This year’s Silbiger Grant recipients Loren Ludwig and colleagues will present music for voices and viols from c.1800 from the Northampton area, performed on New England viols built in the early 1800s.
Made in the Valley: 19th-C. Music for Viols and Voices from the Connecticut River Valley
October 18, 2025 at 7pm
Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence, 220 Main Street, Northampton, MA
Music was everywhere in New England in the decades before and after the Revolution. By 1800, Northampton was a regional hub of music printing, and Connecticut Valley instrument makers worked to meet the new demand for musical instruments. While there were few professional musicians, almost everyone–rich or poor, Black or white–learned to sing and many learned to play New England viols (similar to modern cellos and violas), fiddles, flutes, “clarionets,” bassoons, and more.
To celebrate this early music, Historic Northampton will present a concert featuring voices and viols of the Early Republic period, including works by Sawney Freeman, a formerly enslaved composer from Connecticut as well as music that Freeman would have played and heard. Other selections will include hymns, fiddle tunes, songs, and dance music, some of which haven’t been heard for more than two centuries.
The music will be performed on New England viols made in and around Northampton by five eminent musicians, among them singer and multi-instrumentalist Tim Eriksen; New England viol virtuoso Loren Ludwig; Alice Robbins, Arcadia Players; Allison Monroe, Director of the Five College Early Music Program; and cellist Nate Steele of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Daphne Lamothe, Smith College Provost, will moderate the program.
This concert has been made possible in part by the Gian Lyman Silbiger Grant of the Viola da Gamba Society of New England. This award fosters the performance of music for viols and voices around New England and encourages further exploration of the viol and its music.
Tickets $0-50, available at Historic Northampton.
