Upper Valley Baroque, with Filippo Ciabatti: An Inaugural Season

Two performances on March 12, 2022

Sometimes all you need is a rhetorical question, spoken out loud. About a year ago, while chatting about a Bach aria for a Sunday service at Church of Christ at Dartmouth College, Music Director Henry Danaher said, “Wouldn’t it be great to have an arts organization in the Upper Valley focused on Baroque and Early Music?” The question landed on the ears of people who decided to establish what is now Upper Valley Baroque. Its first concert was in December, 2021. The next performances are scheduled for March 12 at 3:00p.m. and 7:00 p.m.

UV Baroque’s Artistic Director Filippo Ciabatti has appeared as a conductor with orchestras and opera companies around the world. He is known by Upper Valley music lovers particularly for his work with the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra and Opera North. (See his bio, below). When asked about how he made the decision to add yet another, new endeavor to an already full professional calendar, he replied:

When Allan Weiman and Jo Shute called me and proposed the idea of establishing a professional Baroque ensemble in the Upper Valley and becoming its Music Director, I was thrilled. I have always loved Baroque music. Since I was a young musician in Florence, I used to attend Baroque concerts and festivals. . . Having the possibility to explore this repertoire more deeply was such an interesting prospect to me. Also, Allan and Jo's idea of bringing high quality music-making to the Upper Valley, with the mission of making this wonderful repertoire available to this community, deeply resonated with me.

The upcoming concerts on March 12 at the Church of Christ in Hanover NH will feature Bach’s 2nd and 3rd Orchestral Suites, described by Ciabatti as encompassing “a range of emotions . . . from contemplative to thrilling, from majestic to melancholic.” The program will also include an orchestral suite by the Florentine composer Veracini and a popular concerto grosso by Corelli.

A third concert for this inaugural season, the Bach Mass in B minor, will be presented on May 29 at Lebanon Opera House. Another performance is planned for early December, 2022.

Upper Valley Baroque is young and evolving, with plans for the future. Ciabatti says it “has embraced the mission to develop an educational program, that will hopefully grow in the next few years and bring this repertoire to new generations of music lovers.”

To purchase tickets and for further information, please click here.

(Photo, top, Filippo Ciabatti, courtesy of the artist.)

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Filippo Ciabatti, Artistic Director of Upper Valley Baroque Professional Ensembles

A native of Florence, Italy, Filippo Ciabatti is the Music Director of the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra, the Dartmouth Opera Lab, and the Interim Music Director of Dartmouth’s Choral Ensembles. He is also the Artistic Director of Upper Valley Baroque, a professional choral and instrumental ensemble. He is the recipient of the 2020 American Prize in Conducting (college/university division).  Mr. Ciabatti has appeared as a guest conductor with opera companies and orchestras including Opera North (NH), Lyric Theatre at Illinois, Aurora Festival Orchestra (Stockholm, Sweden), Vermont Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Toscana deiConservatori (Italy), ICM Orchestra, and Universidad Central Orchestra (Bogota, Colombia). He served as assistant conductor for the Portland Symphony Orchestra (Maine) and as chorus master and vocal coach for the Middlebury Opera (Vermont). In 2020, he also conducted a project with the Martha Graham Dance Company.

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And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.