The following announcement was provided by Sarasa Ensemble:
As part of the semiquincentennial celebration of our nation and the Battles of Lexington and Concord taking place in Eastern Massachusetts in 2025, Sarasa will present a chamber music program for soprano, violin, two cellos, and fortepiano that highlights works which would have been performed around the time of the American Revolution.
In celebrating these historic events with our local communities, Sarasa hopes to connect a diverse local audience with music that inspired our Founding Fathers. Sarasa will present “@1775” at three public performances, as well as to incarcerated teens at Massachusetts’ Department of Youth Services facilities, as part of Sarasa’s award-winning Music Unlocked program.
Sarasa’s concert program takes its inspiration from the Bach-Abel Concerts in London (inaugurated in 1765, and became a fixture at the Hanover Square Rooms in 1775), Le concert spirituel in Paris (founded in 1725), and the Tonkünstler Societät in Vienna (founded in 1772); all of these organizations brought music to the wider public and for the greater benefit of society as well as its musicians. Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams attended concerts at these benevolent institutions during their diplomatic travels.
“@1775” showcases the cross-pollination of music from these European 18th-century concert societies, underlining the significant historical context of the music of J.C. Bach, Thomas Baltzar, Francesco Barsanti, Giacobbe Cervetto, Thomas Arne, Salvatore Lanzetti, Franz Joseph Haydn, and W.A. Mozart, along with the music of Boston-born William Billings; Billings was the first American to publish his own collection of music, with engravings by none other than Paul Revere. Sarasa will perform this music on instruments of the era: gut strings made from sheep’s intestines, 18th-century transitional bows, as well as a copy of a fortepiano from 1770, also strung historically with gut and iron.
Concert Information:
“@1775: Boston, London, Paris & Vienna”
“Do not neglect your music,” Thomas Jefferson wrote his daughter. “It will be a companion which will sweeten many hours of life to you.” Works that would have been heard in 1775 across four capital cities. Composers include Billings, Arne, JC Bach, Barsanti, Cervetto, Baltzar, Lanzetti, Haydn, & Mozart.
With Carly DeFranco, soprano; Susanna Ogata, violin; Jennifer Morsches, Timothy Merton, cellos; Andrus Madsen, fortepiano
- Friday, September 12, 2025 at 7pm – Brattleboro Music Center, VT (tickets at bmcvt.org)
- Saturday, September 13, 2025 at 7pm – Church of the Good Shepherd, Watertown
- Sunday, September 14, 2025 at 3:30pm – Follen Church, Lexington
Tickets:
$25 when purchased ahead, $30 at the door: student and senior discounts available, and children under 18 are free! Tickets to Cambridge & Lexington performances available here, Brattleboro tickets here.
More info at www.sarasamusic.org, admin@sarasamusic.org, or (978) 766-9408
All concerts will be available to stream free 10 days later on the Sarasa website.
About the Sarasa Ensemble:
For over 25 years, Sarasa Ensemble has shared wide-ranging, inspiring musical repertoire with the greater Boston community, while simultaneously spearheading an award-winning outreach program for incarcerated teens in conjunction with the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services.
The Sarasa Ensemble is a collective group of international instrumentalists and vocalists who perform classical music of outstanding quality, spanning the 17th to the 21st centuries, on both period and modern instruments, and bring this music to diverse communities. It has received critical acclaim for its “informed and impassioned music-making” and is hailed for its “great clarity” and “irresistible energy.” Drawing on a pool of more than 125 world-class musicians from the United States, Europe, Canada, Brazil and Japan, the ensemble varies in size according to the particular program of each of its concerts. Sarasa has toured throughout New England performing on many renowned music series, including the Frick Collection, the Morgan Library, the 92nd Street Y, the Boston Early Music Festival Series, and the University of Vermont Lane Series.
Sarasa’s unique and award-winning outreach program has encompassed over 175 free presentation concerts and 65 residencies at teen detention centers in the Boston metropolitan region. Sarasa was unanimously awarded the Department of Youth Services Commissioner’s Community Partner Award for service to the community in September 2018, was featured on WBUR’s The Artery in 2019, and was granted an Early Music America Engagement Award in 2022, and again in 2025. Outreach presentations and residencies in the 2024-25 Concert Season were supported by a Challenge America grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2025-26, Sarasa is supported by the Boston Foundation, the Otto & Marianne Wolman Foundation, and the McKenzie Family Charitable Trust.