Renaissance music to celebrate the changing of the season is coming to Wilmington this weekend.
The Philadelphia-based ensemble Piffaro has been around for decades, specializing in the music of the late medieval era and the Renaissance. Sunday, they visit Wilmington with a program of music celebrating spring and the month of May.
Priscilla Herreid, Piffaro's artistic director, says there’s a lot of music from the Middle Ages and Renaissance about May and springtime, a time when people celebrated an end to frigid weather and a beginning of more food and socializing after a long winter.
“There's just so much music about the month of May, how love returns, how life returns, how the animals come back out, how we wake back up," she says "And it happens to us now, even though there's not as much of a physical difference in our lives, at least in 21st century America.”
While the group itself is fairly small, look for a lot of instruments on stage for their performance.
“We're a group of about six people, and in one concert we'll play about 40 or 50 different instruments," Harreid says.
Some of those instruments, like shawms, sackbuts, and crumhorns are rarely seen in modern performances, having been supplanted by more modern instruments. Other instruments, however, will be familiar to almost everyone - like the recorder.
“The Renaissance recorder, which we play, looks not too different from the recorder that you or your kids played in 4th grade," Herreid says.
Piffaro’s concert, “Now is the Month of Maying,” is Sunday at 3:00 p.m. at Immanuel Church Highlands in Wilmington.
Delaware Public Media's arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
