EMV’s 2026-2027 Main Season
Welcome to our 56th concert season!
The 2026-2027 season is a rich and thoughtful journey through music of the Renaissance, Baroque, and beyond. From bold new works to timeless masterpieces by Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, and Mozart, this season brings together internationally acclaimed artists and beloved local ensembles in programmes that explore themes of transformation, love, and resilience.
Highlights include the World premiere of Peter Hannan’s Snow Skills, a radiant holiday performance of Charpentier’s Messe de minuit pour Noël, and a dazzling presentation of Handel’s La Resurrezione. Join us for an inspiring season where past and present resonate in powerful and unexpected ways.
SUBSCRIBER TICKETS ON SALE APRIL 16 | GENERAL ON SALE APRIL 23
2026-2027 Season
Music for the Little Ice Age
This programme features the premiere of Snow Skills, a newly commissioned work by composer Peter Hannan that blends humans with electronics, and the past with the present. Stories unfold through Renaissance letters and speech set against contemporary digital transmissions, performed by a small vocal ensemble, with the Pacific Baroque Orchestra on period instruments and electronic tracks.
Christ Church Cathedral
2026-2027 Season
Blind Man’s Bluff – Concerto di Margherita
Inspired by the vocal and instrumental works of late 16th and early 17th century Italy, the ensemble Concerto di Margherita presents a programme in the form of a fable: an archetypal Lover is caught in a cruel game of Blind Man’s Bluff. Playing with concepts of visibility and sight throughout the concert, the musicians take the audience with them on the Lover’s path: born in bright innocence, blinded and deluded by love, lost and disoriented in darkness and finally finding solace in obscurity.
Christ Church Cathedral
2026-2027 Season
A Little Night Music with Mozart
Mozart’s KV 525, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, is arguably one of the most recognizable pieces in the history of classical music. But it is only one of countless “Serenatas” or serenades – pieces written for entertainment in the evening hours. We pair Mozart’s classic tune, freshly performed on period instruments, with a lesser-known piece from his earlier life in Salzburg: The Serenata Notturna, KV 239. This eclectic programme also includes a fanciful quintet by Boccherini about 18th century night-life in Madrid, instrumental songs by Dowland and Purcell, and an intriguing night-watch tune by Austrian composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, in which even the audience will participate.
Christ Church Cathedral
2026-2027 Season
The Magic of Monteverdi with Les Arts Florissants
Join Baroque masters William Christie and Paul Agnew for a revelatory program of Monteverdi’s finest madrigals for mixed voices, including a performance of the iconic Il Combattimento (The Combat of Tancred and Clorinda). William Christie will lead the continuo from the harpsichord, and Paul Agnew will lead and sing in the vocal ensemble, joined by singers who are rising stars from the next generation.
Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
2026-2027 Season
A French Baroque Christmas with Ensemble Correspondances
Written for the holy night of Christmas, Charpentier’s Midnight Mass has travelled the world. Based on traditional French Noëls, this music offers pleasure to everyone: be it through the joy of hearing a familiar tune, or of marveling at its extraordinary craftsmanship. The very simplicity of the original songs lends the entire Mass a cheerful character and a transparency that is anything but shallow, speaking instead in a language that was once profoundly universal.
Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
2026-2027 Season
Festive Cantatas: Gloria with Vivaldi & Bach
For much of his adult life, Antonio Vivaldi worked as a teacher at the Ospedale della Pietà, a charitable convent, orphanage and music school established by Venetian nuns in the 14th century. It was for those children that Vivaldi composed such pieces as The ‘Gloria’, and in doing so attracted travelers from around Europe to see them perform. Inspired by Vivaldi’s work with young people, we have invited the Vancouver Youth Choir to perform ‘Gloria’ with us this holiday season, which is sure to be an extraordinary celebration of light and joy.
Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
2026-2027 Season
Tormento Seicento – Amanda Forsythe & Opera Prima
Musicians of the early Baroque were masters of improvisation and they invented melodies and harmonies with skill and confidence. The goal of this period in music was expression—the singer was at an advantage, with the text and melody notated, but the heart of this operation was the Basso Continuo, the musicians that interpreted the figured bass line.
Christ Church Cathedral
2026-2027 Season
Moonlit Mozart with Les Délices
In late-18th century Vienna, wind bands known as “Harmoniemusik” offered an effective – and colorful – means of presenting music in virtually any setting. Whether performing nocturnes or serenades, dance music, or even operatic or symphonic reductions, an ensemble of eight woodwinds could cover most – if not all – bases. Soaring melodies were often split between first oboe and first clarinet, inner parts were covered by other winds and horns, bassoons would alternate between tenor solos and bustling bass lines, and a double bass often provided reinforcement on the low end.
Christ Church Cathedral
2026-2027 Season
The Rise of European Music
Michele Pasotti and his ensemble La Fonte Musica trace this rise of European music through the works of Ciconia and those of his precursors and famed successors such as Guillaume Dufay and John Dunstaple.
Christ Church Cathedral
2026-2027 Season
Handel’s La Resurrezione with PBO
In 1708, George Frideric Handel was just twenty-three years old, a German Lutheran who had been in Rome for only two years, when he undertook one of the most profound subjects of Catholic liturgy: the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. In La Resurrezione, Handel encapsulates all the operatic styles and languages available at the time. The story is bookended by the transcendent fight between heaven and hell, personified by an angel and Lucifer; the earthly actors are Mary Magdalene, Mary Cleophas and John the Baptist. A stellar team of 5 soloists will join the festive orchestra forces with trumpets, oboes, recorders, flute, bassoon, strings, gamba, harpsichord and theorbo.
Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
2026-2027 Season
Songs from the Mayflower with Ménestrel
Ménestrel is a Canadian early music duo mixing ancient repertoire with Canadian oral folk traditions. Their sound is grounded in historical practice, yet their sensibility is disarmingly modern, shaped by the emotional clarity and immediacy of folk and popular styles. This concert features a beautiful programme of folksongs collected by Helen Creighton, Canada’s ‘First Lady of Folklore,’ who was responsible for amassing over 4,000 songs from across the Canadian Maritimes.
