La Fonte Musica, Iestyn Davies, and more, as Early Music Vancouver announces 2024-25 season
British a cappella artists VOCES8 are here in February as LUMEN Festival makes return in the new year
Italian Renaissance specialists La Fonte Musica.
Celebrated countertenor Iestyn Davies.
AN ITALIAN RENAISSANCE ensemble, a standout tenor, and a smashing British a capella group are on the roster, as Early Music Vancouver announces its 55th season.
Italian ensemble La Fonte Musica, Britain’s Sequentia, celebrated countertenor Iestyn Davies, British choral ensemble VOCES8, and members of Montreal’s culture-crossing Constantinople are just a few of the names on the roster. The LUMEN Festival, launched in 2023, will also return in the new year.
Its 2024-25 season kicks off with a new arrangement of J.S Bach’s Goldberg Variations, in concert on September 20 at Christ Church Cathedral, with Alexander Weimann leading the Pacific Baroque Orchestra. “While there are existing arrangements of the work for baroque chamber ensemble, including Chad Kelly’s recent project for Beacon Baroque, my approach to Bach’s writing incorporates the Trio Sonata No. 4 in C Major by Johann Gottlieb Goldberg (long attributed to Bach) that I’ve woven into the Variations,” Weimann hinted in the announcement today. “It has been supremely rewarding to place myself in Bach’s mind, imagining how he himself might have orchestrated the work for strings, winds, and harpsichord.”
October 25 at the same venue, DanteNova: Music from Dante’s Commedia will draw on Dante’s Divine Comedy, with Italian early-music ensemble La Fonte Music playing while narrator Bill Richardson brings the story to life.
November 23 sees a coproduction with the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts and the Indian Classical Music Society of Vancouver: Bahauddin Dagar in Concert features a rare concert by the world master of the rudra veena, the commanding stringed, double-resonator classical instrument that’s key to Hindustani music. It’s at the Chan.
Davies appears with Fretwork on November 26, back at Christ Church, in Lamentos, an emotion-soaked 17th-century German repertoire by J.C. Bach, Schütz, and others.
On December 5 at the cathedral, Blessed Echoes: Elizabethan Lute Songs explores popular English lute songs during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I with Ensemble “Près de votre oreille”.
The holiday tradition of EMV’s Festive Cantatas returns December 22 at the Chan, featuring Bach’s “Gloria in excelsis Deo” cantata with the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, Vancouver Chamber Choir, and soloists Hélène Brunet, Suzie LeBlanc, Cecilia Duarte, James Reese, and William Kraushaar.
The new year brings a January 17 concert at the Vancouver Playhouse with EMV favourites Sequentia, featuring Benjamin Bagby at the helm of the medieval verse epic Gregorius, a narrative poem of sin and redemption.
On Valentine’s Day at the Chan, the second edition of EMV’s annual LUMEN Festival gets underway with VOCES8: Draw on Sweet Night—the English a cappella octet performing intricate music through the Renaissance to today, including their own arrangements of film scores.
Elsewhere at LUMEN, Dorothee Mields & the PBO: Bach Ties the Knot hits St. Andrew’s-Wesley United Church on February 15, with the German soprano interpreting wedding-related music by J.S. Bach. Huehuetenango: Music from 16th-Century Guatemala takes place at Pacific Spirit United Church the next afternoon with two early-music specialists: tenor Jonatan Alvarado, and Ariel Abramovich on vihuela.
In March, Quicksilver Baroque Ensemble is on hand with The Early Moderns, exploring the musical revolutions of the Early Modern period at St. Andrew’s-Wesley.
Keyboard artist Dmitry Ablogin plays a concert in collaboration with the Vancouver Chopin Society, March 29 at the Playhouse.
Later in the spring, watch for Doulce Mémoire: Now, Let Us Dance!, an April 12 performance by Ensemble Doulce Mémoire and dancer Hubert Hazebroucq at the Playhouse; Stefano Maiorana: Secret Pages of Venice, a collaboration with Vancouver New Music on April 26 at Pacific Spirit United Church that spotlights the virtuoso theorbo player; and Estuary: Ablaye Cissoko, Kiya Tabassian, & Patrick Graham, featuring the kora master, Persian setar virtuoso, and master percussionist (the latter two members of Constantinople) in a multicultural meditation, at Christ Church on May 6.
For tickets and information, visit earlymusic.bc.ca. 
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