In an exciting spring collaboration Spectra Musica and The Mount St. Mary’s University Chamber Choir will perform a concert featuring the best of Renaissance Spain, England and Italy on Saturday, May 6, 2006. This rare concert joining one of our region’s premiere Renaissance bands, Spectra Musica, with the superb Mount St. Mary’s University Chamber Choir will fill the Basilica of the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton at 33 South Seton Avenue in Emmitsburg Maryland with vocal and instrumental music of 16th century Europe.

The concert begins at 7:00 p.m. and a free will offering will be accepted. As with all PEMG events, there will be an open playing session to which any recorder player, other early instrumentalist or singer is invited to come play music together one half hour before the concert. Please bring your favorite pieces to share and a stand.

This concert series was supported by Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts (PPA), the regional arts funding partnership of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency. State government funding comes through an annual appropriation by Pennsylvania's General Assembly and from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. PPA is administered in the Gettysburg region by the Council for the Arts in Chambersburg.

Mount St. Mary’s University choirs are premier musical ensembles from the second oldest Catholic university in the United States. Every year, students representing every discipline of the university, audition for the opportunity to sing with the choirs, which perform a wide variety of sacred and secular repertoire. The choirs have performed before audiences in such locations as Madrid, Sevilla, Atlanta, Washington, and New York’s Carnegie Hall, and in collaboration with such ensembles as the Gettysburg Chamber Orchestra and Schola Cantorum, and the New England Symphonic Ensemble.

Spectra Musica was formed in 1980 as an ensemble dedicated to the performance of early European music. They produce an average of three main concerts a year of music from about 1400 to 1800 AD. The ensemble has grown to seven players and specializes in accompanied music for winds. Late Medieval and Renaissance music is played on cornetti, sackbuts, kortholts, recorders, dulcians, and violas da gamba with a small Italian harpsichord as continuo. They play Baroque music on period recorders, oboe, flute, and violins with gamba and a Flemish harpsichord as continuo. They have performed extensively throughout the Philadelphia area and New Jersey. Spectra Musica also provides lecture recitals and instrument demonstrations for those interested in learning about early musical instruments and the music written for them.

For more information, please call (717)677-7072 or email: PEMGmusic@earthlink.net or visit: www.pommerianearlymusicguild.org/index.html