Cantabile

Cantabile Vocal Ensemble

Maki Matsui, Katrina Turner, Nina Wurgaft, James Mead, Aidan Linden, Peter Shea

Cantabile is a self-directed vocal group based in the Pioneer Valley that specializes in a cappella performances of vocal chamber music of the European Renaissance. The group performed its first concert, a program of Venetian Renaissance music, in January 2002 at the Wistariahurst Museum in Holyoke. During the succeeding years, the ensemble has presented many similarly beautiful and unusual programs of vocal chamber music. Cantabile began as an octet, then became a sextet in 2005, a quintet in 2012, and again a sextet in 2023. The group’s current members include a non-profit fundraiser, a psychologist, a retired librarian, a farmer and research engineer, and two teachers. All have sung professionally or semi-professionally with various other area groups, including all six with Illumine Vocal Arts Ensemble.

In addition to its love of European Renaissance repertoire, both sacred and secular, the group has enjoyed occasional forays into other repertoire, ranging from Hildegard and Handel to Romantic part-songs and the Great American Songbook. A wide array of organizations and music series have presented Cantabile's concerts in the Pioneer Valley over the past two decades, most recently Arcadia Players, Mohawk Trail Concerts, Amherst Woman’s Club, and Rotunda Rhythms at the Springfield Library.

After a hiatus of nearly three years during the pandemic Cantabile reconvened in January 2023 with three new members. Working began immediately on an all-Gesualdo concert, entitled “The Prince of Love and Death,” eventually performed at Grace Church in Amherst in April 2024. The group also appeared twice as a guest ensemble with Arcadia Players during that organization’s 2023-24 concert series. Cantabile gave four performances of their “Triumphs and Laments” program between October 2024 and January 2025, presented by Mohawk Trail Concerts, the Amherst Woman’s Club, Applewood at Amherst, and by Cantabile itself at the Northampton Center for the Arts. Most recently Cantabile was the guest ensemble in Tiny Glass Tavern’s eclectic, cross-genre Christmas 2024 program Magnify! at Edwards Church, Northampton. They are currently working on a wide- ranging program of “stories in song” to be performed this fall at various venues.

Cantabile is excited at this unique opportunity to perform four new works composed for the group by Jerry Noble for Peter’s Heine concert series, and is grateful that former member Justina Golden is able to join the ensemble for this program during Nina’s leave of absence.