The Phelps Mansion is pleased to welcome Harpsichordists Michael Bahmann and Paul Cienniwa as part of our 2022 Chamber Music Concert Series. The concert will be on Sunday April 3rd at 3:00pm.

Tickets are $20.00 and can be purchased by clicking the “add to cart” button at the bottom of this page or at the door.

The Program: Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080
performed on two harpsichords.

About the performers:

Michael Bahmann is equally at home on both the fortepiano and the harpsichord and occasionally also performs on the modern piano and the organ. His teachers include Karl Engel, Mack McCray on the piano and John Gibbons on the harpsichord. He holds degrees from the “Staatliche Hochschule fur Musik und Theater Hannover”, the San Francisco Conservatory and the New England Conservatory. Michael Bahmann is a founding member of the “Musicians of the Old Post Road,” with whom he has appeared at the Boston Early Music Festival concert series, at early music festivals in Indianapolis, Regensburg and Mexico City and has recorded several CD’s for the Meridian label.

As a soloist or recitalist he also performed at the festivals of Radio France, Koenigslutter, Aix-en Musique, Simiane la Rotonde, and for the Chicago symphony chamber concerts, Bay Chamber Concerts, Museum Concerts of Rhode Island among others and toured with the baroque orchestra “Musica Aeterna” of Bratislava. In 2005 he was invited to direct Handel’s “Orlando” for the Festival de Antibes. As a longstanding member of “Music of the Baroque” of Chicago he has recorded several concerti for harpsichord for Fine Arts Radio Network.

Michael Bahmann is artistic director of Musica Maris, a concert series dedicated to performing music from the 17th to the 19th centuries on period instruments. He is co-music director at Trinity Church in Newport, RI. In his spare time he works as an organ voicer for Fratelli Ruffatti of Padova.

Cited by the Huffington Post for his “inner sense of creative flow, fueled by an abundance of musical imagination and desire,” harpsichordist Paul Cienniwa has an active career as a soloist, ensemble player, recording artist, and teacher.

His playing of Francis Poulenc’s Concert champêtre was heralded by the New Bedford Standard-Times as “exquisite—no drama, no posturing—just consummate artistry and a superb performance of a marvelous concerto,” and The Boston Musical Intelligencer called his performance of Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in A Major “a joyous romp.” His recording with Grammy Award-winning uilleann piper Jerry O’Sullivan was named one of the top ten Irish traditional albums of 2010 by The Irish Echo.

A frequent chamber music collaborator, he has performed the complete Bach Violin Sonatas with renowned violinist Rachel Barton Pine on Chicago’s WFMT radio and during the 2013 Boston Early Music Festival. As an orchestral musician, he has played regularly with the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra, the Rhode Island Philharmonic, and, most recently, the Palm Beach Symphony.

In 2020, he was appointed Executive Director of the Binghamton Philharmonic in Binghamton, NY. Most recently, he was Director of Music Ministries at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Delray Beach, FL. Prior to that, he was music director at First Church in Boston and Chorus Master of the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra.  He was awarded the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in harpsichord from Yale University in 2003.