difficulty pursuing musical careers in previous centuries, particularly women. Clara Wieck Schumann, the daughter of a well-known piano pedagogue (the teacher of her future husband), made a name for herself as a virtuoso pianist well before her marriage to Robert in 1840, having given her first public performance in 1828 at the age of nine and her first solo concert at age eleven. She went on to become one of the most famous pianists of her day while also composing and publishing a substantial catalog of music. Mendelssohn’s sister Fanny enjoyed a thorough musical education and blossomed into a talented pianist and prolific composer; however, she pursued a traditional life as wife and mother, confining
her musical activities (including running a small choral group) to the home and not publishing any music until a year before her untimely death at forty-one.
Life was challenging for people of color in the nineteenth century, but one successful Black musician was the British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. A student at the Royal College of Music, where he studied with Stanford, ColeridgeTaylor became renowned as a composer of choral music, often setting works by African-American poets. So well-known did he become in America that his music inspired the establishment of the Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society in Washington, DC, with which the composer toured several times.
The legacy of Romantic choral music can still be felt in the vibrant choral music scenes that exist to this day in many American and European cities.
Andrew H. Weaver is Professor of Musicology at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Yale University and a B.Mus. in musicology and viola performance from Rice University.
Listen to the concert playlist
Musical Queens
By Rebecca Cypess
Europe, in the second half of the eighteenth century, saw the rise of numerous powerful queens: the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa, her daughter Marie Antoinette of France, Queen Charlotte of England, Catherine the Great of Russia, and others. Navigating their positions as women of authority required careful self-fashioning within accepted paradigms of womanhood that allowed their subjects and peers to respect and honor them.
Seraphic Fire’s March 2025 program explores music in Vienna during the reign of Empress Maria Theresa, who became a patron to numerous women artists whose brilliance reflected well on her. Among these artists was the composer Marianna Martines, who achieved international renown when she became the first woman inducted into the Accademia filarmonica of Bologna in 1773. Because of her family’s friendship with the imperial court poet Pietro Metastasio, the leading operatic librettist of the eighteenth century, Martines had the opportunity to perform for the empress and her daughters. Martines was a virtuosic singer and keyboardist as well as a prolific composer of instrumental and vocal music, much of which she performed herself. She regularly hosted musical soirées in her home that attracted guests from the local intelligentsia, professional artists, and aristocrats, as well as international visitors, all of whom came to hear her. Among
these guests was the English music historian Charles Burney, who gushed about Martines’s performances and compared her to St. Cecilia, patron saint of music.
All of Martines’s surviving Italian cantatas are set to texts penned by Metastasio. This includes “Berenice, che fai?,” the text of which derives from Metastasio’s operatic libretto Antigono. The story revolves around the Egyptian princess Berenice, who is betrothed to the Macedonian king Antigono, but who is in love with his son Demetrio. Martines chose for this cantata a highly dramatic excerpt in which Berenice appears insane with rage. The original audience for this work would no doubt have known that the story ends happily—Berenice is ultimately allowed to marry Demetrio—but they would have reveled in seeing her temporary madness, a condition widely associated with women in the eighteenth century.
Martines’s sacred motet “O Virgo, cui salute” is dedicated to Mary, another archetypal “queen” who served as a paradigm of womanhood. The piece is composed of a recitative, an aria, another recitative, and a concluding Alleluia, and it includes an obbligato oboe part that offers a counterpoint to the soprano soloist. While, in theory, women were not allowed to perform in church, they did so occasionally, as Burney recounted after he visited Vienna’s
St. Stephen’s Church. The presence of a set of performing parts for this motet in the archive of St. Michael’s Church suggests that the piece was performed there, perhaps by Martines herself. Seraphic Fire's performance is a modern world premiere of this motet, based on an edition by musicologist Lynette Bowring.
