Gotham Early Music Foundation, New York's largest presenter of medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music concerts, plans to shut down at the end of the current season. In a statement sent earlier this week to supporters and subscribers, Gotham's founder and Chairman, Gordon L. Beals, and its President, Douglas K. Dunn, said that, "due to the massive losses the Gotham series has incurred over its five years of operation — and which have unfortunately continued unabated — the series will very likely have to cease operations as of June 30, the end of its current fiscal year."
"In its current circumstances, Gotham would need to secure commitments of at least $225,000 to $250,000 in the next two to three weeks to be able to continue through a sixth season in 2001/2002," the statement continued, acknowledging that such a windfall is highly unlikely. Plans for that sixth season (2001-2002) included, among others, a performance by Philippe Herreweghe and his Collegium Vocale, along with Ensemble Modern of Frankfurt, of Schütz's Musikalisches Exequien and Stravinsky's Mass; solo recitals by the award-winning violinist Andrew Manze (of Italian music in the 17th-century "stylus phantasticus") and harpsichordist Davitt Moroney (Book One of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier); Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort in John Sheppard's Missa Cantate; the Italian vocal consort La Venexiana in madrigals by Gesualdo and his contemporaries; and pairs of concerts by the widely-acclaimed Huelgas Ensemble and Doulce Mémoire. Plans were also under way for Gotham's participation in the large-scale "Sounds French" concert series to be presented, in cooperation with the French Embassy to the United States, in numerous venues around New York City during the 2002-2003 season; among the Gotham concerts projected for that series were performances by Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel (grands motets by Jean-Baptiste Lully), Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques (airs sérieux by François Couperin, Lully and Campra) and Gérard Lesne and Il Seminario Musicale (sacred music of Marc-Antoine Charpentier).
Gotham Early Music got its start in the 1989-1990 season with two performances by the Tallis Scholars, who had made a string of highly-praised recordings of Renaissance sacred music but had performed in New York only once before. Over the next several years, Gotham continued as a small-scale operation, presenting only a few concerts per year but introducing New York audiences to Andrew Parrott's Taverner Consort and Players, Jordi Savall's Hesperion XX, and those courageous and provocative scholar-performers of plainchant from throughout Western musical history, Marcel Pérès and Ensemble Organum. In addition, Gotham maintained a steady relationship with the Tallis Scholars, presenting them more times than possibly any other single organization in the world.
Beginning with the 1996-1997 concert season, Beals and Dunn formally established the Gotham Early Music Foundation and presented a full subscription season of ten to twelve concerts. Featured performers included (in addition to the artists mentioned above) lutenist Paul O'Dette, fortepianist Andreas Staier and Musica Antiqua Köln with mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter; particularly notable were the New York debuts of Il Giardino Armonico and Paul McCreesh's Gabrieli Consort and Players.
As this roster might indicate, Gotham Early Music's niche was presenting top-notch early-music specialists — mostly European artists — whose recordings received great critical acclaim but who were not being engaged by New York's existing musical institutions. Often, for ensembles too small to have a significant extra-musical infrastructure, Gotham helped arrange North American tours and assisted with such tasks as visa applications; indeed, Gotham was often the crucial element for many of these performers in establishing any concert presence in North America.
"It was such a great series, so vital for so many European artists," said Sarah Folger of Harmonia Mundi USA, which distributes the recordings of many artists Gotham has presented, "and it was put together by someone [Dunn] who really had his own personal vision, which New York City really needed, as far as early music was concerned." It has been observed (by The New York Times among others) that New York has had difficulty in reaching the level of early music activity enjoyed by Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area. Dunn and Beals hoped to help remedy this situation: as they said in their statement, "we had hoped to establish. a premier early music concert series, one which would not only regularly present a wide range of the world's foremost international early music artists, but also one which could develop and expand the audience in New York for early music . To try to realize this, however, meant that from the start Gotham faced 'major-presenter' expenses, but it has had to do this on what has stubbornly remained — for whatever reasons — a 'small-presenter' audience support base. This equation is simply no longer sustainable.
"We think it is also important, though. to reflect on Gotham's musical achievements — an extraordinary run of over 50 superb early music concerts, with a range and scope and quality that had few equals anywhere in the world. It is the legacy of these marvelous, stimulating, and beautiful concerts that will be our memory of Gotham Early Music Foundation — and we hope it will be yours as well."
© andante Corp. May 2001. All rights reserved.
