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Home  >  EMV’s 2025-2026 Main Season

EMV’s 2025-2026 Main Season


Welcome to our 55th Anniversary!

The 2025–2026 Season glows with superb artistry: vocal stars Amanda Forsythe and Philippe Jaroussky; violinists Rachel Podger, Théotime Langlois de Swarte, and Amandine Beyer; and keyboardists Eric Guo and Ronald Brautigam. We’re also thrilled to welcome Canada’s Tafelmusik and debut performances by Europe’s ensembles Gli Incogniti and Artaserse.

Purchase your tickets now to get your favourite seats!

To learn more about prices, our ticketing systems and how to purchase, click here


Eric Guo in Recital
Early Music Vancouver

Eric Guo in Recital

Canadian pianist and rising star Eric Guo makes his Vancouver debut in this co-presentation between EMV and the Vancouver Chopin Society. A gold medalist of the International Chopin Competition on Historical Instruments in Warsaw (2023) and laureate of the Canadian Chopin Competition, Eric will perform a programme of Chopin’s works on EMV’s 1876 newly acquired Pleyel piano, beautifully restored by Mike Story. 

Sunday, September 14, 2025 | 3pm
Vancouver Playhouse
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Amanda Forsythe sings Handel – Victoria
Early Music Vancouver & EMSI

Amanda Forsythe sings Handel – Victoria

This exceptional concert features the return of internationally-acclaimed soprano Amanda Forsythe with the Pacific Baroque Orchestra under the direction of Alexander Weimann. The performance features Handel arias originally written for Elisabeth Duparc (‘La Francesina’) and includes the world premiere of Métis composer Pat Carrabré’s “The Mother Tree” based on Suzanne Simard’s novel “Finding The Mother Tree”.

Friday, September 26, 2025 | 7:30 pm
First Church of Christ, Scientist
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Amanda Forsythe sings Handel
Early Music Vancouver

Amanda Forsythe sings Handel

Amanda Forsythe sings Handel Artists: Amanda Forsythe, soprano with the Pacific Baroque Orchestra directed by Alexander Weimann Pre-Concert Chat: 7 pm hosted by Denise Ball with Alexander Weimann & Patrick Carrabre…

Saturday, September 27, 2025 | 7:30pm
Christ Church Cathedral
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Beethoven & Haydn: Consone Quartet
Early Music Vancouver

Beethoven & Haydn: Consone Quartet

London’s Consone Quartet returns to Vancouver with a selection of works by Beethoven, Haydn, Mendelssohn, and more. The first period instrument quartet to be selected as ‘BBC New Generation Artists’ (2022), Consone Quartet is fast making a name for themselves due to their sensitive and historically-informed approach to works of the Classical and early Romantic periods.

Thursday, October 9, 2025 | 7:30pm
Christ Church Cathedral
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Schubert & Boccherini: Mimosa String Quintet
Early Music Vancouver

Schubert & Boccherini: Mimosa String Quintet

Franz Schubert’s final chamber work, the String Quintet in C major is often described as having “bottomless pathos” and regarded as one of the greatest chamber music compositions. Boccherini’s mastery of string writing shines in his elegant and dramatic Quintetto Op. 29 No. 6 in G Minor. His Fandango is a vibrant, rhythmically intense work infused with Spanish flair.

Saturday, November 1, 2025 | 7:30pm
Christ Church Cathedral
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Tafelmusik: Brilliant Baroque
Early Music Vancouver

Tafelmusik: Brilliant Baroque

World-renowned period orchestra Tafelmusik, known for their dynamic, engaging, and soulful performances, brings their latest programme to Vancouver, headed by British violinist and conductor Rachel Podger. Brilliant Baroque is a musical ‘tasting menu’ of Baroque gems for orchestra by Bach, Handel, and Lully, perfect for newcomers and seasoned fans alike.

Saturday, November 15, 2025 | 7:30pm
Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
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Handel’s Messiah
Early Music Vancouver

Handel’s Messiah

Early Music Vancouver and Vancouver Chamber Choir’s joint mounting of Handel’s indomitable Messiah returns to The Orpheum with a stellar lineup of soloists. At times reflective, joyful, solemn, and mysterious, this monumental work speaks to audiences across all worlds, bringing a fundamental message of hope. Alexander Weimann’s direction of this masterpiece is spell-binding.

