The Early Music Society of the Islands has been bringing leading early music artists and ensembles from around the world to Victoria for four decades, and the society is planning a spectacular season for 2024/2025 to celebrate this milestone.
“Victoria has a vibrant early music community,” said Bill Jamieson, Executive and Artistic Director, “and we believe that EMSI has played a major role in developing that community. For 40 years, we have followed the goal of raising awareness and appreciation for early music by presenting concerts that are of the highest artistic merit, but at the same time are accessible and entertaining for the audience.”
For EMSI, “early music” encompasses some 800 years of music, reaching back to the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque eras. “There is an element of time travel as the artists perform the music as closely as possible to how it was originally performed,” said Jamieson. “Ultimately, though, we mostly want our audience just to sit back and enjoy intimate and engaging performances of this captivating music.”
For their anniversary season, EMSI is pulling out all the stops – to use an early music metaphor. It will be launched with a unique and ambitious dinner-and-opera event that captures the spirit of the first performance of an early Handel work, Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, at an Italian noble wedding in 1708.
The season will continue with a string of concerts that feature world-renowned artists and ensembles, including acclaimed Canadian bass-baritone Jonathon Adams and violinist Chloe Kim; one of the world’s leading counter-tenors, Iestyn Davies, with the celebrated ensemble Fretwork; a grand program of festive cantatas in time for Christmas by Vancouver’s Pacific Baroque Orchestra under Alex Weimann; the peerless Benjamin Bagby with medieval Sequentia Ensemble; the Argentinian duo of Jonatan Alverado and Ariel Abramovich; critically acclaimed American Baroque ensemble, Quicksilver; and closing out the season in a unique performance of Renaissance music and dance, by the French ensemble Doulce Mémoire with historical dancer and choreographer, Hubert Hazebroucq.
For more information and to find out about EMSI’s Flex Pass subscription model, visit earlymusicsocietyoftheislands.ca
