South Florida Classical Review

Patrick Quigley will open Seraphic Fire’s 2024-25 season on October 10.

Seraphic Fire will offer a wide-ranging series of concerts in the 2024-2025 season that will explore the byways as well as the major routes of music through the centuries.

A group of distinguished musicologists will aid in curating the programs as well as writing articles and present free Zoom panel discussions and Q&A sessions. “We are excited to have partnered with top music scholars to consult on repertoire for each of our programs. Seraphic Fire is an alchemist, combining scholarship and fun to provide a moving, entertaining and informing concert experience,” artistic director Patrick Quigley said.

Quigley leads the chamber choir’s opening program October 10-13 devoted to “A Brief History of Western Music.” Featuring works by Medieval abbess Hildegard von Bingen thru the Renaissance era’s Tomás Luis de Victoria to Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart and Stravinsky, the concert spans decades, centuries and stylistic trends of the classical canon.

Associate conductor James Bass helms “Jewish Voices” on November 7-10. Exploring contemporary composers and culture, the a capella program spotlights “Shimm L’yom,” a song cycle by Pulitzer prize winning composer Shulamit Ran. Works by Lera Auerbach, David Lang and Sid Robinovitch  will also be presented. December 7-14 brings the popular annual “Seraphic Fire Christmas” concert, this year under the direction of guest conductor Anthony Trecek-King

University of Miami Frost School of Music faculty member Amanda Quist directs “The Capilla Flamenca,” a tribute to the famed choir that wrote and performed in Spain’s cathedrals for centuries (January 16-19, 2025). Heindrich Isaac, Jacobus Clemens non Papa and Giovanni Palestrina are among the Renaissance  composers who comprise the concert’s repertoire.

The choir’s yearly Enlightenment Festival will offer two programs in late February and early March. Bass conducts “Romantic – Schumann and Mendelssohn: (February 27-March 2), contrasting scores by Felix Mendelssohn and Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel and Robert and Clara Schumann. Brahms and Schubert also put in an appearance as well as later day romantic composers Samuel Coleridge Taylor and Amy Beach. Quigley returns for Classical – Martines, Mozart and Haydn” on March 6-9. Two works for soprano and orchestra by Marianna Martines, a multi talented Classical era artist who studied with Haydn and was Mozart’s duo piano partner, share the bill of fare with Haydn’s Symphony No. 63 and Mozart’s ‘Laudate Dominum” from Solemn Vespers and Missa Brevis in F Major.

Quigley concludes the season with “Angels Behind the Walls,” a concert focusing on the women Vivaldi taught and directed at the Venetian convent and orphanage Ospedale della Pietà. Music by Chiara Margarita Cozzolani and Isabella Leonarda are among the female Baroque composers on this aural view inside one of Venice’s early music schools. Vivaldi’s Magnificat in G minor concludes the season.

Concerts will be presented in Miami, Coral Gables, Miami Beach, Pinecrest, Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton, West Palm Beach and Naples. seraphicfire.org

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