Feast Days Season Subscription | Brooklyn Heights

By purchasing this ticket, you receive access to the following performances:

(*Note: Please select ANY SINGLE date listed above to receive tickets to ALL FOUR concerts listed below)

Harvest Festival | September 14 at 3pm

Celebrating the fall harvest, Kevin Devine, hurdy-gurdy, and Aisslinn Nosky, violin, join Repast for music by the three brothers, Nicolas, Pierre, and Esprit Phillippe Chedeville. The brothers wrote music for the amusement of French aristocracy, finding rustic life to be the height of fashion a generation before Marie-Antoinette was playing peasant at Le Hameau de la Reine. In 1737, Nicolas (in a secret agreement with his cousin, the printer Jean-Noël Marchand) published Il pastor fido, Op. 13, a collection of sonatas for musette or hurdy-gurdy under Antonio Vivaldi’s name. Two years later, Nicolas published Le printems, ou Les saisons amusantes, Op. 8, arranging chamber versions of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons for musette along with two newly composed concertos, La Moisson, honoring the harvest, and Les Plaisirs de la St. Martin, celebrating Saint Martin's Day, the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter revels.

Aisslinn Nosky and Natalie Rose Kress, violins
Kevin Devine, hurdy-gurdy
Stephanie Corwin, bassoon
Sarah Stone, cello
Gabe Shuford, harpsichord

Saint Cecilia's Day | November 23 at 3pm

Saint Cecilia, patron saint of musicians, poets, composers and instrument builders, is celebrated on her feast day through the creation of a pastiche ode in her honor. On November 22, 1683, musicians and music lovers of The Musical Society of London started an annual tradition of commemorating Cecilia through newly composed works, with Henry Purcell’s Welcome to all the pleasures headlining the first festival. Purcell’s best known Cecilian ode, Hail! Bright Cecilia (1692), used a libretto from the Irishman Nicholas Brady, who in turn had reworked John Dryden’s poem A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day. Handel’s own cantata Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day (1739) continued in this tradition, returning to this same poem half a century later. Music by Purcell, Handel, Blow, Eccles, and Festing.

Sonya Headlam, soprano
Carmen Lavada Johnson-Pájaro and Ravenna Lipchik, violins
Stephanie Corwin, bassoon
Sarah Stone, cello
Gabe Shuford, harpsichord

The Ides of March | March 15 at 3pm

Beware the Ides of March! Repast curates the story of Julius Caesar through the instrumental music of George Frideric Handel and the 1908 silent film Julius Caesar from Brooklyn's own Vitagraph Company of America. Telling tales of Shakespeare, Repast pairs Handel's music with three other films produced in New York City's maverick movie scene (1908-1910). Guest artist Margaret Owens joins Repast on oboe and recorder for an unforgettable pairing of music and New York film history.

Margaret Owens, oboe and recorder
Natalie Rose Kress, violin
Stephanie Corwin, bassoon
Sarah Stone, cello
Gabe Shuford, harpsichord

Rosalia | May 17 at 3pm

Opening with the famous final scene from Dido and Aeneas, where Dido states, ‘Remember me! but ah! forget my fate’ as roses are scattered over her tomb, Repast’s Rosalia memorializes remembrance. Rosalia, the Roman festival of roses, was a day of rose adornment on the tombs of the dead as mourners reflected on the ways of their ancestors via ‘mos maiorum.’ Roses and violets, the flowers of the Elysian Fields, symbolized rejuvenation, rebirth, and memory, even as their red-to-purple color, ‘purpureus,’ evoked blood and bruising in the epic poetry of Virgil. The madrigal Doulce memoire (Sweet Memories), a often-copied pop song of the 17th century, serves as a joyful farewell — this program acts like a memorial service for listeners to remember loved ones. Music by Henry Purcell, Isabella Leonarda, Barbara Strozzi, Marieta Prioli, Pierre Sandrin, Diego Ortiz, Albert de Rippe, and Hernando de Cabezón.

Margot Rood, soprano
Rebecca Nelson and Natalie Rose Kress, violins
Stephanie Corwin, bassoon
Sarah Stone, cello
Gabe Shuford, harpsichord
Adam Cockerham, theorbo

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

McKinney Chapel at First Unitarian Brooklyn, 116 Pierrepont St., Brooklyn, United States