mainstage series
Saturday, October 3, 2026 • 7:30 p.m.
First Free Methodist Church (3200 3rd Ave W, Seattle)
Harmonia Orchestra & Chorus
William White, conductor
Natalie Ingrisano, soprano
Seattle Early Dance
Anna Mansbridge, choreographer
Program
Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643)
Toccata from L’Orfeo
Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687)
Marche pour la Cérémonie des Turcs from Le bourgeois gentilhomme, LWV 43
Jean-Phillipe Rameau (1683–1764)
“Forêts paisibles” from Les Indes galantes, RCT 44
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
Badinerie from Orchestral Suite No. 2 in B minor, BWV 1067
“Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig” from BWV 26
George Frideric Handel (1685–1759)
Allegro from Concerto Grosso in B minor, Op. 6, No. 12
Johann Sebastian Bach
“Jauchzet, frohlocket!” from Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248
Claudio Monteverdi
“Vanne, Orfeo, felice e pieno” from L’Orfeo
Henry Purcell (1659–1695)
“Now Joyn your Warbling Voices” from The Fairy Queen, Z. 629
George Frideric Handel
“Now Strike the Golden Lyre again” from Alexander’s Feast, HWV 75
Henry Purcell
March from Funeral Music for Queen Mary, Z. 860
Rondeau from Abdelazer, Z. 570
Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741)
Allegro from Concerto for Two Cellos in G minor, RV 531
opening movement from Viola d’amore Concerto in A minor, RV 397
“Armatæ face” from Juditha triumphans, RV 644
George Frideric Handel
Allegro from Water Music Suite No. 1, HWV 348
“Lucky Omens Bless Our Rites” from Semele, HWV 58
Henry Purcell
“Sound the Trumpet,” Z. 335
George Frideric Handel
Overture from Royal Fireworks Music, HWV 351
Claudio Monteverdi
“Domine ad adjuvandum” from 1610 Vespers
About the Concert
Dance the night away with a nonstop mix of the bounciest hits from the 1720s, ’30s and ’40s by Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Lully and Rameau — plus golden oldies from Monteverdi and Purcell!
- This performance will last approximately 80 minutes, with no intermission.
Maestro’s Prelude
Dear Music Lovers,
As I listen to the selections on tonight’s program, I find it tremendously challenging to write this column, because I can’t. Stop. Dancing.
This may be a challenge that you yourself face while enjoying the concert this evening. I wish there were something I could do to help, but I probably can’t have you dancing in the aisles (mainly because, at various times, members of Seattle Early Dance will be doing just that). But you are most welcome to bop around in your seat; I doubt I could prevent you from doing so, and I wouldn’t want to try.
Music of the Baroque era shares many qualities with modern pop: it’s rhythmically propulsive, danceable, hook-based, and usually comes in three-minute, radio-friendly chunks. It also relies on improvisation, particularly with regard to members of the “continuo” section — in our case, the two harpsichords and theorbo — who read chord symbols rather than written-out music like the rest of the players.
Baroque music has experienced a huge surge in popularity over the past 50 years, spurred by a pair of seemingly paradoxical developments running in parallel. First, there was a wave of musicological scholarship that began in the 1820s (well, arguably the 1780s) but really heated up in the 1920s and ’30s, that unlocked huge troves of the repertoire, analyzed performance practices, and revealed the technical details of instrument construction from an earlier era.
Second was the technological development in microphone construction, amplification and recording technology. The sound of Early Music as we know it today is a contemporary construct, as much as some of its practitioners would have you believe that it is an “authentic” recreation of an art long thought lost to history.
For me, all this adds up to the fact that Baroque music is a playground: an area ripe for innovation, exploration and frivolity. In a season about the Great Powers of music, this music might be the most powerful of all — powerful enough to hijack your body and get it moving one hard-going track at a time.
— William White
P.S. If, at the end of this evening’s performance, you find yourself yearning for even more Baroque music, perhaps of the double-album variety in contrast to tonight’s string of A-sides, Harmonia has you covered. As always, we will present Handel’s beloved oratorio Messiah in December, and March brings Bach’s immortal St. John Passion.
Dance your way over to www.harmoniaseattle.org right now to secure your tickets — or, better yet, a pro-rated season subscription so that you can experience powerful music from other eras, including Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations, Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, and much, much more.
Guest Artists
Soprano Natalie Ingrisano enjoys performing in the Pacific Northwest and Midwest, from intimate community concerts to Chicago’s United Center. Her solo appearances include Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri, Haydn’s The Seasons and The Creation, Mother in Amahl and the Night Visitors, Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, the Bruckner and Mozart Requiems, Couperin’s Leçons de ténèbres, Handel’s Messiah, Charpentier’s Te Deum, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Monteverdi’s 1641 Vespers, a guest faculty-artist recital with organist David Schrader at Lyon College, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4. As a chorister, she sang in the Grant Park Symphony Chorus before relocating to Seattle, where she is now a resident member of the Mägi Ensemble (with which she recently toured in Estonia) and frequently performs with the Byrd Ensemble and Emerald Ensemble. Ms. Ingrisano recently finished recording her first solo EP with harpsichordist Jillon Stoppels Dupree, and regularly appears with the East Coast–based Celtic band The Beggar Boys. She received her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, is a graduate of the Artist Diploma in Early Music program at Cornish College of the Arts, and has studied Baroque dance with Anna Mansbridge for nine years.
learn more: natalieingrisano.com
Originally from Australia and the U.K., choreographer, dancer and educator Anna Mansbridge now resides in Seattle. She holds a First-Class Honors Degree in Dance and Education from Bedford College and an MFA in Choreography and Performance from Mills College. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1998, she founded Seattle Early Dance, dedicated to recreating dances from the European Renaissance and Baroque periods. The ensemble has collaborated with local musicians and performed around the Pacific Northwest. Ms. Mansbridge has choreographed and directed opera productions in Europe and the U.S., including Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas with Pacific Musicworks, Lully’s Les Bourgeois Gentilhomme at Cornish Playhouse, and John Blow’s Venus and Adonis in Varazdin, Croatia. As a solo dancer, her recent performances include Dancing with the Sun King for the Whidbey Island Music Festival and Emperor of the Moon for the San Francisco Early Music Society. She has taught and reconstructed 18th-century European dances using Beauchamp-Feuillet notation at the University of Washington, Cornish College of the Arts and Utah Valley University.
learn more: seattlebachfestival.org