Announcing Our 40th Anniversary Season
40 years of Early Music in Victoria!
EMSI has been instrumental (pardon the pun) in building a great community of early music aficionados in Victoria and its surrounds over the past 40 years – and it is still building!
This coming season, we celebrate that legacy with a wonderful lineup of artists from here and around the world. The season will lead off with our very special opera and dinner event, Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, an ambitious project years in the planning and made possible by a wonderfully generous major donation from a long-time patron.
Following up on the opera event is a lineup of varied programs showcasing music from the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and Baroque. We’re excited about these programs and hope you will join us.
Aci, Galatea e Polifemo (painting by Claude Lorraine). Notice Etna smouldering in the background.
Watch and listen to a sampling of our season
September 22, 24, 26 and 28, 2024
Aci, Galatea e Polifemo opera event
Music Director Marco Vitale, cast: Stefanie True, Margherita Maria Sala and Trevor Eliot Bowes (UK/ITALY)
Our unique dinner and opera event featuring Handel’s Italian masterpiece. An intimate and immersive opera experience, capturing the spirit of the opera’s first performance at a wedding of nobility in 1708 Naples. More information . . .
Friday, October 25, 2024
Out of the Deep
Jonathon Adams, Chloe Kim and Friends (CANADA)
Cree-Métis two-spirited baritone, Jonathon Adams, and brilliant Victoria violinist Chloe Kim, have put together a concert of Baroque music that has special meaning to each of them, and will be joined by an ensemble from across the country and the UK. This concert has been performed to acclaim across Canada. More information . . .
Friday, November 29, 2024
Lamento
Fretwork with Iestyn Davies (UK)
The famed ensemble from England that epitomizes the beauty and richness of viol consort music joins forces with one the world’s leading counter tenors in a program of music by composers including Scheidt, Schein, Schütz, Buxtehude and J. C. Bach. More information . . .
Saturday, December 21, 2024
Festive Cantatas
Pacific Baroque Orchestra (CANADA)
Vancouver’s Pacific Baroque Orchestra under the direction of Alexander Weimann performs seasonal cantatas by Zelenka and J. S. Bach, including movements from the B minor Mass. Joining the PBO will be the Vancouver Chamber Choir and soloists in a grand Christmas musical feast. More information . . .
Saturday, January 18, 2025
Gregorius the Sinner
Sequentia Ensemble (USA)
The ground-breaking ensemble Sequentia, led by Benjamin Bagby, famous for his one-person Beowulf tour-de-force performances and master at turning captivating stories into dramatic music, presents an intriguing tale from the 13th Century, sung in old German with projected translations. More information . . .
Saturday, February 15, 2025
Huehuetenango
Ariel Abramovich and Jonatan Alverado (ARGENTINA)
Tenor Jonatan Alverado and lutenist/vihuelist Ariel Abramovich examine the musical and cultural collision between European colonial and South American indigenous traditions in a program of music from a beautiful and mysterious 16th Century Guatemalan manuscript. More information . . .
Saturday, March 22, 2025
Early Moderns – extravagant and inventive new music of the 17th century
Quicksilver Ensemble (USA)
The celebrated American ensemble, Quicksilver, presents a concert of early Baroque music from the 17th Century, a time of musical transition, that turned Vienna into a great musical centre for the first time. The mixed ensemble, including sackbut and dulcian, situates the music in an intriguing musical soundscape. More information . . .
Friday, April 11, 2025
Eh bien, dancez maintenant !
Doulce Mémoire (FRANCE)
In a fittingly energetic and exciting finale to our 40th season, choreographer, dancer and scholar, Hubert Hazebroucq, performs historical Renaissance dance accompanied by a lively consort of Renaissance wind instrumentalists on shawms, crumhorns and recorders. More information . . .