Music of J.S. Bach and his talented students comes to life as Jörg-Michael Schwarz, violin, leads The REBEL Ensemble for Baroque Music alongside harpsichord soloist Donsok Shin. They will play both the celebrated Brandenburg Concerto No. V in D Major BWV 1050 and the Overture in A Minor for recorder and strings BWV 1067 of J.S. Bach, plus the Italian Concerto KMV 821 of Bach’s student, harpsichordist and copyist, Johann Ludwig Krebs.
The REBEL Ensemble
Hailed by the New York Times as “sophisticated and beguiling” and praised by the Los Angeles Times for their “astonishingly vital music-making," the award-winning, New York-based ensemble, REBEL (pronounced “Re-BEL”) is one of North America's top-tier ensembles specializing in 17th- & 18th-century repertoire performed on period instruments. Named after the innovative French Baroque composer Jean-Féry Rebel (1666-1747), REBEL was formed in The Netherlands in 1991; that same year the ensemble took first prize in the International Van Wassenaer Competition in Utrecht, succeeded by their sensational début on the world stage at the Holland Festival Oude Muziek and their critically-acclaimed American début in New York City in 1992. Since then the ensemble has garnered an impressive international reputation, enchanting diverse audiences with their unique style and their virtuosic, highly expressive and provocative approach to baroque and classical repertoire. The core formation of two violins, recorder/traverso, cello/viola da gamba, and harpsichord/organ/fortepiano expands in a variety of formations with additional strings, winds, brass, theorbo and vocalists, as needed.
REBEL, through its long-term residency from 1997-2009 at historic Trinity Church, Wall Street in New York City, achieved high acclaim for its collaborations with Trinity Choir in performance, radio broadcasts, webcasts and recordings with works ranging from the cantatas of Bach to large scale works by Monteverdi, Handel, Bach, Purcell, Mozart and Haydn. An 8-CD set of the complete masses of Haydn was released in 2009 on the Naxos label. The REBEL Baroque Orchestra first gained worldwide recognition for its acclaimed performance of Mozart’s Requiem with Trinity Choir under the direction of Dr. Owen Burdick, broadcast nationally over National Public Radio in September 2001, and for its subsequent annual performances of Handel’s Messiah and the choral works of Haydn, which were broadcast live over WQXR-FM in New York City and internationally over the internet. Currently the RBO enjoys collaborations with various choirs including the Westchester Oratorio Society and the Central City Chorus in New York City.
REBEL has performed at prestigious festivals and venues in Europe, including the Holland Festival Oude Muziek, Tage Alter Musik Berlin, the Konzerthaus (Vienna), La Chapelle Royale (Versailles), Internationale Festtage für Alte Musik Stuttgart, Tage Alter Musik Regensburg, Les Luminères Festival (Helsinki), the Händel Festspiele Halle and the Göttingen- Handel Festival in Germany, amongst others. In the U.S., REBEL has been presented in thirty-eight states at distinguished venues including the Da Camera Society (Los Angeles), the Schubert Club (St. Paul), Friends of Music (Kansas City), Spivey Hall (Atlanta), Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center (College Park, MD), Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.), Caramoor (Katonah, NY) Chautauqua Institution, Stanford Lively Arts, University of Chicago Presents, Market Square Concerts (Harrisburg, PA), the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston), the Cleveland Museum of Art, the early music festivals of Boston and Berkeley and Music Before 1800 in New York City.
REBEL has collaborated with renowned vocalists Max von Egmond, Derek Lee Ragin, Suzie Le Blanc, Daniel Taylor, Marta Almajano, Peter Kooy, Barbara Schlick, Yulia Van Doren and Rufus Müller; in 2005 REBEL gave its Carnegie Hall début with Renée Fleming at Carnegie Hall to high acclaim. The ensemble has recorded for all the major European national radio networks and has been showcased in performance and interview on BBC’s Radio 3. Arguably the most aired American baroque ensemble in the U.S. today, REBEL is regularly featured on the nationally syndicated shows Performance Today and Sunday Baroque, and has appeared several times on Minnesota Public Radio’s St. Paul Sunday. REBEL remains the only period instrument ensemble ever to have been awarded an artists residency at National Public Radio. REBEL has recorded over twenty discs and can be heard on Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Naxos, ATMA, Hänssler Classic, Dorian, Sono Luminus and Bridge Records.
REBEL Baroque Orchestra has enjoyed recent collaborations with the Susquehanna University Choir, the Schola of the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer, the Central City Chorus in New York City, and The Thirteen in Washington, D.C.
Since 2013 the ensemble has been in residence at the venerable Downtown Music at
Grace series in White Plains, N.Y. and maintains a self-produced concert series in Bedford, NY, now entering its twentieth season.
Highlights of the 2019-‘20 season include engagements in New York State, Connecticut, Washington, D.C. and Massachusetts, with artist residencies at Michigan State University and the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, and collaborations with soprano Yulia Van Doren as well as baroque dancers Thomas Baird and Paige Whitley-Bauguess. www.rebelbaroque.com