Vienna’s musical life depended on the collaboration and competition of its leading artists. In an autobiographical letter, Martines recalled that, in her youth, she had studied keyboard with Franz Joseph Haydn. In the 1780s, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart attended Martines’s soirées and played keyboard duets with her. On Seraphic Fire's program, works by Haydn and Mozart complement Martines’s compositions.
Mozart’s “Laudate Dominum,” from his Solemn Vespers, K. 339, was composed in 1780 for performance in the Salzburg Cathedral. In a melody that soars above the orchestra, the soprano soloist pronounces a Latin translation of Psalm 117, which calls on all people to praise God; her invocation is answered by the chorus. Mozart wrote his Missa brevis, K. 192, when he was just 18 years old. Its Credo movement is unified by a recurring four-note theme (Do-ReFa-Mi), which he would later use as the basis of the finale of his last symphony, “Jupiter” (No. 41).
The title of Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 63, “La Roxelane,” refers to the work’s second movement, which is a musical portrait of another queen: Roxelane, wife of Suleiman the Magnificent, a sixteenth-century sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Attempting to understand the meaning of Haydn’s title, scholars have suggested that he composed incidental music to accompany a German adaptation of the play Soliman II by the French writer Charles Favart, which was performed in Vienna throughout the 1770s. However, this suggestion is speculative; no such work survives.
Rebecca Cypess is The Mordecai D. Katz and Dr. Monique C. Katz Dean of the Undergraduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Yeshiva University.
Listen to the concert playlist
Marianna Martines
Roxelana, wife of Suleiman the Magnificent
Empress Maria Theresa
CELEBRATING 40 YEARS OF THE ARTS
Watch anytime with PBS Passport
Learn Something New from Music Scholars
For Season 22, we’ve gathered a host of the nation’s top musicologists to present on the major eras of music in online Scholar Lectures. Hosted on Zoom by the program’s consulting musicologist, Scholar Lectures will take place approximately 2 weeks before each program. Register for FREE at SeraphicFire.org/Education.
Honey Meconi on A Brief History of Western Music
Tue, Sep 24 at 7:00 pm
Mark Kligman on Jewish Voices Tue, Oct 22 at 7:00 pm
Honey Meconi on The Capilla Flamenca Mon, Jan 6 at 7:00 pm
Andrew H. Weaver on Schumann & Mendelssohn Thu, Feb 13 at 7:00 pm
Rebecca Cypess on Martines, Mozart & Haydn
Tue, Feb 18 at 7:00 pm
Craig A. Monson on Angels Behind the Walls
Tue, Mar 18 at 7:00 pm
Can’t make the lecture? We’ll have it available for you to listen to as a podcast before the concert.
Angels Behind the Walls
By Craig Monson
In 1664, a Bolognese clergyman extolled the music he had heard while playing tourist in Milan:
At Santa Radegonda (a convent of nuns), we couldn’t tell if the singing voices were from down here, below, or celestial. They sang a Regina Coeli, which plainly showed that they had learned from the angels how to salute their Queen of Heaven. The church was so packed with the nobility that one couldn’t breathe in the heat. Foreigners who pronounced upon this music were unashamed to say that it is second, neither to that of the Austrian Emperor nor to any performed in Italy!
continued
“Orphans Singing, Organ of the Choir of the Church of the Ospedale della Pieta, Venice” by Jan van Grevenbroeck
It may come as something of a surprise that during the Baroque, nuns’ singing exerted such a powerful fascination for aristocratic connoisseurs and others on the European Grand Tour. In Milan, the best choral singing could be heard, not at the cathedral but at the Convent of Santa Radegonda (home to Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, who appears on this program). Nuns’ vocal attractions were enhanced by the fact that they remained invisible: their disembodied voices echoed from behind the grilled screens of their choir lofts, often high up, near the vaults of their churches.
The pseudo-privacy of their screened choir lofts allowed nun singers to perform respectably, without the social taint then associated with a woman’s singing in public. After all, sight had recently displaced hearing as the second most powerful provocation of lust, according to Catholic confessors’ manuals. As one fifteenth-century influencer on family values had put it, “The speech of a noble woman can be no less dangerous than the nakedness of her limbs.”
