Donning costumes, playing roles, Funaro to trace harpsichord history

By STEPHANIE GUNTER
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- Concert-goers will do more than hear the musical talent of harpsichordist Elaine Funaro in a free public concert Sept. 24 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Funaro also will don costumes and assume the roles of numerous characters, taking the audience on a musical journey through 500 years of the history of the harpsichord.

Formerly of the UNC music faculty’s baroque chamber group Ensemble Courant, Funaro will perform selections by William Byrd -- one of Queen Elizabeth’s favorite composers -- and others at 8 p.m. in Person Hall.

"Elaine Funaro is well-known to Chapel Hill audiences from her many years as harpsichordist with Ensemble Courant," said Brent Wissick, a UNC associate professor of music. "She continues to develop imaginative and extraordinary performance projects, and we’re thrilled to have her back performing on campus."

Funaro will begin the program with 16^th-century music, then explore the association of the instrument with movement and dance during the 17^th century. Next, the program will address efforts to save the harpsichord from the French Revolution. Funaro will close with a look at the instrument’s place in 20^th- and 21^st-century music.

Funaro has performed at international early music festivals in Berkeley, Calif.; Boston; Bloomington, Ind.; and Amherst, Mass. She also has given solo performances at the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress and Spivey Hall in Atlanta. Centaur Records will release her fourth compact disc, "Dances with Harpsichords," this year.

"Elaine Funaro gave the overflow crowd a great deal more than just the fine playing by one of the area’s – and arguably the nation’s – best harpsichordists performing today," Marvin J. Ward, a correspondent for the local journal "Classical Voice North Carolina," wrote in a review. "The narrative was well written, returning to the themes of time and sound as the evening progressed. The whole was as much an event, both theatrical and musical, as a concert … a time travel experience … a most pleasant and interesting journey."

Funaro studied at Oberlin College in Ohio; the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston; Conservatorio Cherubini in Florence, Italy; and the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam, Netherlands. As past president of the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society, she is running the society’s Aliénor Harpsichord Composition Competition, an international program for new music and composition, this year.

Paid parking will be available in the Swain visitor lot off Cameron Avenue for the event, presented by the UNC music department. For more information, call (919) 962-1039.

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(Gunter, of Raleigh, is a senior majoring in journalism and mass communication.)

Contact: Glenn McDonald, (919) 962-1039
News Services Contact: L.J. Toler, (919) 962-8589, laura_toler@unc.edu