BRATTLEBORO — Brattleboro native Nathaniel Cox and his early-music ensemble, In Stile Moderno, from Basel, Switzerland, will be performing in his hometown for the very first time.
In a concert entitled “Un Concerto per Barberini,” In Stile Moderno will be playing works by Italian Baroque composers Girolamo Frescobaldi and Johannes Hieronymus Kapsberger at the newly renovated sanctuary of St. Michael's Episcopal Church on Sunday, Aug. 4, at 4 p.m.
Son of noted West Brattleboro violin maker Douglas Cox, Nathaniel came of age in the Brattleboro arts community. He performed in bands under Jim Kurty and Steve Rice at Brattleboro Union High School, studied trumpet with Dan Farina at the Brattleboro Music Center, and clowned in Russia with Stephen Stearns with the New England Youth Theatre.
“My great loves as a teenager were music and theater,” says Cox, speaking from his home in Basel. “I performed in the band, but also did a lot of plays.”
However, Cox feared he might be spreading himself too thin, and in his junior year of high school decided to devote himself to his music full-time.
He studied trumpet performance at Oberlin College and Conservatory where he also earned a bachelor's degree in Russian.
“Oberlin opened my eyes,” he says. “I fear coming from Brattleboro that I was somewhat naive about the life of a professional musician. I had planned to be an orchestral trumpeter. But soon I realized that life in an orchestra could be quite bleak. It did not offer the freedom of musicianship I was looking for. The conductor is the musician of an orchestra, while I would be only a small part of the vast intricate network.”
Then early-music musician Bruce Dickey arrived at Oberlin to play the cornetto in a concert, and Cox's musical life was changed forever.
“I suddenly realized what I wanted my future as a musician to be,” Cox says. “I went up after the concert and asked Dickey how I could learn to play cornetto, a wooden horn wrapped in leather, with finger holes like those of a recorder. He suggested that when I graduated I should come and study with him in Basel, Switzerland. And that's exactly what I did.”
According to the Medieval Music and Arts Foundation, early music usually designates the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods of Western music.
Cox has studied cornetto with Dickey at the Schola Cantorum since 2009, and earned his master's degree in 2012. He began to play theorbo, a kind of lute with an extended neck, making it ideal for bass accompaniment, in 2011, and that summer performed in Monteverdi's opera “l'Incoronazione di Poppea” with the Kammeroper Schloss Rheinsberg. He has also performed regularly on cornetto throughout Europe.
He is now embarking on making a career as a professional musician in early music.
“The early music scene is definitely stronger in Europe than in America,” says Cox. “Much more is happening at the highest level by top professionals. There are some fantastic early music players in the U.S., but they are too far apart to make a vital scene. It would certainly be more of a challenge for me to make a career in America.”
After playing with several other European early music ensembles, in 2012 Cox founded his own group, “In Stile Moderno,” with his girlfriend, soprano Agnes Coakley.
Coakley specializes in the singing of this early baroque music; Cox plays two instruments popular during the period: cornetto and theorbo. The ensemble usually is accompanied by other musicians for their concerts. In Brattleboro, they will be joined by Benjamin Katz on harpsichord.
Coakley grew up in Watertown, Mass., and received her bachelor's degree in music in 2008 from Yale University, where she discovered her love of early music as a member of the choir of Christ Church New Haven and as a cellist in numerous ensembles.
After two years of teaching English in Berlin, she began voice studies with Evelyn Tubb at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, where she received her masters' degree in June 2013. She directs church choirs in Haltingen, Germany, and Mumpf, Switzerland.
Katz received his bachelor of music in harpsichord performance from Oberlin Conservatory in 2008, and has studied more recently with Peter Sykes at the Longy School of Music of Bard College.
His past projects include commission and performance of new works for harpsichord, as well as a solo recital for the Boston Early Music Festival Fringe. He has been awarded a fellowship from the Beebe Fund to spend the next year in London researching the role of improvisation in the musical lives of Baroque composers.
“The early Italian Baroque saw some of the most innovative and experimental music-making in history,” Cox says. “In Stile Moderno is devoted to exploring the type of music that at the time was called the 'new style.' In fact, in stile moderno means in Italian 'in a modern style.' During this period music moved away from the complex polyphonic and fugal style of the earlier era to music with a simpler musical line, which led to a more dramatic type of music.
“This music had its origins in late 16th century Florence and spread throughout Europe at the beginning of the 17th century. While our ensemble principally focuses on Italian music, we also perform music of the same period from England, France, and Germany.”
The Brattleboro concert, “Un Concerto per Barberini,” brings together music composed under the patronage of Cardinal Francesco Barberini, the nephew of Pope Urban VIII.
“One of the great patrons of the 17th century, Barberini employed the finest painters, sculptors, architects, and musicians in Italy,” Cox says. This concert will feature the works of two of those musicians: Girolamo Frescobaldi and Johannes Hieronymus Kapsberger.
“Our concert is completely made up by music of these two composers,” he says, “except for one piece, which you might say is by me. In the 17th century, composers sometimes would take one simple line from an earlier piece of complex polyphonic music and add modern coloration to it to make it 'in stile moderno.' That's exactly what I did with a polyphonic piece and reworked it into my own version that I will be playing in Vermont. In a sense, you could say it is simultaneously an early music piece of music and a new composition of my own.”
“Un Concerto per Barberini” will also be performed in the Boston area on July 30 to Aug. 1 under the sponsorship of the Society for Historically Informed Performance.