Sonatas for the Summer
For our second Summer Concert, Ensemble Il Postiglione from Italy will present a program of sonatas by Bach, Telemann, Scarlatti and others. Enjoy an intimate concert of beautiful music in the equally beautiful setting of a stunning Arts and Crafts home set in a magnificent garden.
Ensemble Il Postiglione takes its name from the postiglione – the stagecoach rider who signalled each arrival with a bright octave leap on the post horn, a gesture that Baroque composers loved to echo in their music. That same spirited interval appears in Telemann’s Il Postiglione Sonata, a nod to the lively, traveling-world energy that inspires the ensemble’s identity.
The musicians of Il Postiglione are:
Enrique Gómez-Cabrero Fernández, violin
Romeo Ciuffa, flutes
Simone Pierini, harpsichord
Bassoonist Kerry Graham will be joining them for this performance.
Born in Spain, Enrique Gómez-Cabrero Fernández graduated in 2010 from the Koninklijk Conservatorium in The Hague, where he studied under renowned early music experts such as Ryo Terakado, Enrico Gatti, Elisabeth Walfisch, and Ton Koopman. This strong foundation in historically informed performance practice has shaped Enrique’s flourishing career as both a conductor and violinist in the baroque music scene. Acclaimed as one of today’s most vibrant and flamboyant artists, he breathes new life into baroque music through his innovative and engaging interpretations. Enrique has previously served as conductor of the Lausitzer Baroque Ensemble and Accademia Ars Augusta, and he is currently the conductor of the Handel Opera Academy and the La Villanesca Baroque Ensemble. He has collaborated with world-class musicians such as Paul McCreesh, Marcel Beekman, Luca Giardini, and Jakub Józef Orliński, and performed with renowned ensembles like La Ritirata, Sezione Aurea, and the Wrocław Baroque Orchestra. Enrique has been concertmaster and soloist for the Bach Orchestra of the Netherlands and Contrasto Armonico.
Romeo Ciuffa is from Rome, Italy. He began playing music at eight years of age in a local band, and took his first flugelhorn classes at that time. In 1989 he studied french horn at the Conservatoire of S. Cecilia in Rome, under the supervision of M° Luciano Giuliani. Romeo also studied bass tuba and trombone at the Conservatoire. Here he studied different musical styles, but was most deeply touched and impressed by ancient music from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Romeo then studied the recorder at the Conservatoire “O. Respighi” in Latina instructed by M° Paolo Capirci. He has also studied with Marion Verrebruggen, Dan Laurin, Kees Boeke and Pedro Memelsdorff. Romeo has performed inChina (Beijing), North Korea (Pyongyang) and Mongolia (Ulan Bator), in Russia, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Holland, France, Spain, Switzerland, Zambia, Syria, Germany, Japan, Finland, Estonia, Hungary, and Albania. In 1997 Romeo founded the “Arcangelo Corelli Ensemble” with which he recorded ten CDs of excerpts from Seventeenth and Eighteenth century European music. In the following years he joined several Roman musicians specializing in baroque practice and formed the “Cappella Musicale Enrico Stuart Duke of York” giving Mr. Cuiffa the opportunity to record works by M.A. Charpentier, M.R. Delalande, J.P. Rameau, and J.B. de Boismortier. In 2006 Romeo obtained his academic degree in Musicology at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” summa cum laude.
Nominated by the British radio Classic FM as one of the thirty most important musicians under 30 for the year 2024, Simone Pierini performs regularly on both the harpsichord and the fortepiano, with a repertoire spanning from the 16th century to the late 19th century. Born in Rome in 1996, Simone began studying the piano at the age of eight. Aged eighteen, he graduated in piano from Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome with highest honours. After initially pursuing a career in piano, obtaining a number of prizes in national and international competitions, his interests turned mainly on historical performance practice, and he later took a master’s degree in Harpsichord under the guidance of E. Baiano, again with highest honours. Simone obtained a master’s degree in Musicology in 2022 cum laude from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, with a dissertation upon the transition between harpsichord and fortepiano in contemporary literature. Starting in the year 2025, Simone began a Master’s in Specialized Music Performance – Harspichord with Andrea Marcon at the renowned Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Switzerland. He is a member of the Cappella Musicale Enrico Stuart ensemble, with which he performs as a continuo player on the harpsichord and organ. He has performed, as well as in Italy, in the UK, Germany, China, Canada, Poland, Finland, Spain.
Kerry Graham left her twenty-five-year engineering career in 2012 to take up bassoon. She has studied with Adam Mikulicz, Christopher Sales, Jesse Read, Julia Lockhart, and Katrina Russell, and earned a BMus in Bassoon Performance from UBC in 2017. Kerry is passionate about baroque music and has studied the baroque bassoon in Canada, the USA and Europe. She has studied at the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute, the Oberlin College Baroque Performance Institute and has received scholarships from the San Francisco Early Music Society and Early Music Vancouver. In 2025, she earned a Master’s of Music in baroque bassoon performance at the University of Victoria. She founded Salt Spring Baroque in 2020 of which she is currently President and Artistic Director.
Programme:
Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)
Triosonata in g TWV 42:g
Aldebrando Subissati (1606-1677)
Sonata No. 16 Domine Ostende
Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757)
Sonata in d K396
Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)
Triosonata in G TWV 42:G1
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Triosonata No. 1 in Eb BWV 525
Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745)
Triosonata No. 3 in Bb ZWV 181
Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)
Sonata (duett) TWV 40:111
Agostino Tinazzoli (1660-1725)
Partite sopra il Passagallo
Marco Uccellini (1603-1680)
Aria sopra la Bergamasca, Op. 3 Aria 5
