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Sunday, June 16 2024
— a “hybrid” event —
Trio Sefardi
Howard Bass, guitar, lute
Susan Gaeta, voice, guitar
Tina Chancey, bass viol, Renaissance violin, rebec, Pontic lyra
Sephardic Songs of Sorrow and Celebration
Howard writes: “We will play some new repertoire, especially some songs from Morocco that we added this year, and resurrect and reinvigorate some of our old repertoire. In 2025 we will celebrate the 15th anniversary of our founding, so we’re excited about that.
We’ve had a good season, including a 10-day, 10-show tour in New England that included stops in Boston, Portland, New Haven, and ending in NYC. And in April we played in El Paso, Las Cruces, and Montclair (NJ), and in Baltimore in May. So we’ve been around!”
Trio Sefardi celebrates the musical heritage of the exiled Jews of Spain, the Sephardim. Trio members Susan Gaeta (vocals/guitar), Tina Chancey (bass viol, Renaissance violin, rebec, Pontic lyra), and Howard Bass (guitar/lute) are dedicated to bringing the vibrant past into the living present and to continuing the musical traditions of those who created and sustained Sephardic song traditions over the centuries. They performed extensively with their mentor, the Bosnian-born singer/composer and 2002 National Heritage Fellowship honoree Flory Jagoda, and with La Rondinella and the Western Wind. Trio Sefardi has performed at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Library of Congress, Kennedy Center, Piccolo Spoleto, Center for Jewish History (NYC), Richmond Folk Festival, and at synagogues, JCCs, and on concert series up and down the East Coast. They have made four CDs, most recently “Rikordus: Remembering Flory Jagoda.”
BIOGRAPHIES
Trio Sefardi celebrates the musical heritage of the exiled Jews of Spain, the Sephardim, with songs in Ladino about love and courtship, holidays and hope. Trio members Susan Gaeta (vocals/guitar), Tina Chancey (bass viol, Renaissance violin, rebec, Pontic lyra), and Howard Bass (guitar/lute) are dedicated to bringing the vibrant past into the living present and to continuing the musical traditions of those who created and sustained Sephardic song traditions over the centuries. They have performed extensively with their mentor, the Bosnian-born singer/composer and 2002 National Heritage Fellowship honoree Flory Jagoda, and with La Rondinella and the Western Wind.
Trio Sefardi has performed at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Kennedy Center, National Gallery of Art, Piccolo Spoleto Festival, the Center for Jewish History and the Greek Jewish Festival in New York City, the Golden Festival, at the Richmond and Washington Folk Festivals, and at many synagogues and Jewish Community Centers around the country. The group recently released its fourth recording, “Rikordus: Remembering Flory Jagoda.”
Connect with Trio Sefardi: www.triosefardi.com; YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv_X1QvgJeWOIn9Mh9TMzpQ;
and on Facebook.
Howard Bass, a founding member of Trio Sefardi, was also a founding member of the early and Sephardic music ensemble, La Rondinella, which recorded three CDs for the Dorian label. He performs programs of Renaissance music for voice and lute with mezzo-soprano Barbara Hollinshead, most recently on the GEMS Midtown Concerts series in New York City, and was an accompanist for Sephardic singer-composer Flory Jagoda for many years. In addition to three CDs with Barbara Hollinshead and four with Trio Sefardi, Howard has performed and recorded with HESPERUS, the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the Folger Consort, the Baltimore Consort, and the Choral Arts Society of Washington, among others. Howard was a program producer at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and the National Museum of the American Indian for three decades before retiring at the end of 2010.
Tina Chancey (bowed string, percussion, backup vocals) directs HESPERUS, the world-traveled early/traditional music ensemble dedicated to bringing the past alive through collaborations between early music and film, theater, dance and world music. She plays early and traditional bowed strings from rebec, kamenj and vielle to viola da gamba and Old Time and Irish fiddle. On these instruments she plays roots music from Sephardic and blues to early music and jazz standards. Her particular specialty is the five-stringed pardessus de viole; she was awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Arts to present pardessus concerts at Carnegie Recital Hall and Kennedy Center. A member of the Chancey-Boekhoorn Duo, Passio and Trio Sefardi, she is a former member of the Ensemble for Early Music, Folger Consort, La Rondinella, Blackmore’s Night, and the multi-media music theater ensemble QUOG. She teaches, performs, records, writes scholarly and popular articles, produces recordings for her own groups and for others, and directs improvisation workshops. In the 2023-24 season she was music director and performer for the Expats Theatre production of “Scorched” and the InSeries production, “Misticas.” Dr. Chancey was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by Early Music America. www.tinachancey.com
Susan Gaeta is an important member of a new generation of musicians who are exploring the rich and varied traditions of Sephardic music. Susan lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for eight years, where she performed classic jazz and traditional Argentine folk songs. Under the auspices of the 2002-2003 Folk Life Apprenticeship Program of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Susan completed studies with National Heritage Fellow, Flory Jagoda, composer, singer and musician known as the “Keeper of the Flame” of Sephardic music, with whom she performed for many years. Susan is now herself a master artist for the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and has been mentoring Gina Sobel, a talented singer and flutist. She has appeared at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, at the Greater Washington Folk Arts Festival, the Holocaust Museum, before numerous Jewish and inter-faith communities and in historic concerts in Istanbul and Sarajevo. She performs nationally as a soloist and is a member of Trio Sefardi. Her recording, From Her Nona’s Drawer, traces the evolution of the authentic a cappella women’s Sephardic vocal tradition that Flory learned from her grandmother to Susan’s interpretations of the composer’s more contemporary pieces. www.susangaeta.com
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