December 12 & 13, 2025 at 7pm
Richmond & Vancouver
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Constantinople presents Bach & Khayyam with Soprano Hana Blažiková
Early Music Vancouver

Constantinople presents Bach & Khayyam with Soprano Hana Blažiková

SOLD OUT
Separated by time and space, the two geniuses of Johann Sebastian Bach and Persian mathematician-poet Omar Khayyam were nonetheless among similar heights of greatness. Ensemble Constantinople and soprano Hana Blažiková bring these two visionaries together in dialogue, intertwining arias by Bach with the contemplative and expressive poetry of Khayyam.

Friday, January 30, 2026 | 7:30pm
Christ Church Cathedral
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Ruckus Early Music: Handel, Sancho, and English Country Dances
Lumen Festival

Ruckus Early Music: Handel, Sancho, and English Country Dances

Strawberry Fields is a joyous feast of rustic dances from the 18th century. Featuring Ruckus’ dazzling arrangements of Ignatius Sancho’s 12 Country Dances for the year 1779 and the evergreen trio sonatas of George Frederic Handel, this program will have audiences craving to get on their feet.

Friday, February 27, 2026 | 7:30pm
Christ Church Cathedral
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Ronald Brautigam in Recital
Lumen Festival

Ronald Brautigam in Recital

Celebrated Dutch pianist Ronald Brautigam, known for his performances of Beethoven’s piano works on the fortepiano, performs in Vancouver for the first time in this co-presentation between EMV and the Vancouver Chopin Society. Brautigam links expressive and poetic music by Beethoven and Schubert together in this masterful recital.

Saturday, February 28, 2026 | 7:30pm
Vancouver Playhouse
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Amour Courtois: Medieval Meets Jazz
Early Music Vancouver

Amour Courtois: Medieval Meets Jazz

Amour Courtois is a bold and evocative musical project led by French jazz pianist Baptiste Bailly, reimagining 14th-century French songs through the lens of contemporary improvisation. Inspired by the enduring emotional resonance of medieval melodies, Bailly collaborates with Matthew Baker on the baryton and Efren López on the hurdy-gurdy and ouds, crafting an anachronistic yet striking soundscape. Their repertoire – featuring works by Machaut, Binchois, and Lescurel – bridges centuries and highlights the timelessness of human expression.

Friday, March 13, 2026 | 7:30pm
Christ Church Cathedral
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A Tribute to Bach: Théotime Langlois de Swarte
Early Music Vancouver

A Tribute to Bach: Théotime Langlois de Swarte

In honour of J.S. Bach’s birthday on March 21, internationally acclaimed violinist Théotime Langlois De Swarte will present a captivating solo recital, showcasing this instrument’s rich emotive power. The recital charts a course through the history of solo violin, with pieces by Purcell, Biber, and Telemann, inevitably culminating in Bach’s Violin Partita No.2 in D minor, whose monumental Chaconne stands at the pinnacle of the repertoire. 

Saturday, March 21, 2026 | 7:30pm
Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
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Amandine Beyer & Gli Incogniti
Early Music Vancouver

Amandine Beyer & Gli Incogniti

Baroque ensemble Gli Incogniti, headed by French violinist Amandine Beyer, brings a programme exploring the works of notable Italian violinist Nicola Matteis (1650-1713), whose life and compositions are steeped in the unknown. Active in London, Matteis published several well-received collections of inventive and evocative violin and chamber music before fading into obscurity – Beyer brings Matteis out of the archives and breathes new life into his music in the concert hall.

Friday, April 17, 2026 | 7:30pm
Christ Church Cathedral
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Cancelled – Philippe Jaroussky: La Gelosia
Early Music Vancouver

Cancelled – Philippe Jaroussky: La Gelosia

Due to complications associated with the securing of the appropriate work visas for their US concerts, the Ensemble must postpone their North American tour.  Despite extraordinary efforts, the Ensemble’s application has been continuously delayed, and Mr. Jaroussky’s Paris-based management team has now determined that the proper paperwork will not be secured in time for their scheduled tour.

Friday, May 1, 2026 | 7:30pm
Vancouver Playhouse
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Een Romantische Johannes Passion

Historical Performance has been steadily looking toward the nineteenth-century as a source of inspiration, and Orchestra Lagrandt wants to lead the charge into Romantic orchestral performance practice. As an orchestra of ambitious musicians in their twenties from 25 different nations, we aspire to represent the voice of the new generation in Historical Performance.

Een Romantische Johannes Passion is an ongoing project to reimagine the Johannes Passion of J. S. Bach in a late nineteenth century style. The first Passion revivals in the Netherlands took place in Rotterdam in 1870, featuring large symphonic orchestrations, and a radically different musical language than that of the HP and modern classical worlds. In our initial performance with the Tangram Chamber Choir, we pushed the boundaries of what Romantic Bach might have sounded like: exploring changes in orchestration, stoic tempi, rubato, phrasing, nineteenth- century bowing practices, and even portamento. We plan to establish this project as an annual tradition every Easter season, reworking the arrangement each time in the spirit of Romantic spontaneity.


