Rare Music Series: "Frescobaldi in Florence," with Julianne Baird, soprano & Benjamin Katz, harpsichord

Concert features music from a newly discovered manuscript of 17th century keyboard music with new works attributed to Frescobaldi and Anglesi. Benjamin Katz has performed as a harpsichordist since 2001, presenting music from the 16th century to the present day. He has performed in venues including the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, MA), Fenton House (London, UK), BRIC (NYC), Annenberg Center (Philadelphia, PA), and Teatro Signorelli (Cortona, Italy). Since 2014, as curator of a private collection of antiquarian music, he has brought together a group of manuscripts that contain previously unrecorded works of major, lesser-known, and anonymous 17th and 18th century composers. Julianne Baird, soprano, with over 130 solo CD's to her credit, has been described as one of the world's most recorded sopranos. She maintains a busy concert and recording schedule of solo recitals, baroque opera and oratorio. In addition to her major roles in a series of acclaimed recordings of Handel and Gluck operatic premieres, recent additions to her discography include six Telemann secular cantatas with Steven Zohn and the complete Biblical Cantatas of Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre with Brandywine Baroque. The New York Times hailed her as a 'national artistic treasure' 'well-nigh peerless performer in the repertory of the baroque.' This concert is presented in association with DUMIC (Duke Musical Instrument Collections.