A picture is worth a thousand words...

and indeed, the images Scaramella chooses each year are carefully selected to convey the season's themes - both musical and extra-musical. In seasons past, our images have confused some people, eliciting comments about their seeming randomness or lack of relevance for a classical chamber music series. Not so! Here's a quick explanation for this year's images:

The 2011-12 season theme celebrates music of the Renaissance and Baroque eras, while finding quirky and eccentric co-themes with which to pair it. The April programme joins England's most renowned classical composer Henry Purcell (1659-1695) to the most renowned of all English rock and roll bands, the Beatles. Hence the images of Strawberry Fields (the John Lennon memorial in Central Park, NYC) and the whimsical photo of four white geese in parody of the famous Abbey Road portrait of the Beatles. The other engravings are drawn from historical sources: Henry Purcell's portrait is the frontespiece to Orpheus Britannicus (published posthumously in 1698), Marin Marais is depicted in a life-like painting by Andre Bouys (1704), an angel descends with viol in hand (by the 17th century Dutch artist Gérard de Lairesse) and Colombina, one of the central stock characters of the commedia dell'arte is depicted in the frontespiece to Maurice Sand's 1860 Masques et Bouffons: Comedie Italienne.