NEWS

By JENA WITTKAMP
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL – Early music specialists Dr. Richard Wistreich, bass, and Nigel North, lutenist, will perform 17^th-century virtuoso solo songs on March 19 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The 8 p.m. concert in Hill Hall Auditorium, "At Looser Hours in the Shade: Petrarchan Songs and Echoes," will feature songs by Claudio Monteverdi, Sigismondo d’India, Giovan Domenico Puliaschi, Henry Purcell and others.

"This concert is a marvelous opportunity to hear two of the world’s leading early-music artists perform songs that stunned the courts of northern Italy in the late 17^th century," said Dr. Tim Carter, David G. Frey Distinguished Professor of music.

The concert is the third in the music department’s 11^th annual William S. Newman Artists Series, which honors the late UNC music professor, historian and performing artist.

UNC’s Center for European Studies is co-sponsoring the concert in conjunction with its March 18-20 symposium, "Francis Petrarch and the European Lyric Tradition." The symposium will bring national scholars to UNC to discuss the work and influence of the 14^th-century scholar and lyric poet. For more on the free public symposium, click on http://www.ibiblio.org/annali/petrarch.

Wistreich, a soloist and ensemble singer who specializes in 16^th- and 17^th-century music, has performed all over the world. He has recorded more than 70 CDs for labels including EMI, Hyperion and Sony Classical and is a lecturer at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England.

A former professor of singing at the Institut fur Alte Musik at the Staatliche Hochschule fur Musik in Trossingen, Germany, he directed the institute from 1999-2001. In 2000, he published a study of renaissance, baroque and classical vocal techniques, "The Cambridge Companion to Singing" (Cambridge University Press, 2000).

North was self-taught and has played lute since he was 15. Now a teacher, accompanist, writer, director and soloist, he specializes in plucked stringed instruments of the 16^th and early 17^th centuries. He has recorded for labels including EMI, Hyperion, Virgin/Veritas and Harmonia Mundi.

A professor of lute at the Early Music Institute of Indiana University, Bloomington, North taught previously at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, for more than 20 years, and the Hochschule der Kunste in Berlin, for six years.

Tickets are available in advance at 104 Hill Hall or at the door the night of the concert. Tickets are $15 for the public, $12 seniors and $5 for students. For more information, call 962-1039.

- 30 -

(Wittkamp, of Raleigh, is a December 2003 UNC graduate, with degrees in women’s studies and journalism and mass communication.)

Contact: Dr. Tim Carter, 962-1032, or Glenn McDonald, 962-1039.

News Services Contact: L.J. Toler, 962-8589, laura_toler@unc.edu