Vancouver Playhouse
Gregorius – The Holy Sinner with Sequentia
Artists: Sequentia – Benjamin Bagby, voice and harp; Jasmina Črnčič, voice and harp, and leiken, voice
Post-Concert Chat: with Sequentia hosted by Suzie LeBlanc
Run time: 100 minutes with no intermission
Benjamin Bagby, known for his performance of Beowulf, returns to Vancouver with the astonishing medieval verse epic Gregorius, “The Holy Sinner”. A narrative poem of sin and redemption, Gregorius retells the legend of St. Gregory the Great.
Bagby is joined by his medieval music ensemble Sequentia, known for their innovative, intimate, and enchanting performances of ancient texts ranging from Hildegard von Bingen to the Icelandic Edda. Sequentia’s virtuosic performances are compelling, surprising in their immediacy, and strike the listener with a timeless emotional connection to our own past musical cultures.
“Sequentia delivers the full compass of human expression, from contemplative quietude to virile chest-thumping, all served up with a startling intensity.” (Boston Globe)
Generously sponsored by Elaine Adair.
Click here to read the programme notes by Benjamin Bagby.
Benjamin Bagby, voice and harp
Vocalist, harper and medievalist Benjamin Bagby has been an important figure in the field of medieval musical performance for over 40 years. Since 1977, when he and the late Barbara Thornton co-founded Sequentia, his time has been almost entirely devoted to the research, performance and recording work of the ensemble.
Apart from this, Mr. Bagby is deeply involved with the solo performance of Anglo-Saxon and Germanic oral poetry: his acclaimed performance of Beowulf has been heard worldwide and was released as a DVD in 2007. In 2017, he was awarded the Artist of the Year Award by REMA, the European Early Music Network. In addition to researching and creating over 75 programs for Sequentia, Mr. Bagby has published widely, writing about medieval performance practice; as a guest lecturer and professor, he has taught courses and workshops all over Europe and North America. Between 2005 and 2018 he taught medieval music performance practice at the Sorbonne – University of Paris. He currently teaches medieval music performance at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany.
Jasmina Črnčič, voice and harp
Jasmina Črnčič is a singer from Maribor, Slovenia. Drawing on her rich experience in choral and theatre work as well as a classical formal education, she now specializes in the performance of music from the Middle Ages. She is a member of the critically acclaimed ensembles for medieval music Sequentia and Per-Sonat, and devotes much of her time to developing new pedagogical approaches which are especially suited for the study of the music of the early/high Middle Ages.
Jasmina is currently a faculty member of the International Course on Medieval Music Performance of Besalú.
As a member of the Slovenian ensemble Carmina Slovenica she has performed in numerous staged and concert productions both as a part of the vocal ensemble as well as a soloist at many festivals and concert venues around the world (New York’s Prototype Festival, Melbourne Festival, Operadagen Rotterdam, Radialsystem V Berlin, Holland Festival, Ruhrtriennale, and others). She is based in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Lukas Papenfusscline a.k.a. leiken, voice
leiken is a singer and performance-maker based in Brooklyn, NY. A specialist in both medieval and new music, their practice fuses these disparate worlds exclusively through collaboration and frequently explores queer spirituality, identity, and ephemera. A sought-after vocalist for concert, opera, and theatre, leiken has performed all over the world alongside iconic artists such as Ran Blake, Sequentia, Eve Beglarian, and Four Larks. Their extensive performance experience has brought them to legendary venues like the Getty Villa Museum, Carnegie Hall, Hong Kong's Queen Elizabeth Stadium, the Théâtre du Chatelet, and the Hirschhorn Museum. leiken also loves fermentation, textiles, and swimming.
