2025
Guts feat. Andrus Madsen plays Fantasticus!
at The Waldo Theatre, Waldoboro, ME
Saturday July 12, 2025 | 7:30 pm EDT
The Waldo Theatre, Waldoboro, ME
Tickets
Guts Baroque with featured guest Andrus Madsen will perform whimsical, varied, and fantastical instrumental music from the 17th-century courts of what is now Germany and Austria. Emperor Leopold I, himself a musician and composer, brought several prominent Italian musicians across the Alps to Vienna. These guests, including violin virtuoso Antonio Bertali, received good salaries and plenty of opportunities to perform, to compose, and to teach the new generation of German musicians the Stylus Fantasticus: the Italian style of purely instrumental fantasies made popular by Italian composers such as Girolamo Frescobaldi. Bertali’s student Johann Heinrich Schmelzer further developed the style, and his innovations helped spread it throughout what is now Germany, teaching and inspiring other prominent composers including Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber.
Sylvia Schwartz, baroque violin
Rebecca Shaw, viola da gamba
Andrus Madsen, harpsichord
Girolamo Frescobaldi: Canzon Prima a canto solo, F 8.01c
Antonio Bertali: Violin Sonata 2 in d minor from Partiturbuch Ludwig
Johann Heinrich Schmelzer: Sonata Unarum Fidium 1
Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber: Sonata 2 from 8 Sonatas (1681)
and keyboard works by Johann Jakob Walther and Johann Jacob Froberger, who the composer and treatise author Mattheson used as an example when he defined “stylus fantasticus”
2024
Brighten your December with daily music from Guts!
Whether it’ll bring moments of holiday joy or moments of respite from a stressful season, treat yourself (and your loved ones!) to a special Advent calendar with a micro-concert video each day.
In the spirit of mystery, we won’t give away in advance which pieces you’ll hear, but we’ve had a great time choosing them and can’t wait to share them with you! We will tell you that it’ll be a mix of music, some Christmassy and some not.
Send us a donation of any amount $20–$100 and you’ll receive a daily email with a new micro-concert video from December 1st to 25th. Daily videos will be about 3–5min each, with a slightly longer one for Christmas Day.
After you open them, videos will continue to be available through the end of January—in case you need some music to brighten the quiet of post-holiday time, as we settle in to winter.
Makes a great gift! Just tell us in the checkout form where we should send it.
Gifting to multiple people? Make a total donation that reflects the number of recipients (you choose the amount that works for you), and put all the email addresses into the form.
*Donations are not tax-deductible, but they do make everything we do possible!
Guts plays Fantasticus! on SoHIP Series 2024
July 9–11 and 26, 2024
7:30 pm EDT
Tuesday 7/9 in Lincoln, MA
Wednesday 7/10 in Andover, MA
Thursday 7/11 in Boston, MA
Friday 7/26 Virtual Premiere
More info and tickets
Guts Baroque with featured guest Andrus Madsen will perform whimsical, varied, and fantastical instrumental music from the 17th-century courts of what is now Germany and Austria. Emperor Leopold I, himself a musician and composer, brought several prominent Italian musicians across the Alps to Vienna. These guests, including violin virtuoso Antonio Bertali, received good salaries and plenty of opportunities to perform, to compose, and to teach the new generation of German musicians the Stylus Fantasticus: the Italian style of purely instrumental fantasies made popular by Italian composers such as Girolamo Frescobaldi. Bertali’s student Johann Heinrich Schmelzer further developed the style, and his innovations helped spread it throughout what is now Germany, teaching and inspiring other prominent composers including Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber.
Sylvia Schwartz, baroque violin
Rebecca Shaw, viola da gamba
Andrus Madsen, harpsichord
Girolamo Frescobaldi: Canzon Prima a canto solo, F 8.01c
Antonio Bertali: Violin Sonata 2 in d minor from Partiturbuch Ludwig
Johann Heinrich Schmelzer: Sonata Unarum Fidium 1
Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber: Sonata 2 from 8 Sonatas (1681)
and keyboard works by Johann Jakob Walther and Johann Jacob Froberger, who the composer and treatise author Mattheson used as an example when he defined “stylus fantasticus”
Guts plays Italian Virtuosi on the Noonday Concert Series
Thursday, January 18, 2024
12:15 pm
Portland Public Library, 5 Monument Square, Portland, Maine
Free RSVP through PortTIX
When Arcangelo Corelli put his Opus 5 violin sonatas into the world in 1700, they made a bang so big that it rippled across Europe, forever changing the way people wrote classical music for the violin, and seriously upping the ante for the way people played it.
