PRACTICALITIES - Venue and Keyboard instruments

The musicians meet over a cup of tea and exchange ideas before they work together on making the music of the centuries. Our present groups include cantata ensembles, trios, quartets, and woodwind consorts.
The ensembles are unsuitable for beginners and amateurs without professional discipline. However, we have a preparatory circle for recorder players wishing to improve and achieve experience to join the ensembles and recorder consorts. The music library at the venue holds a comprehensive collection of around a thousand works. All singers and instrumentalists are welcome: woodwinds (oboe, bassoon, flute, oboe d’amore, baroque flute, recorder), strings including viols, keyboard players, and players of folk instruments (Northumbrian bagpipe, the chromatic Chinese Sheng, etc.).

The TEAHOUSE BAROQUE venue has a double manual harpsichord made by Mark Stevenson, Cambridge 1980, tuned on 415 Hz. and 392 Hz., the Old French Opera pitch. The harpsichord, formerly owned by Stanley Sadie, the editor of the ‘Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians’, is ‘celebrated for its rich, mellifluous sound, distinguished by its resonant qualities and absence of harsh or metallic tones’ (Bach Club).

The venue is also equipped with a 2021 Hamburg Steinway & Sons Model B 211 tuned to A440. Ulrich Gerhartz, Director Concert & Artists Services, Steinway & Sons, about the grand piano: ‚It has been selected out of many for its particularly well-balanced warm sound from bass to treble and beautiful cantabile. The instrument represents the best of the company’s 171 years of manufacturing pianos of the highest quality, and with Steinway & Sons’ latest technology: It is also capable of high-definition playback‘

THE HOST

The Teahouse Baroque benefits from the hosts‘ connections and involvement with multiple music institutions. Dr. Donatus has 40 years of experience as a music teacher and is accredited by the Independent Society of Musicians ISM and the European Recorder Teachers Association ERTA.

Courtesy of Recorder Maker Adrian Brown

T E A H O U S E B A R O Q U E