Concert This Month: 
QUASI UNA FANTASIA

Join us for an array of fantasias from Purcell to Britten, from Fauré to Barber to Vignieri in a special program to end our 2015-16 season on Saturday, May 21 in Cambridge and Sunday, May 22 in Concord.

Get Ready to Help Sarasa to the Finish Line 
Make the Boccherini CD Happen!

Sarasa is launching a crowdfunding campaign to raise the remaining $20,000 needed to complete the project. What is crowdfunding? Well, it simply means that we are relying on you, Sarasa fans, to raise awareness and spread the word about Sarasa's good work.  How do you do this? In the next couple of weeks you'll receive an email with a link to our fundraising website - from that site, you can make a donation and share the news of your support with friends and family with easy links directly on the page. 

Stay tuned for more details!  Can't wait? You can always mail your contribution made payable to Sarasa, 14 High St. Cambridge, MA 02138 - just make a note that it's for the Boccherini CD campaign.

Sarasa Highlight
Tom Vignieri
Composer

Sarasa's May Concert will feature a commissioned work by composer Tom Vignieri and below he was so kind as to answer a few questions for us: 

• When did you start composing and what or who were your influences?

My entire life in music has been an unlikely story! I grew up in rural Wisconsin and thanks to a piano that was donated to our family by a local convent which was closing its doors, I began taking lessons at age 10. Prior to that I’d been weaned almost entirely on Top 40 radio. But from the moment...continue reading here!

• How did you first learn of Sarasa?

Well, the unlikely tale continues. I fell into arts administration quite by accident while studying for a master’s degree in composition at Boston University. I was  invited to spend a summer at Tanglewood by Robert Sirota, director of the School of Music at the time, as his assistant for BUTI’s Young Artist Composition Program. Long story short, by the end of that summer...continue reading here!

• Sarasa is very excited to perform the world premiere of your piece “MyMother on an Evening in Late Summer” for voice, oboe, harp, and string quartet. What can you tell us about it?

I love setting music for voice. Whether that’s a soloist or a choir of voices. It’s the process of choosing and setting a text that I find most gratifying. Generally everything I need to know is contained in the words and if I’m moved by a poem I can usually convey that in the music. In graduate school I wrote...continue reading here!

• Can you tell us something about your compositional process?

There’s a little thing I say to myself every time I sit down to start a new piece. Try and be undeniably good. It’s actually a quote by actor/comedian/musician Steve Martin who was asked how to make it in show business. “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” ...continue reading here!