Marco Beasley & Franco Pavan

When it comes to Italian Renaissance song, one name is on the tip of our tongue: Marco Beasley. This time he is applying his voice and charisma to frottolas and madrigals full of elegantly rendered despair, which grabbed many a courtier by the throat in the sixteenth century. Companion for this passionate tour de force is string wizard Franco Pavan. In 2021, he personally dragged the songs on this programme from beneath the dust on an Italian family archive. From the very first modern performance of music by Bartolomeo Gazza and a certain Ogniben, to works by Bartolomeo Tromboncino and Philippe Verdelot:  passion and despair never lie far from each other in this concert. 

Marco Beasley studied theatre and musicology at the university of Bologna, with special emphasis on ‘recitar cantando’ (sung speech) and sacred and secular polyphony. He received singing lessons from the legendary American mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian, after which he proceeded to develop a vocal technique of his own, using his voice in a completely natural way – quite a sensation in the early music world. With his charisma added to the equation, the Italian tenor quickly became one of the most popular and most award-winning performers of classical music. 

The Italian lute and theorbo player Franco Pavan graduated cum laude both in lute and in musicology in Milan. He works with leading early music ensembles such as Concerto Italiano, Accordone, La Cappella della Pietà dei Turchini, La Risonanza, La Venexiana and Trinity Baroque. He forms a duo with recorder player Dorothee Oberlinger and is the founder of Ensemble Laboratorio’600. In 2014 he was granted the title Cultore della Materia of music history at the University of Padua. Pavan teaches lute at the conservatory of Verona. ​​​​​​​

In collaboration with Stichting Oude Muziek.