2023 EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL

October 27, 28 and 29, 2023

EARLY MUSIC ALBERTA FESTIVAL

First Presbyterian Church, 10025 105 Street, Edmonton

Early Music Alberta’s 2023 festival will once again be held in the beautiful historic First Presbyterian Church and will be centred around 17th & 18th century Italy with three feature evening concerts, a community concert, masterclasses, a renaissance reading workshop, and a baroque dance class, with musicians and clinicians from Edmonton, greater Alberta and across Canada.

Friday, October 27 – 7:30 p.m.: Claudio MONTEVERDI- Combattimento

Saturday, October 28: 3:00 p.m.- Community Concert

Saturday, October 28 – 7:30 p.m.: Antonio VIVALDI – L’Estro Armonico

Sunday, October 29 – 3:00 p.m.: DIMINUTIONS from the Italian Renaissance

and

Saturday, October 28, 9:30 a.m. – Community Renaissance reading session (free)

Saturday, October 28: Noon – Community Renaissance dance session (free)

You can attend the main CONCERTS IN PERSON
First Presbyterian Church – 10025 105 St, Edmonton
AND
We offer the opportunity to attend the main CONCERTS VIRTUALLY, through professional, multi-camera, high-quality private Livestream. The event will remain online for ticket holders for 7 days after the performance.

You have the choice of buying a pass for Livestream or in-person, however, you can change this at any time. If you bought a Livestream pass but would like to come in person, make sure to contact info@earlymusicalberta.ca so that we can put you on the in-person list for that concert, provided we haven’t reached capacity. The same goes for the reverse situation: if you bought in-person but perhaps feel unwell, or prefer to stay home; just let us know and you will get the Livestream link, and free up more space for someone wanting to attend in person.

If you would like to attend the concert and/or would like to watch it virtually, please purchase the ticket(s) below

Program Booklet

Friday, October 27, 2023

Concert: 7:30 p.m.
Pre-concert Talk 7:00 p.m.: Christopher Bagan
(High-quality private Livestream available)

Claudio Monteverdi

Combattimento

Opening night will feature music by Venetian composer Claudio Monteverdi, and the program will be centred around the dramatic “Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda”. The piece is based on a libretto by Tasso and describes the fight of Tancredi and Clorinda, star-crossed lovers who fight each other to the death without realizing each other’s true identity. It is fully orchestrated and effectively written (in stile concitato) to represent the sound of swords clashing, horseback riding, and fully expressing the anger, sorrow, and regret in this story. The piece was first performed during the carnival season of 1624, when it was semi-staged at the palace of a Venetian nobleman. Monteverdi wrote that music had long been able to depict the emotions of love, but it needed a new language in order to truly express the more agitated emotions of anger and the violence of war. The level of detail in Monteverdi’s instructions about how to perform this piece is unprecedented for his time.

Several madrigals, including the spectacular Lamento della Nynfa, Zefiro Torna, and Ballo will also be on the program.

Musicians:

Jolaine Kerley, soprano
Dawn Bailey, soprano
Timothy Schantz, tenor
Kerry Bursey, tenor, lute
Michael Kurschat, bass
Noémy Gagnon-Lafrenais, violin
Laura Veeze, violin
Josephine van Lier, violone
Lucas Harris, theorbo
Jonathan Stuchbery, theorbo, tenor
Christopher Bagan, historical keyboards

Program Booklet

Saturday, October 28, 2023

3:00 p.m.
(High-quality private Livestream available)

COMMUNITY CONCERT

The community concert has become an important mainstay of the early music festival. It offers an exciting performance platform for local amateur ensembles. We are excited to host several splendid ensembles.

Musicians:

Recorder quartet Ensemble al Contrario
Bella Baroque with Jodi Penner and Edmonton and University of Alberta choral scholars
featuring sacred Bolivian Baroque music
Divertimento Chamber Ensemble under the direction of Lori Klingbeil
with a great mix of Italian baroque music

Program Booklet

Saturday, October 28, 2023

Concert: 7:30 p.m.
Pre-concert Talk 7:00 p.m.: Noémy Gagnon-Lafrenais
(High-quality private Livestream available)

ANTONIO VIVALDI

L’Estro Armonico

This concert showcases all twelve spectacular concertos of Antonio Vivaldi’s L’estro Armonico. They are the most popular and well-known of all of Vivaldi’s works. It is vintage Vivaldi: lively, exuberant and brilliant allegros, spun‐out cantilenas in Italian ‘belcanto’ style, and a general feel of Italian passion and good humour. The works immediately met with great acclaim after their publication in 1711, giving way to over 30 reprints in the subsequent 32 years. For each concerto, there are seven independent parts. In each consecutive group of three concertos, the first is a concerto for four violins, the second for two violins, and the third a solo violin concerto. The cello gets soloistic passages in several of the concertos. Vivaldi scholar Michael Talbot described the set as “perhaps the most influential collection of instrumental music to appear during the whole of the eighteenth century.”
Our violinists will all be soloists as well as taking on all the other parts.
A concert not to be missed!

Musicians:

Noémy Gagnon-Lafrenais, solo violin
Laura Veeze, solo violin
Naomi Delafield, solo violin
Keith Hamm, solo violin
Leanne Dammann Maitland, viola
Ronelle Schaufele, viola
Josephine van Lier, cello
Anne Duranceau, bass
Lucas Harris, theorbo
Jonathan Stuchbery, theorbo
Christopher Bagan, historical keyboards

Program Booklet

Sunday, October 27, 2023

Concert: 3:00 p.m.
Pre-concert Talk 2:30 p.m.: Lucas Harris
(High-quality private Livestream available)

DIMINUTIONS

from the Italian Renaissance

The festival’s final concert will take us to 16th-century Italy and features highly embellished quasi-improvised music. The art of playing diminutions, (called divisions in England, passaggio in Italy, double in France and glosas or diferencias in Spain) has been largely lost in modern times. It is thoroughly documented in written sources of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries, and enjoyed a remarkable flowering in Venice from about 1580-1620. The concert will draw you into the intimate world of Italian Renaissance music.

Musicians:

Noémy Gagnon-Lafrenais, violin
Josephine van Lier, viola da gamba
Lucas Harris, theorbo
Jonathan Stuchbery, theorbo
Kerry Bursey, tenor, lute
Christopher Bagan, historical keyboards