Join us in the performance hall downstairs at Portland Public Library during your lunch hour Thursday, January 18th to see and hear what all the ruckus was about.
Sylvia Schwartz, baroque violin
Rebecca Shaw, baroque cello
Corelli’s Opus 5 #9 sonata, one of the works that kicked it all off
his student Carbonelli’s Sonata #1, by turns gorgeous, grand, and playful
his student Locatelli’s Sonata #2, a piece reminiscent of CPE Bach (who was 15 when it was written) with its tender moodiness
and contemporary Vivaldi’s Opus 2 Sonata #3, a different take on the same sonata structure
2023
Guts plays Les Maîtres du violon!
Sunday, September 10, 2023
2:30 pm
St. Luke’s Cathedral Chapel, 143 State St, Portland, Maine
Tickets at the door, $15/$10 for seniors
Around the turn of the eighteenth century, Lully was dead, and the next generation of court musicians in Paris were starting to make their own marks on his legacy in French music.
The graceful dance suite of Lully’s time, so beloved by the late Louis XIV, was slowly being supplanted by the Italian sonata. Many French violinists and other musicians traveled to Italy to study with Corelli and other great masters, then returned to France, bringing with them Italian aesthetics and musical forms. As a result, the solo music written for violin gradually shifted towards the Corellian sonata, while still retaining the sublimely intricate and delicate ideas of the French Baroque.
Join us Sunday 9/10 to hear more about the composer-performers of the time and revel in the music that came out of this transition, music whose grace, beauty, and expressive vocabulary assures it a very special place in the hearts of so many baroque string players. We’ll play sonatas by free-spirited early-adopter Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, unrightfully obscure François Francoeur (whose surname shows up in Sylvia’s family tree…), and the biggest name in this style, Jean-Marie Leclair.
François Francoeur: Sonate 2 in e from Sonates à violon seul, Livre I
Jean-Marie Leclair: Sonate 3 in Bb Major from Premier Livre de Sonates
Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre: Sonate 2 in D from Sonates pour le viollon
Vigorous Tenderness, Summer Solstice 2023
Join us at Range Pond State Park for a wander-as-you-wish outdoor concert featuring several chamber groups in different parts of the trails! Look for us under the big leaning tree, playing Isabella Leonarda‘s haunting and dancing Sonata 12.
More information below and at: https://www.facebook.com/events/1394209371312727/
Celebrate summer with vibrant chamber music that connects new sounds, the environment, and the community.
Vigorous Tenderness is an immersive outdoor concert series that amplifies marginalized voices in classical music and democratizes new / experimental music. This summer solstice event resembles an art museum experience, with chamber music in harmony with the landscape inviting the audience to follow their own path of listening and reflection.
Please arrive between 6 and 6:30 pm and move through the installation at your own pace.
Sliding scale donations are welcomed: suggested ticket price is $25 but please pay what you can based on need.
Cash and venmo are accepted; everything goes to the musicians and to sustaining future concerts. Venmo: @VigorousTenderness
The rain/snow date for this event is Thursday, June 22nd.
We value inclusion and access for all participants and are pleased to provide reasonable accommodations for those who need assistance. This event involves moving over mostly hard-packed wide trails built to accommodate wheelchair users and other mobility devices. In partnership with Maine Adaptive Sports & Recreation, we are prepared to help bridge access and answer any questions you might have prior to attending.
For more information, please see the Maine State Parks’ Accessibility Guide or reach out to vigorous.tenderness@gmail.com.
Featuring music by John Cage, Hawa Kasse Mady Diabate, Gabriela Lena Frank, Annette Kruisbrink, Phong Tran, and Isabella Leonarda
Performed by Katherine Liccardo, Zoe Hardel, Suki Flanagan, Alyson Ciechomski, Jordan Guerette, Kal Sugatski, Lauren Hastings Genova, Christina Chute, Dean Stein, Maria Wagner, Molly Harmon, Kimberly Lehmann, Sylvia Schwartz, Rebecca Shaw, and more
join the Vigorous Tenderness mailing list: http://eepurl.com/dJ0XBA
instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vigorous.tenderness/
more about Vigorous Tenderness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjdcswdJgqw
Read about Vigorous Tenderness in The Maine Mag: https://www.themainemag.com/a-musician-brings-classical…/
This concert is supported by Shahida Keen Associate Broker Realtor, The Onion Foundation, and many wonderful volunteers. We are deeply grateful.