But convent performances also required careful negotiation on the cloistered singers’ part: the church hierarchy remained suspicious of musical performance by nuns, who were supposedly “dead to the world.” One disapproving cleric lamented, “While their bodies remain within the sacred cloisters, music causes them to wander outside in their hearts, nourishing within themselves an ambitious desire to please the world with their songs.”
Most Baroque women who “went public” by publishing their compositions turned out to have been nuns. Over seventy percent of published collections containing women’s music between 1568 and 1700 were the work
included on this program), Chiara Margarita Cozzolani published four volumes of her music.
It is worth remembering, however, that during the Baroque, audiences flocked to nuns’ churches more for the singers than the composers. Dozens of male composers dedicated works to notably musical convents or to individual, “star-quality” convent musicians. Diarists commonly displayed greater interest in the performers than the specific works they sang. As co-creators of the musical experience with composers, convent singers eclipsed them in the public imagination.
This was also true at Venice’s renowned foundling hospital for abandoned girls, the Ospedale della Pietà, where female voices also resounded from behind choir loft screens. These girls, carefully trained as singers and instrumentalists, lived regimented lives behind their walls, but enjoyed somewhat greater freedom. With permission from the Ospedale’s governors, the best (and best-behaved) musicians could leave the Ospedale for the day to perform at noble households, provided that they returned before sunset. The Ospedale also received a few foreign girls, sent by German courts to be trained at their monarchs’ expense. The Ospedale’s governors were careful to extract assurances, however, that these girls were of impeccable virtue and would never perform in public theaters.
Despite his current reputation, Antonio Vivaldi remained a tangential figure around the Ospedale. After his initial appointment in 1703, he served there sporadically, commonly as maestro del violino, not as director of the Ospedale’s more prestigious choral performances. At their annual elections, the governors
off-and-on, as a choral director between 1713 and 1717, when he provided most of his choral music (including the earliest version of his Magnificat). One contract in 1723 carefully stipulated that senior, female teachers “must always be present when the said Reverend Vivaldi shows up to teach the girls.” (Did they fear possible improprieties during his lessons?) After a decade’s absence, in 1737 he was one of several music masters hired piecemeal to direct the choir and provide appropriate music (including an updated version of his Magnificat). But a year later, the governors let him go once-and-for-all. During his periodic affiliation with the Ospedale, he never enjoyed the esteemed title of maestro di coro.
The Ospedale’s choral performances eclipsed those of the girls’ instrumental ensembles, which Vivaldi more commonly directed. As the singers’ voices echoed from behind the church’s choir loft grills at Vespers, their invisibility enhanced their mysterious allure. Enthusiastic audiences down below, forbidden to applaud within the sanctuary, could only express their approval by coughing heartily, loudly blowing their noses, and shuffling their feet instead.
Perhaps no audience member was more enraptured than the French philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose Confessions (1782) reveal just how entranced he was by these hidden voices. One of the governors agreed to take him to tea with the invisible singers. “On entering the salon,” he wrote, “which contained these beauties I so longed to see, I felt an amorous trembling as never before. Monsieur le Blond presented these celebrated female singers to me, one after another, whose names and voices were all I knew of them.
they only sang in the choruses. I was nearly in despair. I scarcely dared return to their Vespers service. But I still found their singing delightful and their voices so embellished their persons that, despite my eyes, I continued adamantly to think them beautiful.”
Craig A. Monson is Paul Tietjens Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St Louis, where he taught for three decades.
Listen to the concert playlist
Chatting with Anthony Trecek-King
Using his passion for choral music to empower and unleash a new generation of musicians
“Anthony Trecek-King is so full of energy and life. He is a brilliant musician and knows how to get the best possible sound out of Seraphic Fire. He will bring a unique sense of musicality and joy to the holiday season.”
– Patrick Dupre Quigley
Q: What do you think is a differentiator in the way you conduct and work with artists?
