Aulos Ensemble

Christopher Krueger, flute
Marc Schachman, oboe
Linda Quan, violin
Myron Lutzke, cello
Arthur Haas, harpsichord

Click here to preview and buy the Aulos Ensemble's newest recording, "The Bach Family Album."

Formed in 1973 by five Juilliard graduates, the Aulos Ensemble is at the forefront of a movement that has captured the imagination of the American listening public. With the release of their recording, "Masterpieces of the High Baroque," Aulos' reputation for exhilarating performances informed with scholarly insight was firmly established. In the early groundbreaking years, the group's innovative programming featured a blend of flute, oboe, violin, cello, and harpsichord, later adding a viola da gamba.  Aulos brings an uncompromising standard of excellence in performance that has resulted in invitations from virtually all of this country's major chamber music presenters. This exposure has helped create a new audience awareness for the rich rewards of this repertoire performed on period instruments.

In the 1980s, Aulos began two projects that brought their music to an ever-widening public and for the first time attracted international critical attention. The group's first recording for the Musical Heritage Society, "Original Telemann," was released in 1981 in connection with the composer's tercentenary, and was universally hailed as one of the most accomplished and significant observances of the Telemann year, receiving the Critic's Choice Award of High Fidelity/Musical America Magazine. Since then, the Ensemble has released over a dozen recordings on the same label, including two-CD sets of Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi, as well as the complete "Essercizii Musici" of Telemann on 5 CDs. This discography is unique among American period-instrument chamber groups.

Aulos' other project in the 1980s was the establishment of its own concert series at home in New York City. This series featured collaborations with guest artists from Europe and America who had made major reputations in this field. These collaborative concerts, exploring a highly unusual repertoire that was impossible to perform in other contexts, provided its New York audiences with cutting-edge performances as well as giving the Ensemble members vital artistic stimulation. Among the stars of the original instrument movement that appeared with the Ensemble in those years were harpsichordists Trevor Pinnock and Albert Fuller, violinists Jaap Schroeder and Stanley Ritchie, cellist Anner Bylsma, oboist Michel Piguet, and vocalists Jan de Gaetani, Bethany Beardslee, Charles Bressler, and Julianne Baird.

The 1980s also saw the beginnings of what became a wonderful tradition for New York concertgoers--the Aulos’ Christmas concerts in front of the Neapolitan Christmas tree at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. These concerts – of which The New York Times said “if it has to be just one Christmas concert, this is it!” – were for many years given annually in the magical setting of the Medieval Sculpture Court and featured a variety of guest artists. A recording of one such program, entitled "A Baroque Christmas" and featuring the soprano Julianne Baird, was recorded for MHS/ Musicmasters. The popularity of these concerts and the recording encouraged Aulos to begin to offer the program on tour, bringing the special affinity of this repertoire and the seasonal festivities to audiences throughout the country.  Over the past seasons the eminent American vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Sanford Sylvan, and Derek Lee Ragin are some of the artists who have appeared with Aulos in these presentations.

In the 1990s Aulos began expanding its repertoire to include ‘one-on-a-part’ performances of some of the best-known and favorite baroque suites and concerti, including Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto and the Concerto for Oboe and Violin as well as Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. These programs, entitled "The Baroque Big Band," are performed by eight to ten artists. An all-Bach recording, part of the continuing discography on MHS, features the Ensemble in this configuration. Additionally, Aulos began giving numerous master classes and lecture-demonstrations in 17th- and 18th-century performance practice at colleges and universities throughout the country. With its members serving on faculties of various schools of music and institutes specializing in historically informed performance, the Ensemble is responsible for training a new generation of American early music performers. Aulos concerts are frequently broadcast by National Public Radio from venues such as The Frick Collection in New York, Live at Wolf Trap, and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.  Most recently, its instrumental Christmas program "Joyeux Noel" was heard throughout the country repeatedly on NPR's "Performance Today."

Now in its fourth decade, Aulos continues to explore new projects and develop outlets for its music-making.  The 2006-2007 season saw its first presentation of Handel's masque Acis and Galatea, done in a version approximating the size of the composer's vision for the piece—five singers and eight instrumentalists without a conductor—and it was a huge hit with presenters, audiences and critics.  The New York Times wrote, "In all, it was an utter delight."

The Ensemble has developed a true chamber orchestra program as well, featuring Handel's complete Water Music in a performance with between 17 and 23 players.  Where appropriate, Aulos has created residencies in which the group and its guests teach and coach young professionals and then join them in these performances.  And 15 years after the release of their Christmas CD from the Metropolitan Museum, the Ensemble and Julianne Baird collaborated on In Dulci Jubilo, a recording featuring much of the new material uncovered in those many years of Christmas concerts.  This CD was released in the fall of 2006 to critical acclaim, and is the beginning in a new series of recordings in an affiliation with Centaur Records.  The second recording, which was released in October 2008, was Aulos' unique version of two of Rameau's wonderful opera suites, Les Indes Galantes and Les Fêtes d'hébé, based on suggestions of the composer in 'short-score' manuscripts. The 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 seasons saw repeat performances at Caramoor as well as visits to Princeton, Penn State, and Yale.

6/10 – Please destroy all previously dated material