La Nef: The 2023-24 Season

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Claire Gignac, artistic and general director of La Nef, says that its repertoire is defined by “a mosaic of musical colours,” the result “of all sorts of artists, disciplines, types of music, repertoires and resonances coming together.” The 2023-24 season will offer four engaging concerts reflecting this range of musical approaches.

To open the new season Oct. 18 at Centre St-Jax, the show Tant que vivray will feature Vincent Lauzer on recorder and Sylvain Bergeron on lute. Dedicated to baroque music, the concert will present an instrumental repertoire from France, Spain and England from the 16th and 17th centuries. Soprano Andréanne Brisson Paquin will join the two musicians to sing airs by John Downland and Henry Purcell.

Sicilia Bella, on Nov. 22 at Maison de la culture Maisonneuve, will offer an original vision of the Sicilian repertoire. The project is created by Dorothéa Ventura and will be a blend of traditional music and madrigals by Sicilian composers of the Renaissance. The versatility of the seven musicians, who are all singers as well, will reveal the uniqueness of performing traditional types of music on unusual instruments (viola da gamba, recorder, guitar, ottavino, melodica, mandolin and accordion).

The third concert, Ars Amoris, is scheduled for March 20, 2024, at Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours chapel. There will be three multi-instrumentalists: Jean-François Daignault (voice, harp, recorder), Kerry Bursey (voice, medieval lute, medieval fiddle) and Pierre-Alexandre Saint-Yves (voice, recorder and chalumeau). They will explore the theme of courtly love in the repertoire of the male voice trio of medieval France from William IX of Aquitaine to Guillaume de Machaut.

To complete the new season, La Nef will present Memento Silva: souviens toi de la forêt on April 22 at Maison de la culture Maisonneuve. This multidisciplinary show will feature Marie Nadeau-Tremblay (musical director and baroque violin), Stéphane Tétreault (cello) and Chloé Dumoulin (piano) playing original compositions by William Kraushaar. This composer and videographer will illustrate the music with a video on the theme of nature and endangered species in Quebec.