Rotorua Daily Post, 12 May 2009 | Trio charms audience At the Concert Chamber last night (11 May) the Baroque instrument trio Latitude
37 charmed the audience and got obvious enjoyment themselves from a programme
of engaging 18th Century French, Italian and German music. |
Bay of Plenty Times, 11 May 2009 | A sumptuous feast of divine harmonies Mills Reef [Winery] provided the ideal intimate venue for Sunday night’s Tauranga Musica performance by Baroque trio, Latitude 37. The Trio ... recreated the lush and layered sounds reminiscent of the Baroque era with their antique instruments; there were moments during the Corelli sonata where one could vividly imagine courtly dances during the reign of Louis the Sun King: slow, graceful, deliberate movements, enhanced by the voluminous and highly ornate costumes of the time. Not only is each performer within Latitude 37 a superb musician, with in-depth knowledge of the history and structure of his/her instrument, but the sum of their improvised harmonies intertwine to create an exquisite ensemble-repartee. Each artist shines: in the first set, Fredersdorff’s violin became a central voice, light and luscious, but piqued with sorrow in the second movement of Jean-Marie Leclair’s Sonata; the haunting resonance of Laura Vaughan’s viola da gamba was further enhanced by her expert use of reverberation in Le Badinage, by Marin Marais; Donald Nicolson’s solo harpsichord, in the final piece by Rameau ... not only illuminated the artist’s incredible dexterity, but also revealed his outstanding ability to create great pathos from this delicate instrument, which is as melodic as it is percussive. Latitude 37: truly a sumptuous feast of divine harmonies. |
Marlborough Express, 4 May 2009 
LAURA VAUGHAN (viola da gamba player), Australia, a member of the NZ-Australian Baroque trio Latitude 37.
| Baroque spirit recaptured Hosted by Marlborough Musical Society, Montana Brancott Winery on Friday, May 1 "Baroque music is a window to a past era populated by people not unlike ourselves." Those words paraphrase Donald Nicolson's summary of baroque in the programme headed International Attitude and distributed to the 80 people who turned up to the Marlborough Musical Society concert by Latitude 37 on Friday evening. New Zealand harpsichordist Nicolson and Australian musicians Jules Fredersdorff [sic], violin, and Laura Vaughan, viola da gamba, make up Latitude 37. Each has a busy, independent musical career, performing, recording and teaching both internationally and in his or her own country. But on Friday evening, the long, complicated musical scripts by 17th century composers were played with apparent ease, suggesting the performers have spent long hours together honing their skills. Latitude 37 music is promoted as antipodean interpretations of baroque for 21st-century audiences. Musically untrained myself, I cannot compare their versions to how the sonatas and other compositions were intended by the German, French and Italian composers such as Dietrich Buxtelhude, Francois Couperin, Dietrich Becker and George Phillipp Telemann. But Nicolson's intricate keyboard skills and the complicated string work Fredersdorff and Vaughan seemed to be doing automatically would surely have pleased the old musical scribes. They were brought alive for me by little stories told by Latitude 37 members before each new item was performed, opening indeed that window to a former era. A halftime interval prompted many audience members to approach the stage for a closer look at Nicolson's harpsichord. Soon the musicians had returned and were answering questions and explaining the features and tuning challenges of their old-style instruments. Music by Jean-Philippe Rameau was the final piece on the programme and long applause for the trio prompted an encore. If the spirit of baroque music was, as Nicolson describes in the programme, not only to please the ear, but to express the sentiments, strike the imagination and command the passions, I believe it was recaptured by Latitude 37. |
The Age, 4 July 2008 Clive O'Connell | Tasman Crossing of Like Minds INTERNATIONAL ATTITUDE Latitude 37, Dante’s Gallery, Fitzroy, July 2
Latitude 37 connects Melbourne with New Zealand and the new early music group takes its name from that feature since one of its members, harpsichordist Donald Nicolson, is active on that country’s musical scene, while the other performers – violinist Julia Fredersdorff and gamba expert Laura Vaughan – are based here. These talented young artists produced a brief program of sonatas by Buxtehude and Telemann, three Rameau pieces de concert, the popular ground-bass Sonnerie by Marin Marais, and a canzone by Bartolome de Selma y Salaverde. Latitude 37 played with firm insistence, Fredersdorff’s violin riding over the bass supporting lines with assured projection. If the performances in general impressed as insistent, the short Rameau excerpts showed an appealing suppleness of dynamic and rhythm, especially from Vaughan who has a reputation as an informed and accurate expert on gamba and lirone. |
