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 was at the forefront of a movement that has captured the imagination of the American listening public. Invitations from some of the most prestigious chamber music presenters in the U.S. soon followed. 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 luminaries 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 have appeared with Aulos in these presentations. In the ’90s the group began expanding its repertoire, and added programming with additional guest artists, enabling performances of the complete Brandenburg Concerti, Handel’s Water Music, and Acis and Galatea. These projects have been met with critical acclaim---the New York Times wrote of their Acis and Galatea performance at the Metropolitan Museum, “In all, it was an utter delight.”

Aulos has continued to give master classes and lecture-demonstrations in 17^th- 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 Ensemble 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.  A new recording partnership with Centaur records has seen the release of 3 new CDs: In Dulci Jubilo with Julianne Baird was released fifteen years after the group’s initial Christmas CD from the Museum. A recording of Rameau’s wonderful opera suites from Les Indes galante and Les Fêtes d'hébé in a never-before-performed chamber music version prompted Early Music America to write:  “The result is something quite new and powerful.  The effect is exquisite.” And in the fall of 2010, Aulos released “The Bach Family Album,” a collection of excerpts from the “Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach” interspersed with chamber music by his sons.  

7/11 – Please destroy all previously dated material