• About the Exhibit

A chamber concert performed by the UNC Consort of Viols
Brent Wissick, Director
Ackland Art Museum
Sunday, 24 March 2002 at 3:00 p.m.

On Sunday, March 24th at 3:00 p.m. the Ackland Art Museum presents a chamber-music concert: A Sunday afternoon at the Huygens's house, The Hague, 1650, performed by the The UNC Consort of Viols, Brent Wissick, director. The concert is organized in conjunction with the exhibition Domesticating Virtue: Paintings, Prints and Piety in the Netherlands (1570 - 1680), on view at the Ackland through May 19th.

The UNC Consort of Viols is the most advanced of several viol groups that rehearse and study viol at the University of North Carolina. This group of 6 consists of graduate students in music as well as professionals in other fields, directed by Associate Professor of Music, Brent Wissick, who is also president of the Viola da Gamba Society of America. Their program at the Ackland will consist of music that might well have been played at the home of Constantijn Huygens (1596 - 1687), a Dutch diplomat, writer and patron of the arts, in the mid-17th century. The Huygens family owned a large collection of English music for 5 or 6 viols and their correspondence frequently refers to the purchase and performance of this music, which is not surprising given Constantijn's activities as a diplomat in London and elsewhere. Constantijn Huygens was an educated and cultivated man. He spoke six languages and was a musician and composer as well as a poet.

Brent Wissick is on the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he teaches cello and early music ensembles. A member of Ensemble Chanterelle and the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, he is a frequent guest with American Bach Soloists, Folger Consort, Concert Royal and Dallas Bach Society as well as Collegio di Musica Sacra in Poland. He was a 1993 NEH Fellow at Harvard, taught at the 1997 Aston Magna Academy at Yale and served as chair of Early Music in Higher Education for EMA. He is currently President of the Viola da Gamba Society of America. Recordings: Albany, Koch International

The chamber concert is free and open to the public.