FREE EVENTS
St. Anselm’s Music Series
EMV is proud to present a series of intimate concerts at St. Anselm’s Church made possible by the generous support of the Drance Family. Each concert is followed by a small reception where audience members can engage with the musicians. Concerts are all admission-by-donation.
Sonata and Fantasy
Artists: Majka Demcak & Erin Dorfer, violins; Christina Hutten, harpsichord
Sonata and Fantasy is an exploration of baroque works composed across the period for one and two violins. The strict form of the “sonata” and free style of the “fantasy” bring various and opposing characteristics out of the music, telling their own unique stories.
Saturday, January 11, 2025 | 3:00 p.m.
St. Anselm’s Church
Tickets: By Donation
These concerts are generously supported by the Drance Family
Majka Demcak
Surrey, BC-born Majka Demcak started her violin studies with teacher Sergei Olikhovski at the age of seven. In her time at university, Majka discovered Early and Baroque music, playing with the Baroque Orchestra Mentorship Programme (BOMP). Through BOMP, she studied with Chloe Meyers, Alexander Weimann, and Kati Debretzeni in a masterclass. She has also participated in masterclasses with world-renowned musicians such as Midori, Rachel Barton-Pine, Noah Bendix-Balgley, Elizabeth Wallfish, Martin Beaver and Corey Cerovsek. During her studies at UBC, Majka excelled in orchestral performance under conductor Dr. Jonathan Girard, acting as concertmaster with the UBC Symphony Orchestra for many concerts.
In 2017 she was invited to play with the Pacific Baroque Orchestra’s performance of Handel’s Messiah. Currently, Majka is playing with the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra, the Surrey City Orchestra, and is freelancing around the lower mainland. In the future, she hopes to continue her studies in Baroque Performance.
Erin Dorfer
Violinist Erin Dorfer recently returned to Vancouver after a year in the Netherlands, where she performed and studied baroque violin at the Koninklijk Conservatorium. While in The Hague, Erin was under the tutelage of Kati Debretzeni and had further studies with Shunsuke Sato, Walter Reiter and Rebecca Huber. Performance highlights include a concert with the Orchestra of the 18th Century.
Previously, Erin earned her Master’s degree from the University of British Columbia, where she studied with Jasper Wood and Marc Destrubé. Her undergraduate studies were at the University of Victoria with Sharon Stanis. Erin has an active studio of students of all ages and remains active in the National Suzuki community.
When not teaching or playing the violin, Erin enjoys working out, gardening, reading fantasy and sci-fi books, and baking.
Christina Hutten
Organist and harpsichordist Christina Hutten has presented recitals in Canada, the United States, and Europe. She performs regularly with Pacific Baroque Orchestra and has appeared as concerto soloist with the Okanagan Symphony, the Vancouver Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra, and the Arizona State University Chamber Orchestra. Christina is also an enthusiastic teacher. She coaches and coordinates the early music ensembles at the University of British Columbia and has given masterclasses and workshops at institutions including the Victoria Baroque Summer Program, Brandon University, the University of Manitoba, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada’s National Music Centre in Calgary, and the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute. Funded by a generous grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, she pursued historical keyboard studies in Europe with Francesco Cera, François Espinasse, and Bernard Winsemius. She participated in the Britten-Pears Programme, led by Andreas Scholl and Tamar Halperin, for which she was awarded the Loewen Prize. Christina obtained a master’s degree in Organ Performance from Arizona State University under the direction of Kimberly Marshall and an Advanced Certificate in Harpsichord Performance from the University of Toronto, where she studied with Charlotte Nediger. She is now a doctoral candidate in musicology at UBC.
Green College: Cultures of Performance
A series of free public performances by professional musicians in the intimacy of the Green College Coach House.
Storytelling and Music: 800 Years Before Netflix
Wednesday, January 15, 2025 | 5 p.m.
Coach House, Green College, UBC and livestreamed.
