FREE EVENTS
Green College: Cultures of Performance
A series of free public performances by professional musicians in the intimacy of the Green College Coach House.
Frescobaldi in the North: Transmission of the Stilo Nuovo by Keyboardists in Amsterdam and Hamburg
Thursday, March 12, 2026 | 5:00 pm, with reception to follow.
Coach House, Green College, UBC and livestreamed.
Artist: Abraham Ross, organist, harpsichordist, and conductor
Abraham Ross enjoys an active career as a concert organist, harpsichordist, and conductor, presenting imaginative programs informed by the most recent research on performance practice, technology, and musicological research. A recent graduate of McGill University, he received a grant from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec for his doctoral thesis on contrapuntal organ improvisation and arrangement practices in early modern Italy. In addition to solo concerts throughout North America, Abraham enjoys collaborating regularly with ensembles and artists of diverse disciplines, and regularly features with groups such as Les Goûts Réunis (Montreal) and Resonance Collective (Los Angeles).
Programme
A new style of expressive musical pictorialism marked the dawn of the Baroque in Italy, where composers sought above all to transport the listener to a state of intensified emotion by means of musical rhetoric and narrative. Gradually, composers such as Girolamo Frescobaldi brought these ideals to the context of instrumental music, printing their virtuosic solo works for a readership that extended as far as Hamburg (where Italian works were copied by Dutch composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck’s students). In this event, Abraham Ross will examine the transmission of Frescobaldi’s style through the lens of organists and harpsichordists in Northern Europe, considering implications for both compositional style and performance practice.
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.
Dr. Emma Cunliffe
Dr Emma Cunliffe is a professor in the Allard School of Law and served as the Director of Research and Policy for the joint Federal-Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission. She is the fourth principal of Green College.
In her academic work, Dr Cunliffe studies how courts decide the facts of contested cases. She is particularly interested in expert evidence, the operation of implicit bias, and legal processes regarding gendered and racialized violence, particularly those regarding Indigenous people. Dr Cunliffe is a member of the evidence-based forensic initiative, which is based at the University of New South Wales (where she is a senior visiting fellow). Her 2011 monograph Murder, Medicine and Motherhood (Hart: Oxford, 2011) provided a comprehensive evaluation of the wrongful conviction of Australian mother Kathleen Folbigg. This book led to a review of Ms Folbigg’s case and eventually, contributed to her receiving a free pardon in June 2023.
With funding from SSHRC, Dr Cunliffe is presently analyzing how facts are “found” in Canadian trials, inquests and commissions of inquiry that engage with gendered and racialized violence. She is particularly investigating whether expert knowledge (such as forensic medicine and psychiatric testing) operates as a Trojan horse by which discriminatory knowledge and beliefs reinforce implicit and structural biases within the legal system. She is also studying examples of legal processes in which discriminatory beliefs are successfully countered. Her major work in progress is a monograph, Judging Experts. This book will explore examples of judicial engagement with expert evidence to assess how effectively Canadian legal processes ensure that expert witnesses provide independent and reliable expert testimony. Dr Cunliffe’s work is predicated on a careful analysis of trial transcripts and court records such as expert reports. She also compares experts’ work in legal cases against the research base of fields such as forensic pathology.
At the Mass Casualty Commission, Dr Cunliffe and her team were responsible for all research and policy aspects of the Commission’s work, including commissioning expert reports, planning and facilitating policy roundtables, consulting with differentially affected communities and producing an environmental scan of past inquiry reports and recommendations on matters within the Commission’s mandate. She also played an integral role in the preparation of the Commission’s Final Report.
Dr Cunliffe’s contributions to research and teaching have been recognized, including in the 2016 Courage in Law Award given by the Indigenous Law Students Association at UBC, a UBC Killam Research Fellowship (2014), the Killam Award for Teaching Excellence (2010) and the George Curtis Memorial Award for Teaching (2010).
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. Click here to see upcoming performances.