A: What makes me unique is how much I try to explore emotion in music. When we like old recordings, they're not perfectly in tune but the emotion is there. Every note has to be oozing with meaning. There are better musicians than me, but the thing that I do well is relentlessly extract every piece of emotion out of the music. My first time with Seraphic Fire, we stopped one of our rehearsals and talked for an hour in order to get to the place where we could be on the same page, emotionally, with the music. Once we did that, everything else worked out.
Q: I know that you adhere to a collaborative rehearsal style. What exactly does that mean?
A: It’s a back and forth - I need them, and they need me - it’s symbiotic. I don’t have all the answers and sometimes the chorus may know better than me. I am here to facilitate their success. Leading by dictatorship is the old model; the new model is we're in this together.
Q: What separates Seraphic Fire from other choirs you have worked with in the past?
A: They are really good, so flexible, and it is a joy to work with them because the opportunities are
limitless. Their strength is their ability to jump into multiple literature and be equally comfortable in different styles. These are some of the best voices in the country, and you can do amazing things when you have the best voices in the country.
Q: Do you have a vision for what you hope to accomplish with this December program?
A: Creating a program that's cohesive, yet challenging for the audience is the hardest part of our jobs as artists. I knew I wanted to explore music that the Seraphic audience had not heard. Even the Ave Maria is one that has not been performed by Seraphic Fire. It's a familiar text, but a different arrangement by a composer of African descent.
The Flight is a piece that I am really interested in performing. It connects Jesus and His birth with immigration and related issues. It's a heavy piece of music that will get the audience thinking. It’s not always our role to provide answers, but, instead, to raise questions. I think it’s important to program music that is familiar or easy for the audience to grasp, and then challenge the audience on the other hand.
Q: What led you to a career in conducting?
A: My music got serious when I started playing cello at age 10. In high school, I joined the chorus and that turned my love into choral music, but I always did both. When I was a college freshman, the chair of the department called for me and I thought I was in trouble. He sat me down and said, “Have you ever thought about being a conductor?” I replied, “No, why would I?” He answered, “Have you ever seen anybody that looks like you on the podium? You should think about it.” It was a very provocative question.
I went to my conducting teacher and said I wanted to learn more and he gave me a score of Romeo and Juliet. I listened to the CD a hundred times, first following just the flute line, then the next instrument, and so on. Finally, I starting waving my arms to figure out “Does this make sense?” By the time I got through with undergrad, I had conducted a lot. But if it wasn’t for that one little conversation, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today.
“My goal in life is to help other people be their best selves, whatever form that takes.” Anthony Trecek-King.
Meet the award-winning, teacher extraordinaire, Renaissance pundit, and sought-after conductor Amanda Quist
“Many of you know Amanda as the former Director of Choral Activities at the University of Miami. She’s an incredible conductor and has a particular love for the music of the Renaissance. She’s a wonderful speaker, a great musician, and we’re really excited to have her with us.” – Patrick Dupre Quigley
Q: Amanda, tell us how you became interested in music as a career.
A: I grew up watching my dad, as the church organist, play for Sunday services. He played the piano at home, and my mom sang and played the piano, so music was always in my life. I considered myself a singer growing up, but I would also accompany our choir at the piano. My high school choir director told me I should consider being a music teacher, but I never envisioned I would go into music professionally. I began college as a psychology major, but took many music classes in my first semester, and switched over to music education. I had a very specific moment when my professor said, “Amanda, why don't you get on the podium and conduct the choir? I have to go get something from my office.” I was probably 18 or 19, and I remember standing in front of the choir and thinking, “Wow… just the sound of these voices, and knowing that I could be part of the whole of it was so exciting and inspiring.” That started me thinking: “This might be my path, making music with other people, and having the chance to facilitate group singing. This is really incredible.”
Q: And now, what do you find are the opportunities or, conversely, the challenges as a female conductor?
