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Early & New Music

Multi-instrumentalist, Composer,

Producer, & Educator

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Niccolo Seligmann (they/them) is currently the most widely-heard medieval fiddler in the world, featured in soundtracks from Netflix’s The Witcher, Firaxis Games’ Civilization VI, Obsidian Entertainment’s Pentiment, and many more big-budget and indie games, film, and streaming series. Niccolo’s opera & live theatre music includes Julie Monster: A Queer Baroque Opera, An Iliad, Minerva: Times Change, and a full-length electronic dance remix of Dave Malloy’s Ghost Quartet. They perform diverse genres nationally with early & traditional music ensembles Alkemie, The Broken Consort, Concordian Dawn, Eya, Hesperus, Washington Bach Consort, and Wherligig. When not touring with their ensembles or recording soundtracks, Niccolo can be found gleefully recording harsh noise, lo-fi dance music, glitchcore, and drone metal in their home studio in the forests of central Maryland. They hold a B.M. in Viola da gamba Performance from Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University.

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Niccolo Seligmann

1120 Arnold Rd

Westminster, MD 21157

+1 804-592-9457

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Media

Cantigas de Santa Maria: CSM 353 Quen a omagen
03:18
Niccolo Seligmann

Cantigas de Santa Maria: CSM 353 Quen a omagen

Niccolo Seligmann, vielle (John Pringle, 2011) NiccoloSeligmann.com Patreon.com/NiccoloSeligmann Facebook.com/NiccoloSeligmann​​Music For more content like this, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and get exclusive content by joining my Patreon community! ❤ Cantigas tell such fascinating stories, always lots to unpack. Here's the Oxford synopsis (https://csm.mml.ox.ac.uk/index.php?p=poemdata_view&rec=353): "A rich man in Venice had only one son because all the rest of his children had died. He sent the boy to live in a monastery to be raised by the abbot. The abbot, who called the boy his son, let him play in the cloister. While playing, the boy often went into the church where he admired a statue of the Virgin and Child. He was captivated by the Child and went to see him often. He decided to offer him a portion of the meal they gave him. He went to the church, climbed up on the altar and laid the food out in front of the statue. He promised to bring the Child food everyday, and encouraged him to eat. The boy did this for fifteen days. Then the statue of the Child spoke to him, bidding him to eat at his Father’s table the next day. The abbot, noticing that the boy was growing thin, questioned him. The boy said that he had been sharing his food with the Child on the altar and explained that the Child had asked him to dinner. The abbot, after asking the child if he could accompany him, assembled his monks. He told them that he would be leaving and appointed a successor, a monk named Don Mateus. That night both the abbot and the boy fell ill; at the sixth hour they were taken to heaven."

Soundtracks

"Niccolo is an outstanding musician to work in the studio. They are always focused and dedicated to the music at hand, and have the virtuosity, aural acuity, and musical flexibility to play alongside a diverse spectrum of musical traditions and genres."

Geoff Knorr
composer, Civilization VI

Rates (2023)

$150 USD/hr recording artist fee, $50 engineering fee

Events

  • Alkemie: Call Me Marie
    Alkemie: Call Me Marie
    January 29, Time TBA
    Norfolk: Old Dominion University
    January 29, Time TBA
    Norfolk: Old Dominion University, 5115 Hampton Blvd, Norfolk, VA 23529, USA
    January 29, Time TBA
    Norfolk: Old Dominion University, 5115 Hampton Blvd, Norfolk, VA 23529, USA
    Collaboration with GRAMMY-nominated storytelling duo Chapter House featuring fables of Marie de France

Ensembles

Compositions

"Kinship expresses a multispecies resistance to the Anthropocene: the entangled systems of domination that threaten all life on our planet. This music calls on us settlers to transform our relations with our kin—human and other-than-human—into a mutualistic symbiosis rooted in today's liberation movements."
Niccolo Seligmann

Vocal Music & Opera

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Opera – about 2 hrs

Follow 18th-century French transmasculine swordfighter and opera diva Julie d'Aubigny as she swashbuckles her way through society, finding love and queer acceptance along the way. This opera uses baroque orchestra & live electronics to evoke a wide array of genres, from honky-tonk to glitch-pop. As one audience member put it: "I didn't really get the whole pronouns thing until I saw this opera."

