Carson City Consort Canzona to perform May 21 and 22

Consort Canzona, a group of local musicians and singers, is putting on two concerts to honor Sharon Kientz, the group’s founder who died last year.

Sharon Kientz was a local musician and early music expert. She founded Consort Canzona several years ago as an ensemble of recorders, cello continuo, and harpsichord. She invited singers to join the group in 2009; the expanded ensemble will perform the memorial concerts.

The cornerstone of the concerts is the Requiem Mass in F Minor by Bohemian composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704).

Instrumental compositions by John Dowland, Michael Praetorius, Hans Leo Hassler, and others will begin and conclude the concert and alternate with sections of the Mass.

Composer Heinrich Biber, better known for his skill a violinist, wrote the Requiem around 1692. It’s considered one of the most striking examples of the Requiem Mass of the 17th Century. Scored for instruments and a five-part chorus, it includes the standard sections of a Requiem Mass: Introitus, Kyrie eleison and Dies Irae, Offeratoriu, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei.

The concerts are at 7 p.m. Saturday, May 21, and Sunday, May 22 at Shepherd of the Sierra Lutheran Church, 3680 Highway 395 S., behind Best Buy.

Admission to both performances is free.

Consort Canzona, directed by Gary Schwartz, affiliated with the Carson City Symphony Association in early 2014. It’s supported in part by a grant from the Nevada Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and by Association memberships and donations.

For more information, call the Symphony at 775-883-4154, or go to CCSymphony.com.