A: As an 18-year-old looking down
my future path, I never really thought about my gender. My choral conductors were all men, but I didn't think, “Oh, they're men and I'm not.” I was born in Michigan, which is a choral-rich state and, as a young person, people around me were saying: “You can do it.” No one ever said, “Oh, but remember, you're a woman.”
As I got older, I noticed more and more the way people might speak or act in the presence of a female versus a male conductor. Looking at the professional world, the number of women conducting professional choirs is small. The number of women conducting orchestras professionally, even smaller. If I’m given the opportunity to have a platform, that is always appreciated, and there is power in representation.
Q: Why are you and Seraphic Fire the right match to deliver this music?
A: This is my favorite genre of repertoire and time period for choral music. The Music History format is perfect because it's a way to teach audiences more about this incredible Renaissance repertoire and the important role it has played in the foundation of choral music. This is an opportunity to shine light on this music because it is so deserving and has a fascinating history. The
Capilla Flamenca was actually a choir, initially employed by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. But more importantly, they were not only the best singers of that time but also the very best composers.
The repertoire and the choir are a wonderful match for one another. This music requires a certain vocal intuitiveness and an experience with this type of singing that Seraphic Fire does so well. A fair amount of this music might be new to the audience, but I believe they will walk away with a new appreciation of this incredible Renaissance polyphony.
An Equation for Success
41 musical high school juniors and seniors plus 13 best-in-class Seraphic Fire singers and 3 highly renowned choral conductors
In June, Seraphic Fire held its first High School Professional Choral Institute (HSPCI). Forty-one aspiring artists from seven Miami-Dade County public and private high schools received intense vocal instruction, participated in education workshops, and received personal guidance and inspiration from Seraphic Fire artists during the five-day event. The young singers, and their Seraphic Fire mentors, were under the baton of three highly acclaimed directors: Seraphic Fire’s Artistic Director and Founder Patrick Dupre Quigley, GRAMMY-winning singer and conductor James K. Bass, and Resident Conductor of the Handel and Haydn Society Dr. Anthony Trecek-King. The week culminated in the students, alongside 13 Seraphic Fire artists, performing a concert at The Wertheim Performing Arts Center at Florida International University singing compositions by names such as Tallis, Rachmaninov, and Handel but also delving into diverse genres from multiple cultures.
The Miami-Dade High Schools represented include Academy for Innovative Education Charter, Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart, Coral Reef Senior High School, Doral Academy Prep, Miami Senior High School, Miami Arts Charter, and Miami Arts Studio @ Zelda Glazer.
The positive feedback received from the participants reaffirmed its success:
“It was an incredible experience to meet the singers, learn how different each one of their lives is and apply it to our own lives. Singing with them was very impactful”
– Mia Vega, a junior from Miami Arts Studio whose dream school is UCLA with a major in music marketing
“I loved seeing and hearing about how professionals actually work and succeed in real life. This experience helped me solidify my goal to pursue choral music. I find choral music so interesting because you not only have to pay attention to what you're doing, but also what the people around you are doing to blend and work on dynamics. I really liked building a connection with all the Seraphic Fire members and the conductors”
– Brenda Duran, a senior at Doral Academy Prep who aspires to attend NYU-Tisch and pursue choral music
“I loved working with fellow students who had the same drive, dedication, and passion for music. Everyone wants to be there and is working as hard as you are. It was a completely different experience than being in choir at school. We were surrounded by professionals who were not only passionate about music but passionate about
sharing it and teaching it. The first day we jumped right in, “Here’s some music, we are going to sight-read some Bach.” I improved so much so quickly it made me realize that I had more talent than I thought I did.”
– Mariana Soto, a junior at Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart
“All four of my students who participated expressed to me how this opportunity was completely eye-opening for them. It is so valuable for the students to have an experience like this, where they begin to see what is truly possible with a commitment to their craft and by surrounding themselves with similarly motivated people. I, too, felt I learned much from seeing the rehearsals. To provide students with access to musicians of this caliber at zero cost to them is an unbelievable opportunity.”