One of the wonderful things about the Historical Performance movement is that we are able to use forgotten practices, this time hailing from the nineteenth century, to present such a beloved and well known-work in a new light.

The world is familiar with stories of clever forgers whose life’s mission is to cunningly reproduce the light and shadows of historical masterworks, from Vermeer’s brushstrokes to Da Vinci’s proportional precision… but what if these crimes of craftsmanship were to extend beyond the visual arts? What if the pieces we know to be by Palestrina, Monteverdi or even Johann Sebastian Bach were in fact stylistic copies, artfully composed by a secret circle of music forgers and passed off as the work of the greats? What if those music forgers are at work as we speak? 

This premise inspires our original program The Music Forgery Workshop. Our early music comedy imagines the lives of such a circle of musical criminals, offering a fresh and lively presentation of historical compositions, not as museum artifacts but as living works in progress. The workshop itself is set up on the stage and its members carry forth the plot in music and words. A narrator in the role of a suspicious inspector lends the performance a theatrical flow. The listener is invited into a satire on high society’s art commerce, while the performers make fun of themselves for having devoted their lives to the niche subject of historical music performance. 

Violinist Elizabeth Sommers combines her skills and experience in traditional music with expertise in the performance and improvisation of medieval and Renaissance repertoires. Multi-instrumentalist Eliot X. Dios (keyboards, bagpipes and flutes) works wholeheartedly to employ storytelling techniques developed through the history of literature and cinema in his early music concerts. Composer Gunnar Haraldsson (violin, guitar) seeks to translate the forms and intentions of early composition for a modern audience. Halldór B. Arnarson (keyboards, voice) has devoted his career to bringing musical craftsmanship from the era of counterpoint to the attention of the public and comedy to the early music scene. Singer and storyteller Ásta S. Arnardóttir brings the storyline to the public with personal immediacy, and through her character work defines the different veins of the show, sometimes hilarious and sometimes serious. 

The story is narrated by the character of the Inspector, acted out by the members of the MFW, and told in rhyming Icelandic verse in one musical pillar of the show, a madrigal composed by our very own 

Halldór in the style of Monteverdi. The show has an entertaining educational dimension. The audience is exposed to a broad sweep of historical and musical information in a condensed form, necessary to understand the musical humour, while dramatic rhythm and scenographic effects prevent overwhelm. We also place particular emphasis on theatrical illusion and synchronisation. One example appears in the opening scene, in which the inspector is seen watching television. On stage, this becomes a complex exercise in coordination: each time the inspector presses a button on the remote control, the musicians instantly switch pieces, creating the impression of rapidly changing television channels. 

This opening scene establishes the tone of the entire show, comical and satirical in its storytelling and diverse in its musical language. It not only introduces the wide range of musical styles that appear throughout the performance, but also functions as the plot’s inciting incident, as the inspector hears a news report about the discovery of a previously unknown concerto by Vivaldi. 

Another important scene takes place when one forger is alone on stage in low light, perusing books on medieval music, while the musicians perform and sing offstage, sounding his audiation as he reads. This intimate moment evokes the sleepless nights spent studying facsimiles and learning historical compositional techniques, by which the forger acquires the inspiration and the expertise necessary to his art, and reveals a hidden side of musical performance: the immense amount of study and preparation that precedes the moment on stage. This setting also creates space for visual and musical comedy, as seen in the trailer video, where a 14th-century melody is played backwards because Halldór is unknowingly reading the facsimile upside-down, only realising the mistake when the music begins to sound absurd. 

Fun and friendship are at the heart of the whole project, though the link between music and crime is an important historical consideration. Classical music was often used as the demonstration of a monarch’s power, music teaching as a cover up for secret affairs, and pieces were published under another’s name for profit. Such examples of “inappropriate practices” carry an exciting and attractive element for the audience which the MFW seeks to exploit. Under this light-hearted surface lies a more serious layer of questions concerning our present-day existence, such as excessive materialism in high society and the threat posed on human craftsmanship and skill by the rise of artificial intelligence. 

Please Note:

The main applicant and creative/intellectual driver of the project must be 30 or under (on May 15th).

The average age of all musicians must not be older than 32, and the maximum age of supporting musicians must be no more than 35 (on May 15th.)