Baroque and Early - my/maSCENA

Dorothéa Ventura

La Nef presents: Tout tourne and Red Sky at Night

By Arnaud G. Veydarier on 3 February 2023 Baroque and Early, Chamber Music

Duly recognized for its quality concert presentations, La Nef is equally known for bold programming choices that feature centuries-old music, folk traditions, and contemporary stylings. Tout tourne, the first of its New Year offerings, pairs two figureheads of the local baroque musical scene, flutist Vincent Lauzer and harpsichordist Dorothéa Ventura, with dancer François Richard. This music and dance encounter is all the more unusual and unique as it weds baroque virtuosity to the tune of modern American minimalism. The second event on tap, Red Sky at Night, will feature vocalist and cittern specialist Seán Dagher in a program of traditional…

Bourgie Hall: First Gesualdo Six Concert on Quebec Soil

By Justin Bernard on 31 January 2023 Baroque and Early, Choral

Bourgie Hall has kick-started the year with a plethora of concerts. Local musicians and ensembles—such as SMAM (Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal) on Feb. 12, Les Violons du Roy on Feb. 24, Nicolas Ellis and Cameron Crozman on March 10, and Orchestre Métropolitain, directed by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, on March 26—and international musicians are front and centre. The Gesualdo Six will make their debut in Quebec. Renowned for their Renaissancerepertoire performances, the United Kingdom-based Gesualdo Six will give a one-of-a-kind concert in Montreal on Feb. 21. Montreal will be the final stop of the singers’North American tour that took them…

Sylvain Bergeron. Photo: Guillaume D. Cyr

La Nef presents Per violino e liuto and Long Way Home

By Arnaud G. Veydarier on 1 October 2022 Baroque and Early, Canadian Music, Folk, Violin, World Music

After two years of pandemic, La Nef is taking to the sea again this fall with a very eclectic program, between world and early music. Their 2022-23 season opens in October with Per violino e liuto, an intimate evening of baroque and popular repertoire from the 17th century, followed in November with a program inspired by Nordic and Middle Eastern musical traditions. For violin and lute Presented on Oct. 16 at the Maison de la culture Maisonneuve, Per violino e liuto will feature two of the city’s finest baroque music performers, multi-instrumentalist Sylvain Bergeron and rising violin star Marie Nadeau-Tremblay.…

Photo: Annie Héthier

Luc Beauséjour and the World of Bach

By Justin Bernard on 1 October 2022 Baroque and Early, Piano

After his concert series of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s music with Hervé Niquet, his harpsichordist colleague and orchestra conductor, on Sept. 29 and 30, Luc Beauséjour gets back to the great Bach’s music for two more concerts during the Clavecin en concert season. First, for Montreal’s Bach Festival on Nov. 18, he will map out the composer’s musical journey from his youth to maturity; then, on Nov. 17 at the Salle Bourgie for the last year dedicated entirely to his cantatas. In addition, there is a recording of Bach’s Trio Sonatas, arranged for harpsichord, marimba and cello with the duo Stick&Bow, released…

Jordi Savall: In Search of New Repertoire

By Justin Bernard on 1 October 2022 Baroque and Early, Interviews

Jordi Savall returns to Canada this fall. Following his North American tour with Concert des Nations last February, which brought him to Ottawa, the famous Catalan gambist is back on the road, this time with Hespèrion XXI. For this new tour, titled The Golden Age of Consort Music, Savall has called upon Hespèrion XXI , the ensemble of viols and theorbo with whom he has prepared a chamber music repertoire from the Renaissance and baroque periods. John Dowland (1563-1626) is one among many composers on the program, known primarily for his songs on the themes of love and pain.…

Ensemble Caprice

Dido and Aeneas : New Prologue Breathes Fresh Life into a Classic

By Gianmarco Segato on 30 September 2022 Baroque and Early, Classical Music, Opera

When Ensemble Caprice brings Henry Purcell’s 1689 operatic gem Dido and Aeneas to Montreal’s Salle Bourgie on Nov. 8 under conductor, flutist and composer Matthias Maute, audiences will hear and see an amalgam of old and new. As with everything this stellar, now 30-year-old group presents, Maute hopes listeners “will feel a spark and be beguiled” by a work that is “really something that is in the present” as much as the far-away past. Maute will be helped in this regard by the vagaries of history itself. We know Dido and Aeneas premièred as a stage work with a prologue…

Pentaèdre: Musical delights of its 37th season

By Hassan Laghcha on 2 September 2022 Baroque and Early, Chamber Music

The Pentaèdre wind quintet announces a 2022-23 season of concerts that align with the group’s spirit of renewal, and the quest for exciting musical challenges that leads them to boldly explore diverse repertoires. The young artistic director, Ariane Brisson, introduces what’s on offer with the quintet in their five concerts of the season—beginning on Sept. 30, in the Serge-Garant Hall of the Faculty of Music of the Université de Montréal, with a concert dedicated to the Day of Truth and Reconciliation, featuring the première of a work by Odawa First Nation composer Barbara Assiginaak. This concert will feature American pianist…

Philippe Jaroussky & Marie-Nicole Lemieux: Good friends find themselves with Les Violons du Roy

By Justin Bernard on 2 September 2022 Baroque and Early, Interviews, Opera

Thanks to their international reputation, Les Violons du Roy have attracted, over the years, the world’s foremost soloists and the most memorable of collaborations spanning all sorts of repertoires, notably in baroque music. The 2022-2023 season is no exception. For their Sept. 22 opening concert in Quebec City, and their Sept. 24 concert in Montreal, the chamber orchestra welcomes none other than Philippe Jaroussky and his longtime friend, contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux. We no longer need to formally introduce the French countertenor, since his 25-year-long career and his 30 recordings speak for themselves. He was in his 20s when harpsichordist Luc…

La Scena Tête-à-tête: Michael Spyres

By La Scena Musicale Team on 2 August 2022 Arts Industry, Baroque and Early, Classical Music, Contemporary, Interviews

In this Tête à tête segment, Don Adriano interviews Michael Spyres for La Scena Musicale during his passage through Montreal to sing at the Lanaudière festival in July 2022! On Youtube: Interview with Michael Spyres: During the interview, Adriano and Spyres discuss Rossini, operatic traditions, voice technique, the Baritenor voice and much more. The following is a sample of their discussion. How to sing like an opera performer As an internationally renowned baritenor opera singer, Michael Spyres has a lot to say on the topic of operatic singing. According to him, the body is not comfortable with operatic singing until…

CD Review | Virtuosa (Leaf music, 2022)

By Zenith Wolfe on 26 July 2022 Baroque and Early, CD and Book Reviews, Chamber Music

Virtuosa Alexa Raine-Wright, flute; Sallynee Amawat, violin; Andrea Stewart, violoncello; Rona Nadler, harpsichord Leaf Music, 2022 In 2017, Infusion Baroque released the Virtuosa Series, a collection of videos highlighting the musical careers of fourteen women from the 18th and 19th centuries. Still infused with the desire to emphasize female composers’ accomplishments in the face of sexism, Infusion Baroque have released their new album Virtuosa. The 14 works on the album, derived from a variety of composers, most of them women, display the ensemble’s tonal flexibility: in their performance of Clara Schumann’s Piano Trio in G Minor, Op. 17 they contrast…

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