Livestream Information – there will be no livestream for this lecture recital
Artists: Sequentia – Benjamin Bagby voice & harp, artistic direction; Jasmina Črnčič voice & harp; leiken, voice
How did Medieval German aristocrats satisfy their appetites for long stories about beautiful, wealthy and tragic fictional characters of their own time? What were the themes which motivated the best storytellers, and how might they have gone about fashioning a real ‘performance’. How did music and the voice figure into this world of noble entertainment, where a given story might require a dozen long episodes to be told in full, in an age which did not know widespread literacy and long before printing?
The members of Sequentia, taking their own work with Hartmann von Aue’s ‘Gregorius’ as an example, discuss and demonstrate how music serves his story, using both voices and instruments. We examine how a flourishing courtly audience ca. 1200 devoured this and other noble stories, always as live performance and only later through reading, leaving the living transmission in the hands of dedicated minstrels (Spielleute) who were the beloved entertainers of their time. Our reconstruction raises question about orality in the Middle Ages, and about musical sources, and how we come to know and use those sources in our retelling.
Benjamin Bagby
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
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
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.
Sequentia
Sequentia is among world’s most respected and innovative ensembles for medieval music. Under the direction of Benjamin Bagby, Sequentia can look back on more than 45 years of international concert tours, a comprehensive discography of more than 30 recordings spanning the entire Middle Ages (including the complete works of Hildegard von Bingen), film and television productions of medieval music drama, and a new generation of young performers trained in professional courses given by members of the ensemble.
Sequentia, co-founded by Bagby and the late Barbara Thornton, has performed throughout Western and Eastern Europe, the Americas, India, the Middle East, East Asia, Africa, and Australia, and has received numerous prizes (including a Disque d’Or, several Diapasons d’Or, two Edison Prizes, the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis and a Grammy nomination) for many of its thirty recordings on the BMG/Deutsche Harmonia Mundi (SONY), Raumklang, Glossa and Marc Aurel Edition labels. The most recent CD releases include reconstructions of music from lost oral traditions of the Middle Ages (The Lost Songs Project), including 9 th and 10 th century
Germanic songs for the Apocalypse (Fragments for the End of Time), the ensemble’s acclaimed program of music from the Icelandic Edda: The Rheingold Curse, as well as the earliest-known European songs (Lost Songs of a Rhineland Harper), medieval liturgical chant (Chant Wars, a co-production with the Paris-based ensemble Dialogos), and most recently, Boethius: Songs of Consolation. Sequentia has created over 80 innovative concert programs which encompass the entire spectrum of medieval music, giving performances all over the world, in addition to their creation of music-theater projects such as Hildegard von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum and the medieval Icelandic Edda. In 2017, Sequentia's 30-year project to record the complete works of Hildegard von Bingen was released by SONY as a 9-CD box set. The work of the ensemble is divided between a small touring ensemble of vocal and instrumental soloists, and a larger ensemble of voices for special performance projects. Recent projects include a version of the 14th – century Roman de Fauvel, staged by Peter Sellars, and presented in co-production with the Théâtre du Châtelet (Paris). After many years based in Cologne, Germany, Sequentia’s home was re-established in Paris in 2001.
Instilling Inspiration Into Sound – Beyond technique and repertoire: what inspires a performer to play?
Wednesday, February 5, 2025 | 5 p.m.
Coach House, Green College, UBC and livestreamed.
Livestream Information – TBA
Artists: Vincent Galland, harpsichord
What makes a performing artist produce a successful music experience for its audience? Is it the perfect execution of learned techniques, sharpened tools, and faithful repetitions? Is it simply the repertoire itself, the taste and genius of the composer, only repeated and read from a sheet of music? What does the musician think of during a performance? Throughout the years, those were some of the questions Vincent Galland has been asked by members of the audience following a recital or concert. It can be valid to point directly at the excellence required to perform some masterpieces on challenging instruments. Yet, one could argue this is not enough, and certainly not enough from a performer’s point of view, in a quest to transmit an inspiration, an emotion, or a vision into a sound, in a given instant. During this lecture-recital, we will explore some of the other necessary components of a performer’s mindset that are not academically taught, how they can be formed, and how the artist can convey what inspires them in their music, beyond technique or repertoire. The programme will be accompanied by brief notes written by the artist, aiming to directly illustrate what he wishes to evoke while playing.
