Early Music Vancouver Events

Hebreo – The Search for Salamone Rossi by Joseph Rolichtz with Profeti della Quinta (Film)

Friday, February 4th at 1:00 AM - Sunday, February 6th at 1:00 AM.Online

In the late Renaissance Salomone Rossi, a young Jewish violinist, burst through the barriers of discrimination and became one of the most renowned composers and performers at the court of the Gonzaga dukes. Yet very little is known about his personal and creative life. In this documentary, Profeti della Quinta performs Rossi’s music in the magnificent town of Mantua, in preparation for a special concert in the Gonzaga dukes’ pleasure palace. With the help of expert historians and musicologists, they shed fascinating light on this elusive man and his extraordinary music.

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The Story of the Madrigal – CANCELLED

Friday, February 4, 2022 | 7:30 pmChrist Church Cathedral

Profeti della Quinta has had to cancelled their tour due to the rising cases of Covid 19. We look forward to when they’ll be able to perform with us in the future.

The singers of Profeti della Quinta and the bassist and composer Elam Rotem specialize in music from the Baroque and Renaissance periods. They are dedicated primarily to the rediscovery of Hebrew vocal music – great works that are often very much overshadowed by the popular klezmer tradition in Jewish heritage in this country. The Madrigal was the most prominent genre of secular vocal music in the Renaissance and early Baroque periods. This program follows its evolution from the highly expressive polyphony of Cipriano de Rore, to the revolutionary madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi that shaped the Baroque era.

“…This expertly performed collection of Italian madrigals, Hebrew prayers and instrumental music deserves recognition as a hidden gem.”

This concert is generoulsy supported by Sharon Kahn & Barry MacFadden, Birgit Westergaard & Norman Gladstone.

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Pardessus in Paradise – J.S. Bach & His French Contemporaries | DCH

Wednesday, February 16, 2022 | 7:30PMOnline

The works selected by Mélisande Corriveau and Eric Milnes for this evening present a vibrant array of French musical styles developed during the 18th century before the French Revolution. The origin and development of the pardessus de viole – known in France as “the woman’s violin”- coincided with the increasing prominence of the violin in French instrumental fashion. The crowning glory of the viola da gamba family, the pardessus – the smallest of the viola da gamba family of instruments – facilitated the instrument’s rise in popularity in France. Most of the works which will be performed were selected from the microfilm collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and few had been recorded until Mélisande’s recent recording. They are charming, playful, luminous and exquisitely elegant.

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Women of Note

Friday, March 4, 2022 | 7:30 pmChrist Church Cathedral

This concert showcases the music of 18th-century female composers who, though forgotten or ignored by history, in their day shared the stage with and enjoyed the respect and friendship of composers we now regard as musical giants, including Haydn and Mozart. Like their male colleagues, these women were highly acclaimed both as composers and as performing musicians. They include the noted pianist and sought-after teacher Maria Hester Park; the star singer and playwright Amélie-Julie Candeille; the stateswoman, keyboard player, and opera composer Maria Antonia, Electress of Saxony; the master violinist Maddalena Laura Sirmen, who was trained at one of Venice’s famous musical orphanages; and the virtuoso singer and pianist Marianne Anna Katharina von Martinez, a frequent duet partner of Mozart’s, an influence on his compositional style, and a member of the prestigious Accademia Filarmonica in Bologna. Their music is brimming with the elegance and eloquence of the Classical era.

This concert is generously supported by Dorothy Jantzen

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Castille to Samarkand

Friday, April 1, 2022 | 7:30 pmKay Meek Arts Centre

The 15th and 16th centuries have been described as “The Golden Age of Spanish music”, but they were also prolific periods for musicians in the Persian courts and throughout the Ottoman Empire. This journey from Castille to Samarkand brings into dialogue the music of the Spanish renaissance with Persian/Ottoman masterpieces taken from manuscripts unearthed in monasteries and palace libraries, such as Topkapi.

This concert is generously supported by Tony & Margie Knox and The RPC Family Foundation.

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Beethoven & Liszt: A Musical Affinity

Friday, April 8, 2022 | 7:30 pmChrist Church Cathedral

Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 29 in Bb Major, Op. 106 is extreme in every way – tremendously long and a challenge to the limits of both piano and pianist with its wide dynamic and pitch range; virtuosic, constantly shifting musical textures; almost unbelievably fast metronome markings and tumultuous expressivity. Having become completely deaf by 1816, Beethoven also suffered frequent illness and the piece is marked by struggle throughout, exemplified in the unusual conflict between two keys a semitone apart: B-flat Major and B minor.

