Music Night | A Library Promenade with Intesa Duo

Intesa, formed in 2023 by Lucine Musaelian and Nathan Giorgetti at the Royal Academy of Music, is a duo celebrating the viol and voice, blending European and Armenian folk and early music. Named after the Italian word for “understanding,” Intesa embodies collaboration through narrative and self-accompaniment. They perform regularly in the UK and internationally, with sold-out concerts at Handel Hendrix House, Fidelio Cafe, and festivals like Utrecht Fabulous Fringe and Vienna’s Resonanzen. Awarded the 2023-24 Royal Academy Chamber Music Fellowship and 2nd prize at #GeneraciónSMADE, they are 2024 Tunnell Trust Award winners. Upcoming performances include London, Munich, Vienna, and a 2026 Scotland tour.

From 16th Century Venice to the rolling hills of Bingyol, Intesa explores the many simple gifts in life: the gifts of youth, travel, love, and country. The programme includes pieces by John Dowland, Giulio Caccini, and Marin Marais, as well as a selection of lively and haunting Armenian folk songs, a tribute to Charles Aznavour, and a nod to John Donne’s metaphysical poetry. Intesa celebrates the viola da gamba’s range of possibility, both as an emblem of the cultivated Renaissance and Baroque, and as a natural, guitar-like duo partner to the voice. They marry historical self-accompaniment practices with singer-songwriter-style ease to tell stories that are both exotic and familiar.

Programme Notes

Our Simple Gifts programme explores life's joys and challenges as a series of gifts. Our first two pieces explore the gift of carefree youth and love: In un boschetto tells the story of a shepherd and nymph falling in love, while Due luci ridenti is an unashamed defence of love's virtues despite its pains. Our next Armenian set focuses on the gifts of yearning and lust: Bingyol speaks of a lost village and love, and Keler Tsoler is narrated from a female perspective, where the protagonist sees a blond mountain man working in the fields, glistening with sweat. L'Arabesque and Shoger Jan explore themes of exoticism and homecoming, respectively. Our first half ends with purely instrumental gifts by Hume and East, which evoke dancing, poetry, acting, and courtly entertainment. 

We start the second half in romantic turmoil with John Donne providing the texts for So, so, leave off and The Flea. This is followed by our 'lost youth' set, featuring Radiohead's poignantly retrospective Videotape and Aznavour's timeless Sa Jeunesse. Marais's Feste Champêtre evokes village sounds and rhythms, and we close off our programme with a set about the gift of love and admiration: Dowland's Time stands still is thought to have been written for Queen Elizabeth I, and Caccini's Dalla porta d'oriente admires the beauty of a young woman, comparing it to the dawning of the sun.

About the Intesa musicians:

Lucine Musaelian​​

Lucine Musaelian is an Armenian-American viola da gamba player, singer, and composer from New Jersey. She graduated from Yale University in 2020 with a B.A. in Music, and completed her M.A. in viol and voice at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel with Paolo Pandolfo and voice with Rosa Dominguez. She continued her viol studies with Jonathan Manson at the Royal Academy of Music. In London, Lucine performs with Jonathan Manson, Elizabeth Kenny, Phantasm, the Dunedin Consort, the Tallis Society, La Nuova Musica, and the BBC Philharmonic. She is a member of the Idrisi Ensemble, where she plays the vielle and sings mediaeval repertoire, and of the Bellot Ensemble, where she sings and plays viola da gamba. She continues writing music for the viol and voice as a part of her exploration of self-accompanied singing with the viol. Her duo Intesa, co-founded with Nathan Giorgetti, is her main project where she explores self-accompaniment.

Nathan Giorgetti

Nathan obtained his Masters degree from the Royal Academy of Music in 2023, where he was a Christopher Hogwood Scholarship holder and specialised in historical performance on the viola da gamba and baroque cello. In 2023-24, he was Chamber Music Fellow at the Academy as part of Intesa. Since graduating, Nathan has worked with leading figures in the early music scene, including Philipe Herreweghe, Rachel Podger, Bjarte Eike, Michael Chance, Matthew Truscott and Pavlo Beznosiuk, as well as being accepted on the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s Experience scheme. In 2022 his string trio, the Tufnell Trio, won the Nancy Nuttall Early Music Prize and was selected for the BREMF Live Scheme, as well as the Philip and Dorothy Green Young Artists scheme. Nathan has collaborated with various leading period performance ensembles including The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, The Hanover Band, Noxwode, and Platinum Consort. He is the founder of the Vilalte Festival, a yearly chamber music festival taking place in southern France. The festival has been running for 7 years and has put on over 30 concerts.

Please note that there are certain rules and customs that members and guests are expected to observe when attending formal dinners at the Inn.