The first time they were in Tucson in 2022, Twelfth Night came as a duo with founding members/artistic directors David Belkovski on keyboards and violinist Rachell Ellen Wong.
On Sunday, March 23, they are returning to Arizona Early Music with the full band, a dozen musicians specializing in historically accurate performances of works dating to the Baroque era and earlier.
Soprano Nola Richardson and mezzo-soprano Xenia Puskarz Thomas will join the ensemble to perform Handel’s pastoral cantata “Aminta e Fillide” at 3 p.m. Sunday at Grace St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 2331 E. Adams St.
Twelfth Night brings Handel’s pastoral cantata “Aminta e Fillide” to Arizona Early Music on Sunday.
Handel scored the work, written in Rome in 1708, for two sopranos. It’s the story of a love-struck shepherd and a nymph pursuing each other with virtuosic and poignant arias through a mythological Greek landscape. The New York-based early music ensemble, which Belkovski and Wong formed in 2021, has been touring the work around the country.
Twelfth Night, which made its Carnegie Hall debut last May, was the only historical performance ensemble featured at Chamber Music America’s 2023 showcase.
Wong, the only early music specialist to ever win the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, won the grand prize in the inaugural Lillian and Maurice Barbash J.S. Bach Competition, while Belkovski’s résumé includes a number of first-place prizes in national and international competitions, including the 2019 Sfzp International Fortepiano Competition.
A pre-concert talk begins at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $30.90 through azearlymusic.org.
