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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 Renaissance
repertoire 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 to 10 cities from west to east.
“Touring is something we’ve done for a while now. I’ve never been to Montreal but very excited to perform there,”
– Owain Park, Gesualdo Six director and founding member.
The Gesualdo Six want to provide a variety of music programs as part of their February
tour. For their concert in Montreal, motets by English composers will be programmed. Most of these motets are obscure. “The composers that get forgotten by bigger choirs are the ones that are writing in three or four parts. That’s where we can shed a light on those. A whole program of it wouldn’t necessarily make sense for us. It would be too research-based or musicological in some ways. We prefer to have the emotion of the music guiding us, so we like to have a little bit of everything.”
William Byrd continually appears in the Gesualdo Six programming, especially in a year when we will celebrate the 400th anniversary of his death. Byrd remained Catholic even though England had chosen to cut ties with the pope and open up to the Protestant Reformation. “There was a lot of friction, but it produced some incredible music. We are grateful for that. Last month, we had the first of our Secret Byrd project happening at the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields (London, England). We performed downstairs in the Crypt, which is interesting because it gives a different feeling than a concert. It’s a little more of that immersive performance,” said Park.
Other concerts dedicated to Byrd will be given between now and the end of the year, in
addition to a recording of his Mass for Five Voices and a number of motets, scheduled for May 2023. As part of the ensemble’s 10th anniversary, the Gesualdo Six singers hope to revive their first concert, given in March 2014, and once again present Carlo Gesualdo’s Tenebrae Responsories. The ensemble was named after that very composer.
Translated by Dwain Richardson
The Gesualdo Six will sing works by Forest, Sheryngham, Sheppard, Power, Weelkes, Tomkins, Tallis and Byrd for its English Motets concert, on Feb 21 at Bourgie Hall. www.thegesualdosix.co.uk
For more details, click on the link here.
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