– Michael Colavita, Choral Director at Miami Arts Charter
Seraphic Fire celebrated another ‘premiere’ this year in their education outreach: a year-end student concert performed at the Adrienne Arsht Center.
The stars on the Arsht Center stage were participants in the Seraphic Fire Youth Initiative: 35 singer-students from Bent Tree Elementary and 45 from Spanish Lake Elementary. Filling the auditorium seats were 1,534 students from 23 local schools, as well as excited parents, teachers, and chaperones.
Jennifer Meneses was one of those singer’s mom: “It took my breath away to see my child onstage. I will never forget it. She is a different child when she sings; her anxiety and nerves just disappear.”
Cameron Elliott, a doctoral candidate at UM’s Frost School of Music and Seraphic Fire Youth Initiative Educator, has worked with the music teachers and students from both schools throughout the school year. Elliott described a standout student, “He doesn’t have the best home life, but that kid comes to class every week, so excited to learn and participate. I have seen his confidence completely blossom. I can see the positive
active engagement that he brings to class. He is very talented and creative with a bright future in music.”
Come see the impact these programs are having! Next year’s concert will feature Comstock Elementary and Kendale Lakes Elementary Schools at the Arsht Center. Mark your calendar for April 14, 2025, contact Info@SeraphicFire.org for more information on attending.
Seraphic Fire's education programs are made possible in part by our generous sponsors and partners:
Seraphic Fire is funded by the Children's Trust. The Trust is a dedicated source of revenue established by voter referendum to improve the lives of children and families in Miami-Dade County.
Seraphic Fire education programs are endowed in perpetuity by The Clinton Family Fund Education Endowment with generous additional support from the Hutson-Wiley Echevarria Foundation.
A Look Back at Season 21
August
Professional Choral Institute at Aspen Music Festival.
October
Free community concert The Art of Protest explores protest songs from a variety of traditions, curated by renowned countertenor Reginald Mobley.
SFYI education workshop on jazz takes place at 12 schools across South Florida.
November
Season opening program Gods and Mortals features a newly transcribed arrangement of Jean-Phillipe Rameau’s Castor et Pollux.
Give Miami Day raises $34,481.
Seraphic’s newest CD, The Apple Tree: Christmas with Seraphic Fire debuts on the top 10 of the Billboard Traditional Classical Chart.
December
A Seraphic Fire Christmas brings holiday spirit across South Florida with 2 weeks of concerts.
Seraphic tours in Grafton, VT.
December education concerts take place in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and Naples.
January
Guest conductor Elena Sharkova returns for In Her Own Voice, a program of music by women composers and poets.
Ensemble Artist Program students from UM Frost School of Music join Seraphic Fire for In Her Own Voice.
An SFYI education workshop on folk song traditions takes place at 12 schools across South Florida.
February
Enlightenment Festival presents two back-to-back weeks of programming featuring music by the Scarlatti family and Haydn.
Ensemble Artist Program students from UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music join in A Visit with Haydn
The third annual High School Master Class takes place at Florida International University with students from Coral Reef Senior High School.
March
Guest conductor Ruben Valenzuela joins Seraphic for The Fountains of Israel, featuring music of German Baroque composer Johann Hermann Scheinn.
An SFYI education workshop on music of the 1960s takes place at 12 schools across South Florida.
April
Seraphic presents education concerts in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts and the Parker Playhouse.
Mid-Century Modern explores music of the mid20th century, led by Associate Conductor James K. Bass, and joined by Ensemble Artist Program students from UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.
June
Seraphic Fire launches the inaugural High School Professional Choral Institute, hosted at Florida International University.
Season by the Numbers
What People Are Saying About Seraphic Fire
“Seraphic Fire’s musical selection always includes music that I haven’t been exposed to before. In my opinion it’s food for the soul.”
- Seraphic Fire Patron
“I am constantly amazed by the talent and wide range of musical ability of Seraphic Fire. We are so lucky to have them in our backyard.”
- Seraphic Fire Patron
“We appreciated the introduction to material unknown to us. We responded to the wrenching emotional content. You perform the unperformable so beautifully.”
