Collegium Musicum at BEMF Fringe

The UGA Collegium Musicum performed and attended workshops, discussions, and performances by top musicians during the 2011 Boston Early Music Festival’s Fringe Concert division in June.

The ensembles' performances were reviewed in the Boston press over the course of the festival. From the Boston Globe:

Monday’s three concerts were nicely varied in repertoire and approach. Under the direction of Mitos Andaya, the University of Georgia Collegium Musicum, a 15-voice choir of both music majors and amateurs from the UGA community, sang a nifty selection of works by 16th- and 17th-century women composers; alternating between the full ensemble and smaller groups, the program traced the gradual convergence of the quick-change expressiveness of secular love songs and the grander lines of sacred music. The culmination was a lively and estimable reading of an eight-part “Magnificat’’ by Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, manifold and idiosyncratically epic, its rapid-fire juxtapositions realized with sweet-toned enthusiasm.

And from the Boston Musical Intelligencer:

The University of Georgia’s Collegium Musicum is a vocal group made up of fifteen young singers singing a cappella and occasionally accompanied by organ and harpsichord. The theme was Of Convents and Courts: Music by Women Composers of the Renaissance and Baroque Eras. As such it was all new music to this reviewer.

The extremely well presented one-hour concert was bookended by the full ensemble and interspersed with smaller ensembles, even one positif organ solo. The composers were Sulpitia Cesis, Maddalena Casulana, Gratia Baptista, Raphaela Aleotta, Francesa Caccini, Barbara Strozzi, and Chiara Margarita Cozzolani.

Mitos Andaya, associate director of choral activities, has a fine soprano voice, which she included in a duet with one of the basses, accompanied by harpsichord. She gets good sound from her singers in various ensembles.

Congratulations to our students and Dr. Andaya on these warm reviews as they represent UGA and Hodgson School of Music.