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Guided by Voices with Bach’s Cello Suite no. 6 | DCH

Wednesday, April 20, 2022 | 7:30PMOnline

Today, the five-string cello is treated as an exotic and rarely-played cousin of the standard cello. However, in the 17th and 18th centuries it was simply one of the many instruments used in the family of bass violins and was particularly important for virtuosc sonatas and solos. This programme centres around the five-string cello’s most enduring work, Bach’s Sixth Solo Cello Suite (BWV 1012).

Each movement reveals the instrument’s incredible versatility and remarkable colours. Elinor Frey explores these qualities further through two newer works, “Guided By Voices” by Scott Godin (based on “O Vis Aeternitatis” of Hildegard von Bingen) and “With concord of sweet sounds” by Isaiah Ceccarelli.

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Imaginario: An imaginary songbook of Renaissance Spanish music

Wednesday, April 27, 2022 | 7:30 pmPacific Spirit United Church (formerly Ryerson Church)

Thousands of vihuelas were built and played during the sixteenth century. Still, only five or six survived and to complicate matters; there are differing opinions about whether these surviving instruments should be called vihuelas or guitars. If so many people played the vihuela in sixteenth-century Spain, why are there so few surviving instruments? Were they converted into guitars at a later date, or did they perish in the annual bonfires that took place on the feast of San Juan?

The body of surviving books of the vihuela repertoire, numbered at seven, is also very small. One reason for this is that printing materials, especially the purpose-specific type needed to print vihuela tablature, were scarce. From the surviving vihuela books and other manuscript sources, Ariel Abramovich’s has created a new imaginary songbook that provides an essential contribution to the vihuela repertoire with various instrumental and vocal combinations. Some of the composers that make up the new anthology are Mudarra, Pisador, Vásquez and Morales, and the influential madrigalists Willaert and Arcadelt. The transformation of many polyphonic madrigals into accompanied lute songs met with great success in Italy and was mirrored by vihuelists in Spain.

Imaginario offers a listening experience that blends the real and the imaginary without a discernible line of demarcation.

This concert is generously supported by Zelie & Vincent Tan.

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Les Plaisirs Du Louvre

Friday, May 6, 2022 | 7:30 pmChan Centre for the Performing Arts

The Louvre was the chief residence of the King, the epicentre of power, where the important events in the life of the court naturally took place. A ceremonial tradition was developed within its walls, which was to reach its zenith under Louis XIV. In this theatre of power, music was an object of entertainment as well as an instrument of magnificence. While laying the foundations of the future splendours of the Grand Siècle, the reign of Louis XIII represents the golden age of a galant culture, whose musical emblem, the air de cour, pervaded the whole of society and was heard in all the salons, galleries and ruelles of the capital’s aristocratic residences, and especially the most symbolic of them: the Louvre. Another key centre of sociability was the Queen’s apartment, located on the ground floor beneath the King’s apartment. It was in these different spaces that the Musique de la Reine could be heard. The echoes of these ‘pleasures’, inhabited by strange and whimsical divinities, allegorical characters or characters from the realm of galanterie, are bound to delight every listener.

This concert is generously supported by Bruce Munro Wright.

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Kalhor & Tabassian in Dialogue

Friday, June 3, 2022 | 7:30 PM at The Kay Meek Centre for the Performing Arts & Saturday, June 4, 2022 | 7:30 pm at the The Roundhouse

From dawn to dusk, music reigns among the stars of Persian civilization. The traditional music of Iran, unique to the Orient, is the fruit of a mystical heritage with a fascinating capacity for constant regeneration. For this unique concert, Kayhan Kalhor, an uncontested master of this tradition, joins Kiya Tabassian on a journey through an immense musical universe. Carrying on tradition while uncovering the future, they make poetry that sings of times both old and new, and contribute to a culture that is in full swing.

The intensely spiritual and emotional improvisations of Kalhor and Tabassian, steeped in the traditional music of Iran, are said to bring listeners to a trance-like state. The ancestry of the setar can be traced to the ancient tanbur of pre-Islamic Persia. It is made from thin mulberry wood and its fingerboard has more than 20 moveable frets. Setar is literally translated as “three strings”; in its present form, however, it has four strings. Because of its delicacy and intimate sonority, the setar is the preferred instrument of Sufi mystics.

” Rather than a duel, the two setarists’ ninety or so uninterrupted minutes onstage turned out to be a clinic in how to build something transcendent.” New York Music Daily

This concert is generously supported by Agnes Hohn.

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