- Seraphic Fire Patron
“This performance as well as the lecture before were sublime and celestial. You transformed us and gave us a great gift of healing and beauty.”
- Seraphic Fire Patron
“Just when it seems that Seraphic Fire has reached the pinnacle of choral singing, artistic director Patrick Quigley and his ensemble exceed themselves.”
- South Florida Classical Review, February 2024
“For sheer vocal beauty and varied quality of repertoire, Seraphic Fire’s Christmas celebrations remain an annual musical treat.”
- South Florida Classical Review, December 2023
“I get super excited every Thursday when [Seraphic Fire] comes because it’s going to be a great time for learning for the kids and for me. Now I can build a fun and exciting music course for the kids and be better prepared for next year. It’s been amazing to see the progress in their performance level. This class enhances their learning experience across the curriculum, math, reading, and their whole attitude about learning.”
– Jackson Bunn, music teacher at Spanish Lake Elementary
“I’ve learned that music is kind of like math – with quarter notes, half notes, and whole notes. We learned about pitch and the right way to sing. Singing is fun, and it makes me calm and relaxed. I want to keep singing.”
– Jake, 4th grade, Spanish Lake Elementary
Will you consider a gift to Seraphic Fire?
Your support makes it possible for Seraphic Fire to present more than 40 performances annually for an audience of 6,000 throughout South Florida and nationally. Your donation further supports a robust series of education programs serving over 3,500 K-12 public school students annually, in addition to professional training programs in partnership with leading universities.
Now more than ever we need your help. This year, arts funding from the State of Florida was cut entirely. Last year we received a $97,000 general operating grant and this year, through a competitive grant process, Seraphic Fire’s application for support was ranked 18 out of 630 total applicants with a recommended award of $150,000. The governor’s veto zeroed that amount out, leaving us with a significant and abrupt budget gap. We know that investing in the arts creates a meaningful return to the local economy, tax revenue, and quality of life.
Please consider a gift to help ensure another year of beautiful music and impactful educational experiences.
Learn more about donor levels and benefits by visiting SeraphicFire.org/Support
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Become a Volunteer
Seraphic Fire is looking for you! Help us create a memorable experience for our concertgoers and patrons by volunteering at one of our concerts! Volunteers receive complimentary admission to the show they usher. Please send an email to Judelle@SeraphicFire.org to sign up.
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Become a Seraphic Fire Artist Host
Another valuable way to contribute to Seraphic Fire is by becoming a host! If you are interested, please email Andrea@SeraphicFire.org to receive our application, and we will notify you if we have a match. Hosts will receive a tax acknowledgment for their contribution at the end of the calendar year.
Board/Administration
Administration
Executive
Patrick Dupre Quigley, Artistic Director
Lauren Schiffer Leger, Interim Managing Director
Artistic
Andrea Leon-Moreno, Artistic Operations Manager
Alexis Aimé, Artist Contractor
Finance & Operations
JJ Flores, Director of Finance and Operations
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Advancement
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Education
Suzanne Floyd, Director of Education
Alexandra Colaizzi, Education Coordinator
Cameron Elliott, Choral Education Liaison
Board of Directors
Diane Ashley, Chair
Joanne N. Schulte, Founding Chair
Robert “Bob” Brinker, Treasurer
Misty Bermudez, Vice Chair
Karen S. Fuller Veloz, Vice Chair
Matthew Anderson
Nirupa Chaudhari
David Foerster
Marilyn Horowitz
Megan Kelly
Ana Marmol
John Martin
Elizabeth Rader
Margaret “Peggy” Rolando
Mel VanderBrug
Gregg Zavodny
Edmundo Pérez-de Cobos, Director Emeritus
Patrick Dupre Quigley, Artistic Director, ex-officio
Nola Richardson, Artist Representative, ex-officio
John Buffett, Artist Representative, ex-officio
Patron Highlights
Lily Sherman: Seraphic Fire's youngest advocate
By Beth Braswell
At the March 2024 Fountains of Israel concert, I noticed a father-daughter duo rapt in attention at the pre-concert conversation. He, in his finely pressed suit, and she, with flowers in her hair, made me pause and acknowledge how music appreciation can be nurtured at all ages; Lily Sherman turned eight in February. After the concert, thoroughly intrigued, I spoke with Lily and her father, Ben, to thank them for attending. It turns out they are a very musical family; mom rocks the electric guitar, while the rest of the family are pianists – Lily began her piano studies before she turned four. It turns out that this was not Lily’s first Seraphic Fire concert. ”My favorite so far has been Handel’s Messiah,” shared Lily. “I loved that there were so many voices and so much music surrounding my ears.”
