CANCELLED - CONSTANTINOPLE AND MARCO BEASLEY (AP)

Il Ponte di Leonardo Constantinople joins forces with the sublime Italian tenor Marco Beasley to celebrate in music a bridge that Leonardo da Vinci designed in 1502. The longest and boldest bridge of the time, it was to span the Bosporus and to link Europe and Asia. But it was never built. The plans, however, were preserved in the artist’s archives. Five centuries later, Marco Beasley, a leading figure in renaissance music, and Constantinople’s soloists immerse us in the imaginary and audacious world of da Vinci’s drawings, with works belonging to the repertoires of two centres of musical culture of the time – Persia and the Ottoman Empire, and renaissance Italy.

Kiya Tabassian – Setar & Artistic director Tanya LaPerrière – Baroque violin & viola d’amore Didem Başar – Kanun Patrick Graham – Percussions Marco Beasley – Tenor Fabio Accurso – Lute Stefano Rocco – Archlute, baroque guitar Marco Ferrari – Flute

With intermission.

Thank you to Michael Pidgeon for sponsoring this performance.

Photo: Juan Manuel Lobatón

Marco Beasley Marco Beasley was born in Portici, near Naples, in 1957. During his musical studies at the University of Bologna, he deepened his knowledge of the two stylistic pivots of the late Renaissance – recitar cantando and sacred and secular polyphony. He thus began an active concert career which quickly took him to some of the most prestigious venues, from the Mozarteum in Salzburg to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, from the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome to Lincoln Center in New York. As a singer, actor and writer, the personality of Marco Beasley embraces the carefree soul of Naples, the joie de vivre of making music, and the desire to confront the world of poetry and literature.