Guts plays Fantasticus!
Noonday Concert Series at Portland Conservatory of Music, Portland, Maine on Thursday May 18, 2023 at 12:15pm
Come join us to hear the whimsical, varied, and fantastic instrumental music from the courts of what is now Germany and Austria! The Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, himself a musician and composer, brought several prominent Italian musicians, including violin virtuoso Antonio Bertali, across the Alps to his court in Vienna. There he gave them good salaries, and plenty of opportunities to perform and compose, as well as teach the new generation of German musicians the Stylus Fantasticus, the current Italian style of purely instrumental fantasies made popular by Italian composers such as Girolamo Frescobaldi. Bertali’s student Johann Heinrich Schmelzer continued and adapted the style, and helped spread it throughout what is now Germany. Several prominent composers emerged, including Andreas Oswald, Nathanael Schnittelbach and Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber. Each left their mark on the emerging German style of music, that would soon lead to famous composers such as J.S. Bach.
To give you a sense of what this music sounds like: Frescobaldi is somewhat modal, with divisions—lots of small notes that fill in between the skeletal notes of the melody. There’s a lot of D, there’s a lot of not-quite-major-or-minor, there’s a snatch of counterpoint here and there.
The virtuoso violinist-composers nurtured by Leopold I (the Freddie Mercurys of their time??) took these ideas and pushed them in all directions, exploring tonality in a more complex way than ever before and bringing it closer to what’s likely more familiar to you in “tonal harmony”: suddenly we have key changes! Sometimes very unexpected and expressive ones! The circle of fifths is now a thing! Also, there are a lot of notes. So many notes. Double stops. Variation patterns that love to hang around in the ears. Sass, panache, lyricism, dazzle.
Girolamo Frescobaldi: Canzon Prima a canto solo, F 8.01c
Antonio Bertali: Violin Sonata 2 in d minor from Partiturbuch Ludwig
Johann Heinrich Schmelzer: Sonata Unarum Fidium 1
Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber: Sonata 2 from 8 Sonatas (1681)
2022
2021
Master and Commander: Chamber Music on the High Seas
November 28, 2021
Still available! Donate to watch
2020
Rising from the Ashes of Plague: Music for Violin & Basso from 17th-Century Italy
Sunday, September 27, 2020 | 7pm EST
Les Maîtres du violon: The Rise of the French Violin Sonata
Sunday, August 30, 2020 | 7pm EST
2019
Les Maîtres du violon: The Rise of the French Violin Sonata
Sunday October 13, 2019 | 6pm PDT
Presented by Hoson House, Tustin, CA
Sponsored by Phil and Katie Friedel
Virtuosic French violin sonatas on the leafy patio of an historic home
Sunday, June 3, 2019, 3:30pm
2017
Finding a Voice: Music from the Streets of Venice to the Courts of France
Saturday December 9, 2017 | 7pm EST
Unitarian Universalist Church of Brunswick, Brunswick, ME
Guts plays Les Maîtres du violon!
Sunday, September 10, 2023
2:30 pm
St. Luke’s Cathedral Chapel, 143 State St, Portland, Maine
Tickets at the door, $15/$10 for seniors
Around the turn of the eighteenth century, Lully was dead, and the next generation of court musicians in Paris were starting to make their own marks on his legacy in French music.
The graceful dance suite of Lully’s time, so beloved by the late Louis XIV, was slowly being supplanted by the Italian sonata. Many French violinists and other musicians traveled to Italy to study with Corelli and other great masters, then returned to France, bringing with them Italian aesthetics and musical forms. As a result, the solo music written for violin gradually shifted towards the Corellian sonata, while still retaining the sublimely intricate and delicate ideas of the French Baroque.
Join us Sunday 9/10 to hear more about the composer-performers of the time and revel in the music that came out of this transition, music whose grace, beauty, and expressive vocabulary assures it a very special place in the hearts of so many baroque string players. We’ll play sonatas by free-spirited early-adopter Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, unrightfully obscure François Francoeur (whose surname shows up in Sylvia’s family tree…), and the biggest name in this style, Jean-Marie Leclair.
François Francoeur: Sonate 2 in e from Sonates à violon seul, Livre I
Jean-Marie Leclair: Sonate 3 in Bb Major from Premier Livre de Sonates
Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre: Sonate 2 in D from Sonates pour le viollon
Guts Baroque Duo 