Lily shared how she first came to love music: “The first time I heard The Rite of Spring, I was three. I loved how the dancing matched the music. That got me excited about ballet. I’d like to be a ballerina and a composer when I grow up.” A composer, too? I asked incredulously. We then went on to have an in-depth conversation about two pieces that Lily had recently composed – one took her a week and the other took two days. “I just write music when an idea pops in my head. I like emotional music – sad and slow, fast and happy or music that says ‘oh no, what’s happening?’’’
I asked Lily how she might describe a Seraphic Fire concert if she was asking a friend to go with her: “If you are interested in music, you should really go. The music and the singing are beautiful. You won’t often get to hear music like this. It’s fun to hear new things. You’re looking at it happening right in front of you.”
Dick Dupere: A Seraphic Fire Activist!
He stood at the front of the sanctuary with his eyes glued to the church entrance. With a few waves of his hand, Dick Dupere was filling his front-row pew with his friends and family as they arrived.
“I am always recruiting people to come. I love to sit and watch people’s faces the first time they hear Seraphic Fire sing. Their mouths drop open and they say ‘Oh my gosh, I didn’t know music could be this beautiful.’ People are astounded by the end of the concert. I had one group that I invited to the Christmas concert, but I told them, ‘That’s just one teeny piece that Seraphic’s famous for, you haven’t really heard them until you listen to them perform Bach, Mendelssohn, Hildegard, or maybe somebody you’ve never heard of.’”
Dick’s second favorite aspect of Seraphic Fire concerts? “I love to hear new things; I can remember a concert of Korean music and one of South American music written by priests. I enjoy all the different kinds of music Seraphic Fire performs. How do you grow without listening to new music?”
When asked about his journey with music, Dick credited his teacher: “I had a music director in 7th grade who challenged me, and I became a competent trombone player. That started my love for the classical world, and I have played in the same symphonic band for 45 years. I live for good music.”
2153 CORAL WAY, STE. 401 MIAMI, FLORIDA 33145
Seraphic Fire recognizes its season sponsors, national sponsors, and institutional partners.
FOUNDER’S CIRCLE SPONSORS
Anonymous
The Sayre Family Charitable Trust
Barbara & Mel VanderBrug
NATIONAL SPONSORS
Robert R. Brinker & Nancy S. Fleischman
Nirupa Chaudhari & Steve Roper
Meredyth Anne Dasburg Foundation
Martha R. Davis & Alix Ritchie
Jane Hurt
Leonard Smith
INSTITUTIONAL PARTNERS
NO. 1343
Seraphic Fire is sponsored by the Miami-Dade County Tourist Development Council, Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; the City of Miami Beach, Cultural Affairs Program, Cultural Arts Council; the City of Coral Gables; Coral Gables Community Foundation; The Dunspaugh-Dalton Foundation; Funding Arts Network; Funding Arts Broward; The Kirk Foundation, Peacock Foundation, Inc; Quest Foundation; and Citizens Interested in Arts; the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture, and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Seraphic Fire is funded by The Children’s Trust. The Trust is a dedicated source of revenue established by voter referendum to improve the lives of children and families in Miami-Dade County. Programs in Broward County are made possible with the support of the Broward County Cultural Division.
