Welcome
Callisto Ascending and the New Amsterdam Boys and Girls Choir invite you to a special community concert:
When: Friday November 7th at 6:00pm
Where: Esperanza Preparatory Academy, 240 East 109th Street , New York, NY 10029
Admission: Free (limited seating)
The two groups will perform Baroque songs in period style together, accompanied on original instruments. This performance is the culminating event of a week-long residency, funded in part by a grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
In addition to performing with the choir, Callisto Ascending will repeat selections from the program that we performed at the Times Center in September, which garnered favorable mention in The New York Times (If you missed it, now is your chance!).
Welcome to the web home of Callisto Ascending! Please join our mailing list to stay up to date on our upcoming concerts and plans (click the link above).
Callisto Ascending is devoted to the vibrant exploration of the familiar and forgotten chamber music repertoire for period instruments and voices. The group has given concerts and master classes at venues including the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, the Staller Center for the Arts at SUNY Stony Brook, and Second Presbyterian Church and the Church of St. Edward the Martyr in New York.
Callisto Ascending was recently awarded its first grant, from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, to support an artist residency in autumn 2008 with the New Amsterdam Boys and Girls Choir.
We recently received our first press mention, in The New York Times's review of our appearance in Gotham Early Music Scene's Times Center Showcase. Of our well-received set, Allan Kozinn wrote: "Callisto Ascending devoted its set to works celebrating the Virgin, most notably a lovely account of Purcell’s 'Tell Me, Some Pitying Angel,' in a passionate, almost operatic reading by Katharine Dain, the soprano. In another Purcell work, 'O dive custos,' as well as in Couperin’s 'Regina coeli laetare,' and a 17th-century oddity, 'O quam bonus es,' by Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, Ms. Dain and Laura Rubin, a mezzo-soprano, blended comfortably and projected with clarity and the kind of shaping that seemed rooted in the emotional currents of the texts."
