Get a Life!

Música Antigua de Albuquerque will present "Get a Life!", a concert of music about work and play in daily life in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, performed with voices & period instruments. The program will include musical pieces that mention many of the daily tasks of medieval and Renaissance times, like doing the laundry, milking the cows, spinning, sewing, cooking, baking, cleaning house, feeding the chickens, and more. Not all of these tasks were unpleasant—the anonymous Italian ballata "De mia farina" describes the poet's love of making lasagna and expresses the sentiments of a true gourmet cook. People did seem to have time for relaxation too, and millers' wives and farmers' daughters in particular seemed to have a lot of fun, and people could always visit the big city for a good time. Composers obviously enjoyed incorporating all these activities into their music, and many of the selections on the program are humorous and lighthearted. The performers of Música Antigua are Hovey Corbin, Dennis Davies-Wilson, Ruth Helgeson, Curtis Storm, Colleen Sheinberg and Art Sheinberg. The program will be performed with historic instruments, including recorders, shawm, lute, violas da gamba, sackbuts, vielles, rebec, medieval harp and others. This project is supported in part by an award from New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.