Organ Recital Series 2008 - 2009 November 16, 2008 • 2.30p - Organ Hall A Fantasy in Time FRANCESCO CERA organ Featuring Kimberly Marshall December 14, 2008 • 2.30p - Organ Hall Sixth Annual Organ Christmas Concert Featuring Kimberly Marshall and ASU the organ studio February 1, 2009 • 2.30p - Organ Hall Organ Masterworks Featuring Yale Organ Professor Martin Jean La Toccata Italiana March 1, 2009 • 2.30p - Organ Hall Bottoms Up! Featuring Kimberly Marshall - organ and Sam Pilafian - tuba March 22, 2009 • 2.30p - Organ Hall Organ Music in the Holy Land Featuring Elizabeth Roloff of the Church of the Redeemer, Jerusalem Sunday, October 12, 2008 • 2.30p Organ Hall La Toccata Italiana Francesco Cera, organ at the Domenico Traeri organ (1742) Giovanni Maria Trabaci (1575ca.-1647) Canzon franzesa sesta (Napoli 1603) Toccata dell’ottavo tono Canto fermo del primo tono Canzon franzesa settima cromatica Tarquinio Merula (1595-1665) Capriccio cromatico Canzone terza Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643) Toccata settima (from Secondo libro di toccate 1627) Toccata per l’elevatione (from Fiori musicali 1635) Bergamasca Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1710) 3 Arie Passacagli Toccata at the Paul Fritts organ (1992) Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707) Passacaglia in d minor BuxWV 161 Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Prelude and Fugue in C major BWV 547 Francesco Cera was born in Bologna, Italy. He studied organ and harpsichord under Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini and later with Gustav Leonhardt at the Amsterdam Conservatory. He is now one of Italy’s leading early music specialists, and is admired for his talent as a performer and for his extensive knowledge of styles that covers different musical expressions. Francesco Cera applies his distinctive interpretative approach not only to keyboard instruments, but also to Baroque vocal and instrumental music. Francesco Cera is particularly interested in voices and vocal music and directs the Ensemble Arte Musica, with whom he performs an Italian repertory covering the period from Gesualdo’s madrigals to the 18th century cantatas. He has performed as a soloist in important international festivals and on historical organs in the whole of Europe (Bologna San Petronio, Musica e Poesia in San Maurizio in Milan, Festival of Flanders in Gent and Bruges, Bach Tage Berlin, Saint Michel en Thierrache, St.Jacobi Hamburg, Arte Organica in Castilla y Leon, Les Gouts Reunis Lausanne, Musica Transalpina in London). Francesco Cera is especially well-known as a performer of 17th century harpsichord and organ music. For Tactus label he recorded the complete works of Michelangelo Rossi, Tarquinio Merula, Bernardo Storace and Antonio Valente, highly praised by critics of some of the most important music magazines such as Goldberg, Amadeus, Répertoire and Diapason. A rhetorical and dramatic as well as brilliant character of Domenico Scarlatti’s harpsichord Sonatas is revealed through his interpretation. Francesco Cera has recorded three CDs of Scarlatti’s Sonatas from the manuscript dated 1742, and taken part in the performance of all Sonatas at the Festival in Gent (Belgium). Francesco Cera was a member of the ensemble Il Giardino Armonico from 1991 to 1994 and later has performed with the ensemble I Barocchisti, directed by Diego Fasolis, with whom he has recorded four concertos for harpsichord by J. S. Bach (issued by Arts). He has held courses, masterclasses and seminaries at the Accademia di Musica Italiana per Organo, the Royal Academy of Music London, the Illinois University, Cornell University, Oberlin College and the Acadèmie d’Orgue de Fribourg. Since 2001 he has been living in Rome where he is appointed Honorary Inspector of Early Organs for Rome and the Lazio region.