Musica Pacifica's ALLA RUSTICA concert features music of Spain, Ireland, and Scotland, as well as rustic pieces by some of the Baroque's favorite composers.
Musica Pacifica's stylish, high-energy, and virtuoso performances have consistently received enthusiastic reviews from critics and audiences alike. These qualities have led to appearances on such prestigious chamber and early music concert series as the Frick Collection and Music Before 1800 (NY), Tage Alter Muisk (Regensburg), the Shrine to Music Museum (Vermillion, SD), the Cleveland Art Museum, the Pittsburgh Renaissance and Baroque Society, the Seattle Early Music Guild, the Los Angeles County Museum, Milwaukee's Early Music Now, the Houston and Arizona Early Music Societies, the Bloomington Early Music Festival, and the Cambridge Early Music Society (MA), among others. They have been a featured ensemble at the Berkeley Early Music Festival three separate times, and their very first appearance there was cited in Early Music (UK) as "perhaps the standout of the entire festival." They have performed at festivals in Germany and Austria and have been heard on German National Radio, the BBC, and on National Public Radio’s Performance Today and Harmonia.
Musica Pacifica’s six CD releases--Bach Trio Sonatas and a 2-CD set of Marais, Pièces en trio on Virgin/Veritas; Alessandro Scarlatti Concerti da camera, Mancini Concerti da camera, Telemann Chamber Cantatas and Trio Sonatas, and Vivaldi La Notte: Concerti per strumenti diversi, on Dorian--have won national and international awards, including the highest ratings in several CD magazines and each one being chosen as "CD of the Month" by the early music journal Alte Musik Aktuell (Regensburg). Their Telemann CD, described by Early Music America Magazine as "superbly elegant . . . exemplifying the finest in historical performance today," won Chamber Music America and WQXR's 2003 Record Award honoring the best chamber music recordings of the year. The Mancini recording was cited as a "Noteworthy Disc" in the 2000 International Antonio Vivaldi Awards for Italian Early Music in Venice--the only CD that year by a North American ensemble to receive the honor. A new CD, "Fire Beneath My Fingers" -- virtuosic Italian solo and chamber concertos--will be released by Sono Luminus this Spring.