Welcome to the 19th Season of the Sackville Festival of Early Music!

The SFEM Team is excited to present this year’s festival.

This year’s festival will feature two returning SFEM favourites, L’Harmonie des Saisons and Constantinople. Juno Award-winning L’Harmonie des Saisons will present two unique programmes: Bach: Concertos from their recent celebrated recording, and Sprezzatura! a virtuosic program of early 17th-century Italian music. Constantinople, in reflection on the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation will present Breathings, a program including Indigenous musics from locations around the globe.

L’Harmonie des Saisons

Bach: Concertos

​Friday, September 29, 2023, 7:30 p.m.

Brunton Auditorium, Sackville NB

​Ensemble L’Harmonie des saisons (Mélisande Corriveau & Eric Milnes, directors) performs music from their recent recording (ATMA Classique) Bach: Concertos. The multifaceted genre of the concerto was developed during the Baroque period in Italy and rapidly took hold throughout Europe as a major vehicle for accompanied solo performance. Bach composed many solo concerti for the harpsichord that have become staples of the performance repertoire; moreover, he composed or adapted concerti for other instruments following the model established within his solo works. This programme features this stunning and seldom-heard repertoire performed by Juno award-winning artists. Eric Milnes (harpsichord), Julia Wedman and Jessy Dubé (solo violins), Matthew Jennejohn (oboe d’amore and baroque oboe), Guillaume Villeneuve, Marie Nadeau-Tremblay (violins), Hélène Plouffe (viola), Mélisande Corriveau (cello), and Pierre Cartier (double bass).

Constantinople

Breathings

Saturday, September 30, 2023, 7:30 p.m.

Brunton Auditorium, Sackville NB

Ensemble Constantinople (Kiya Tabassian, director) will join with Mi’kmaq singer Darlene Gijuminag and Tuvan throat singer (khöömei), Mongun-ool Ondar to present a programme of early Indigenous music appropriate to reflection on the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. One of the foremost representatives of Tuvan throat singing (khöömei), Mongun-ool Ondar will use his singular vocal technique to evoke the souls of the steppes and nomadic peoples. Heir to a living indigenous tradition that finds its source in the sounds of nature, Darlene Gijuminag will perform Mi’kmaq vocalizations and prayers. Their voices will be joined by the Persian melismatic stylings and songs of Kiya Tabassian, completing this meeting between three bearers of ancestral traditions, who invite the audience to take part in their dialogue about past, present, and future. Darlene Gijuminag (Mi’kmaq singer and drummer), Mongun-ool Ondar (throat singer), Kiya Tabassian (director; setar), Kianoush Khalilian (ney), Patrick Graham (percussion), Didem Basar (kanun), and Leonardo Teruggi (double bass).

L’Harmonie des Saisons

Sprezzatura!

​Sunday, October 1, 2023, 3:00 p.m.

Brunton Auditorium, Sackville NB

Ensemble L’Harmonie des saisons (Mélisande Corriveau & Eric Milnes, directors) performs this breathtaking programme of virtuosic 17th-century music Sprezzatura! Italy was a source of musical influence and new styles inspired by notational developments, particularly those that emerged at the turn of the 17th century during the early Baroque period. Known as the seconda pratica, this new musical language was infused with improvisation and inspired by a search for elegance and the ability to move the emotions of the listeners. As a result, instruments were featured in increasingly virtuosic and creative roles. Julia Wedman (violin), Matthew Jennejohn (cornetto), Mélisande Corriveau (cello and viol), and Eric Milnes (organ and harpsichord).