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Early Music Vancouver Events

Currently viewing listings for: Past Events

Sea Songs & Shanties feat. Ensemble La Nef & Chor Leoni

Saturday February 22, 2020 | 7:30PM (Pre-concert talk at 6:45PM)
Chan Shun Concert Hall at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts

Join the musicians and vocal soloists of La Nef and Chor Leoni Men’s Choir as they explore music of the sea with capstand shanties, halyard shanties, laments, forecastle songs, and short haul shanties: hear the rich songs and music that accompany a sailor’s work and play. Inspired by a tradition of English maritime music going back to the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, Seán Dagher, the troupe’s musical director, has created modern arrangements of these songs to display all the warmth and depth they deserve.

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Film in Concert: The Passion of Joan of Arc feat. The Orlando Consort

Friday January 31, 2020 | 7:30PM (Pre-concert talk at 6:45PM)
Christ Church Cathedral

An intense experience awaits us as we journey to medieval France to witness the trial of Joan of Arc: a silent movie classic, accompanied by intricately beautiful live choral music from The Orlando Consort. Condemned unseen in France on its release, vilified by the Catholic authorities and even banned outright in England, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s film, La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928), is widely recognised as a masterpiece. The award-winning Orlando Consort have crafted a stunning soundtrack to transport us back to the 15th century.

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Beowulf: The Epic in Performance feat. Benjamin Bagby, voice and harp

Saturday January 11, 2020 | 7:30PM
Vancouver Playhouse

“Hwaet!” commands the storyteller. Listen! And tremble at this fearsome tale! A millennium or more has passed since the superhero Beowulf appeared in the annals of epic poetry, yet the legend of his bare-handed conquest of the terrifying Grendel endures. As one of the world’s leading practitioners of historically informed music and theater, Benjamin Bagby dramatizes the awe-inspiring poem in the original Anglo-Saxon, while simultaneously accompanying himself on medieval harp. With English supertitles.

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Charms, Riddles & Elegies feat. Sequentia Ensemble for Medieval Music

Friday January 10, 2020 | 7:30PM (Pre-concert talk at 6:45PM)
Christ Church Cathedral

For this intense new program, vocalist and harper Benjamin Bagby will be joined by his Sequentia colleagues Norbert Rodenkirchen, Hanna Marti and Stef Conner, for a program of riddles, charms and elegies of their medieval ancestors, the Anglo-Saxons and the Germanic tribes of the European Northlands.

These are songs of magic, healing, exile, of the uncertainty of fate, of a wandering poet/singer searching for a patron, funeral songs and celebrations of life-giving magic herbs. Their sources are varied: the Old English Beowulf epic, the Old Icelandic poetic Edda, and the few poems surviving in ancient songbooks such as The Exeter Book. Each of these songs is a glimpse into another time far from ours, and into the souls of poets, warriors, valkyries and seeresses, bards and philosophers, whose creations were the first to be written down in English and other Germanic languages. In addition to songs in English, there will be Old High German and Old Icelandic songs of conjuring, magic, and lament as well. The world of the pagan medieval north, just turning to Christianity, will be explored, using the oldest sources known to us today. The featured instruments will include 6-string Germanic harps, triangular harps, wooden flutes and a swan-bone flute.

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Festive Cantatas: Christmas in Gabrieli’s Venice

Sunday, December 22 2019 | 3:00PM (Pre-concert talk at 2:15PM)
Chan Shun Concert Hall at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts

Giovanni Gabrieli, who died in 1612, was without a doubt the greatest composer of the Venetian High Renaissance. We celebrate the holidays this year with music by this Venetian master, his uncle Andrea, and their contemporaries. This is music that would have echoed from the mosaic-covered vaults of Saint Mark’s Basilica as well as other Venetian churches. The program consists of motets for from two to fifteen voices, as well as dazzling sonatas and canzonas for cornetti, trombones and strings – festive music worthy of the season but also of the pomp and brilliance of the Venetian State.

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Handel Messiah

Saturday November 30, 2019 | 8:00PM (Pre-concert talk at 7:15PM)
Chan Shun Concert Hall at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts

After the dramatic success of the PBO’s production of Messiah in 2017, EMV has invited guest director Ivars Taurins, conductor of the Juno award-winning Tafelmusik Chamber Choir to lead an international team of soloists, the PBO and the Vancouver Cantata Singers in a thrilling period instrument performance of this seasonal favourite.

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Harpsichordist Ton Koopman in Recital – Music by J.S. Bach, D. Buxtehude, and more

Tuesday November 12, 2019 | 7:30PM (Pre-concert talk at 6:45PM)
Christ Church Cathedral

By his twenties, Antonius “Ton” Koopman was already carving a musical niche for himself in which he would rise to become one of the world’s most prominent performers in the early music movement. He founded his first Baroque orchestra in 1966, followed by an exuberant career (40 years and counting) of performance, conducting, and scholarship. He is widely regarded as one the finest organists, harpsichordists and conductors of our time. A frequent guest on EMV’s series over the years, for this recital he will play on a harpsichord by Vancouver-based maker Craig Tomlinson.

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Dowland Lachrimae feat. Les Voix Humaines & Lutenist Nigel North

Friday November 1, 2019 | 7:30PM Pre-concert talk at 6:45PM)
Christ Church Cathedral

Star British lutenist Nigel North joins Canada’s now-legendary viol consort, Les Voix Humaines, for a performance of John Dowland’s 1604 Lachrimae. This iconic collection of passionate pavans, galiards, and almands is replete with musical effects, dissonances and suspensions that powerfully evoke the melancholic subjects that re-appear throughout Dowland’s compositions: the agonies of the soul, night, and darkness.

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Purcell & Nyman: Music After Awhile feat. Iestyn Davies, counter-tenor & Fretwork

Tuesday October 29, 2019 | 7:30PM (Pre-concert talk at 6:45PM)
Christ Church Cathedral

Iestyn Davies is a British countertenor widely recognised as one of the world’s finest singers, celebrated for the beauty and technical dexterity of his voice and intelligent musicianship. Simply put, he is one of the best countertenors in the world, performing regularly in lead roles at the world’s most important opera houses (the Metropolitan Opera, the Glyndebourne Festival, and Covent Garden). While widely respected as an opera singer, he is also valued as one of the finest interpreters of early and contemporary song repertoire. This concert highlights his work with English composer Michael Nyman, the songs of Henry Purcell, and Fretwork, the celebrated viol consort. Expect bold harmonies, wondrous inventions, and melodies that will haunt your dreams – whether from the 17th century or the 21st.

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