Mary Gerbi has assembled a powerhouse ensemble of early-music specialists from the Midwest and Northeast to come to Tucson โ in July โ to sing music that goes back nearly 500 years.
Yes, the Cambridge, Mass.-based mezzo-soprano has a bit of a wicked streak about her. When her colleagues arrive in Tucson this weekend to perform St. Andrewโs Bach Societyโs โMonteverdi on the Edgeโ on Sunday, July 8, the mercury will top 100 degrees.
โI have been to Tucson twice in the summertime and I think it was 112 degrees,โ said Gerbi, who is a regular with True Concord Voices & Orchestra and performed with the Bach Society last summer. โI have been to Tucson at least 15 times overall and I really think of it as a second home now. So itโs really fun for me to bring together my mostly Northeastern friends to Tucson.โ
Gerbi will join soprano Teresa Wakim, tenor Lawrence Jones, baritone Sumner Thompson, bass-baritone Paul Max Tipton and David Walker on theorbo to perform music from his Monteverdiโs sixth and seventh books of madrigals, which bridge the gap between Monteverdiโs Renaissance era and the Baroque era of Vivaldi and Bach.
Gerbi curated the program and recruited the vocalists at the request of St. Andrewโs Bach Society Artistic Director Ben Nisbet.
โThis is kind of her world and she and I had discussed this idea more than a year ago about putting together a concert like this,โ Nisbet said.
At last summerโs Bach Society concert, Gerbi and Nisbet talked about this summerโs series โ the groupโs 30th โ and Gerbi suggested early music composed centuries before Mozart, Bach and Beethoven. She is a regular on the early-music circuit, performing with chamber groups, in festivals and with orchestras around the country.
Gerbi admitted that some audiences might be unfamiliar with Monteverdi and other composers.
โMost people will be able to pick up on the fact that itโs very passionate,โ she said. โMonteverdi ... was using texts that inspired him and then expressing the sentiments in those texts through music. So most of (his compositions) have to do with love or loss.โ
Nisbet, who is in his seventh season as head of the Bach Society, has been programming vocal music for the past couple summer series to build on the areaโs enthusiasm for the genre. Nisbet said much of that enthusiasm has sprung out of the success of True Concord, Tucsonโs Grammy-nominated professional choir; the choral program at the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music; and the annual Tucson Desert Song Festival.
โWhen you are trying to program a concert series that is exclusively classical music ... you canโt just do instrumental music, especially when you consider just how much good vocal music and talent there is,โ Nisbet said.
Gerbi said she has performed in various iterations with members of Sundayโs group, which Nisbet called a โpowerhouse ensemble of early music specialists.โ But this is the first time she will share the stage with all six.
โIโve been telling my colleagues, โYou are going to enjoy this so muchโ,โ she said, describing the large, enthusiastic audience she experienced at last summerโs concert. โIt makes it more fun for us to perform for people who are so excited.โ