Preview

Mirroring The Other: Yiddish Songs & Dances (2020)

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Songs & Tunes

Alkemie's 2020 program Mirroring the Other highlights commonalities and differences between Jewish and Christian medieval music. These bawdy and heartfelt songs set 15th-17th-century Yiddish texts to Niccolo Seligmann's original music using traditional synagogue modes. Vocal line is notated, instrumental accompaniment at performers' discretion

Preview

Minerva: Times Change (2019)

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Opera – about 2 hrs

In this touching & campy "new Baroque opera," Niccolo Seligmann's recitatives connect Handel arias into a story of gods & humans spanning centuries. Will Warrior Princess Bracciana avenge her mother's violation? Can Walt compose his way out of slavery? Can a new app teach people—and gods—to love? Premiered by Into the Woods Productions in Richmond VA, June 2019.

Preview

Contact
for more info

Fallen Angel (2019)

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Monody for voice & any instrument – about 5 min

Originally written for bass-baritone Jonathan Woody, this wistful vocal solo uses original text to narrate the resilient queer romance between a human and a fallen angel, set on a cold, rocky island after an unidentified cataclysmic climate event. The score is formatted like medieval monody: a single line and stemless noteheads, to allow for maximum freedom for an accompanist playing any instrument.

Preview

Cyclical Gratitude (2019)

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Hymn for vocal ensemble – about 3-8 min

Originally written for vocal ensemble The New Consort, this piece expresses gratitude for the microbiome inside each of us, reframing the first-person experience of bodily decomposition as a gift to our microscopic kin. Each singer chooses from a set of options for each "phase" based on their neighbor's choices, progressing through phases organically as a group. Sounds different with each performance.

Preview

Instrumental Music & Trad Tunes

Excerpts from Kinship (2020)

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Viola da gamba solos – about 15 minutes

Select transcriptions from Niccolo Seligmann's 2020 viola da gamba improvisation album, Kinship (Split Log Productions.) Kinship expresses multispecies resistance to extractive capitalism & white supremacy. This music calls on settlers to reframe our relationships with our other-than-human kin, work that must include Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination.

Preview

Renaissance Dance Collection (2020)

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Dance tunes for any instrument – 8 tunes

These dance tunes are based on 15th-and 16th-c. Italian & Burgundian "balli" and "bassadanze," written as part of Alkemie's program Sweet Friendship & Sacred Monsters' program La Gelosia! The balli in this collection have  sections in different proportions of the same tactus. The bassadanze in this collection are "tenors" to be improvised over, as were the historical models.

Preview

A Sett of Tvnes in the Celtick Tradition (2019)

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Tunes for bass viol & Celtic players – 6 tunes

The original tunes in this collection are written in the Celtic tradition with a bass viol player in mind. Tunes are typeset in font EMS_Serenissima (free, from EarlyMusicSources.com), based on the look of 17th-c. movable type printing. Excerpts from this collection can be found in treble clef by searching for Niccolo Seligmann on the-session.org.

Preview

Poetry & Libretto

The American Promise (2020)

About Time (2011-2020)

Full-length performance libretto
Excerpts below
Art song texts

Who are

The People?

The Promise

of Peace

The Long

River

Fallen

Angel

Now the Lark

is Silent

Teaching

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10+ years of Teaching Experience:

Musicality

Technique

Improvisation

Composition

Music Theory

Performance skills

Ensemble skills

Laptop music performance & programming

Historical & traditional performance practices

Rates

$75 USD/hr, $45 half-hour

Financial need rates available

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Instruments

Viola da gamba, Vielle, Psaltery, Gittern, Kemençe, Cello, Guitar, Bass guitar, hand percussion, beatboxing, laptop music performance

Lessons

Half-hour, 45-minute, and hour-long lessons

Rehearsal Coaching

Chamber ensembles, choirs, music collectives

 

Distance Learning

Lessons over video chat are available

Masterclasses & Workshops

Historically informed performance, improvisation,

ensemble skills, composing for early and folk instruments

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