Música Antigua de Albuquerque will present “Drive the Cold Winter Away,” a concert of rarely-heard Christmas Middle Ages and Renaissance performed with voices and period instruments. The program will include selections from England, Scotland, Italy, France, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Spain and the Spanish New World. Audiences will recognize some of the composers whose works will be performed, like Michael Praetorius, Guillaume Dufay and King Henry VIII, but there were many other composers of the period who produced beautiful music that deserves to be heard more often, like Pedro Bermúdes, Richard Smert, and Francesco Bianciardi. Not to mention all those whose identities are unknown to us today but whose music has survived to enrich the holiday season. The performers of Música Antigua are Hovey Corbin, Dennis Davies-Wilson, Ruth Helgeson, Curtis Storm, Colleen Sheinberg and Art Sheinberg. They will be joined by Kathy Wimmer as narrator. The program will be performed with historic instruments, including recorders, flute, shawm, lute, violas da gamba, vielle, rebec, harp, sackbut and hammered dulcimer.
