Sémplice Baroque

In Concert!

Happy Hour Concerts
A Baroque Valentine

Sémplice returns to Happy Hour with a heart-felt concert of Baroque and Renaissance music (and a touch of folk) celebrating the amorous in all its forms—with a special focus on lovebirds! Think music about love, music about birds, music by Byrd (William, the composer), music by Bach (why Bach?—come to this concert and find out!)… and much more. And as always, there will be entertaining stories about the composers, the instruments, and the cultural context in which the music was created. This is proving to be a delightful concert-in-the-making that you will not want to miss, either in-person or streaming.

Friday, February 14, 2025
6:00 pm

Epiphany Lutheran Church
790 S. Corona Street
Denver, Colorado

For information see Happy Hour Concerts

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Miriam Rosenblum, recorders
Carla Sciaky, baroque violin
Ben Cohen, lute and harpsichord
Sarah Biber, baroque cello and bass viol

Music Samples

From a performance on Colorado Public Radio

About Us

Sémplice (pronounced SEM-plee-chay) is a Denver-based quartet specializing in the music of and around the baroque period. The quartet, comprised of Miriam Rosenblum on recorder, Carla Sciaky on baroque violin, voice and tenor viol, Sarah Biber on cello and viola da gamba, and Ben Cohen on lute, baroque guitar, theorbo and harpsichord, got our chops in the early 2010s playing house concerts. We feel an informal atmosphere is perfect for this style of chamber music, so Sémplice carries that relaxed performance presentation into concert halls, churches, wherever we perform. In place of concert black, printed programs, and austere silence between tunes, our audiences enjoy music delivered along with stories of the composers, the instruments, and the cultural context from which the music was created, including the occasional tasty tidbits that depict the baroque characters as the actual human beings that they were.  

Miriam Rosenblum started playing recorder as a child and went on to study the oboe. She got a bachelor's degree from Yale University, where she played recorders in the Yale Collegium Musicum, and earned a Master of Music degree in oboe performance from the University of New York at Stonybrook. While in graduate school, she became intrigued by the haunting sound of the Irish uilleann pipes. This obsession led her to learn to play the pipes as well as the Irish tin whistle and the button accordion, thus launching her life-long interest in ethnic music of various kinds. In the 1990s she fell in love with klezmer music and learned to play the clarinet, which she currently plays with Hal Aqua and The Lost Tribe (nouveau klezmer) and the Klez Dispensers (traditional klezmer). She has been a guest presenter for the Denver and Boulder chapters of the American Recorder Society on many occasions, and teaches recorder and tin whistle to adults and children at her home studio in Denver and online. She is certified to teach Suzuki Recorder Books 1 and 2, and opened Denver's first Suzuki recorder studio in 2015. miriamrosenblum.com

Carla Sciaky is a multi-instrumentalist based in Lakewood, Colorado. She plays baroque violin as a core member of the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado since their first season. She has performed with Colorado Chamber Players, Diverse Passions, the Denver Early Music Consort, the Platte River Consort, and the Dufay Consort, including a critically acclaimed Carnegie Recital Hall performance with the latter. She has studied under Cynthia Roberts, Marilyn McDonald, Tekla Cunningham, and Dr. Gordon Sandford, and been coached by Marc Destrube, Lara Jeppeson, Sarah Cunningham, and the late Judith Davidoff.

Carla is also known for her career as a singer/songwriter and folksinger, including a recent induction in the Colorado Music Hall of Fame with the group the Mother Folkers. She toured the US and Europe during the 1980s and ‘90s, amassed a discography on Green Linnet and her own Propinquity labels, and was awarded awards and recognition for her songwriting in such arenas as the Kerrville New Song Competition, the Louisville (Kentucky) songwriting competition, the Colorado Arts and Humanities Fellowship for Composition, the Billboard Songwriting Competition, and the Colorado, Utah, and Kansas Artist-in-Residence programs. She is currently working on a solo album and performing annually as part of the “Jews Do…” series.

Outside of music, Carla is deeply committed to the world of alternative medicine, is certified in several energy and holistic health modalities, and has a coaching and healing practice called Doorway to Healing. She is presently writing a book based on her own path of healing and serving others on that path. carlasciaky.com

photo: Steve Zimmerman

Ben Cohen began playing lute for the Oberlin Conservatory Collegium Musicum in the mid 1980s, and served as the assistant director of that group upon graduating Oberlin College with a degree in mathematics. While at Oberlin he also studied baroque flute and recorder with Michael Lynn and keyboard continuo with Lisa Crawford.

Since moving to Denver in 1995, Ben has sung with the St. Martin’s Chamber Choir, played lute continuo for local ensembles Seicento and Diverse Passions, and recorded a CD of Dowland lute songs with soprano Kristine Hurst, available at Centaur Records. Mel Bay published and keeps in print his transcriptions of J.S. Bach violin sonatas for electric bass. Ben also plays mandolin and banjo for Rocky Mountain Jewgrass; bass and tuba for Hal Aqua and the Lost Tribe; and leads his own klezmer band The Klez Dispensers. He nonetheless keeps his day job as an appellate lawyer.

Sarah Biber has played viola da gamba and cello across the United States, Australia and China. In recent collaborations with dance, she has been featured with the Paul Taylor Dance Company performing solo Bach for the company’s first performance with period instruments. Ms. Biber earned her doctorate from Stony Brook University after double-degree studies at Oberlin Conservatory and College and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She recently relocated to Golden, Colorado where she teaches and plays with the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado, Colorado Bach Ensemble and Byrd on a Wire, her viol consort. Sarah plays an 1815 Lockey Hill cello and a 2015 gamba by François Danger. She enjoys playing both Baroque and Modern styles. A Colorado native, she has been delighted to be a part of the growth of Early Music in this beautiful state. Sarah has performed with the Colorado Chamber Players since 2019.

Contact

Sémplice Baroque

(pronunciation: SEM-plee-chay)

Sémplice is a 501(c)(3) organization.

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Map to the Concert

Epiphany Lutheran Church
790 S. Corona Street
Denver, Colorado

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