Programme
Programme:
Jean-Henri d’Anglebert (1629 – 1691)
Prelude in D minor – Pièces de Clavecin
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750)
Sonata in D minor BWV 964, violin transcription – Adagio
François Couperin (1668 – 1733)
La Superbe ou la Forqueray – 17th Ordre
Johann Jakob Froberger (1616 – 1667)
Suite in E-Flat Major, FbWV 631
Louis Couperin (1626 – 1661)
Passacaille in C Major
Gaspard Le Roux (1660 – 1707)
Passacaille in C Major
Vincent Galland, harpsichord
Vincent Galland is a passionate musician and keyboardist with a natural disposition for Early Music. Acting on the advice of his first piano teacher and following his growing love for baroque music, he entered the Grenoble National Conservatory (France) at age ten to study music theory, and harpsichord with Arnaud Pumir.
He then pursued advanced keyboard studies (Harpsichord, organ, and pianoforte) at the renowned Oberlin College & Conservatory of Music (Ohio) with Lisa Goode Crawford, one of the most highly respected music professors in the United States. He then continued to study under Webb Wiggins and international artists such as Skip Sempé, Davitt Moroney, and Arthur Haas. He obtained a performance diploma from Oberlin, and his French baccalaureate with the highest honours, in 2008. Vincent then changed course to study economics and management at McGill University through a BComm, as well as completing a music industry management program offered by the Berklee College of Music in Boston. During his years in Montreal, Vincent continued to perform on the harpsichord during concerts given by masters students at McGill under the mentorship of Professor Hank Knox, and through solo recitals in the Eastern Townships. Vincent continued his professional and academic career while being involved in both modern and classical music projects in London and Montreal.
He now lives in Vancouver since 2022 and aims to perform locally to provide more opportunities for the public and community to discover and enjoy baroque music.
For over seven years, EMV has offered an annual series of free lecture demonstrations at Green College at UBC, related to our season programming and designed to inform and grow our audience base. These events have been increasingly well-attended and have stimulated a dialogue between the organization and the local community regarding the wider context of our activities in the community. Early Music Vancouver has had a strong relationship with Green College since 1993, offering courses throughout the years and summers.
Mark Vessey | Principal of Green College
Dr. Mark Vessey has been the Principal of Green College at UBC since July 1, 2008. Prior to his appointment as Principal, Dr. Vessey had a long history with the College, having previously served as Acting Principal in 1998/99, and as a Faculty Member of Green College since 1994. Dr. Vessey obtained his B.A. in English at the University of Cambridge and his D.Phil. in Ancient History at the University of Oxford. He came to UBC in 1989 as an I. W. Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of English, and was appointed to a faculty position in that department in 1990. He held a Visiting Fellowship at All Souls’ College, Oxford, in 1997 and was Visiting Professor of Augustinian Studies at Villanova University in 2000. In 2001 he was awarded a Canada Research Chair in Literature / Christianity and Culture (renewed in 2005), and in 2005 won a Senior Killam Research Prize at UBC. Before taking up his position as Principal of the College, he served as Associate Head and Chair of the Graduate Program in English. He is a member of the UBC Senate, representing the Faculty of Arts, for the triennium 2008-11.
Dr. Vessey’s research focuses on processes of text-, canon- and discipline-formation in the Latin Christian culture of the later Roman Empire (4th to 6th centuries) and their role in the shaping of longer-term discourses and institutions of “western civilization,” particularly those associated with “literature.” He has published in the fields of Roman history, patristics, medieval studies, Latin and English Renaissance literatures, literary theory, and the history of the book. He is married to Dr. Maya Yazigi and they have a daughter, Leila.
