Here are the concerts for 10-11 season. Click the blue CanadaHelps button to the right if you want to help us hire a small orchstra for New Year's Day. I'll be posting more on these in the next few days between working on getting the season brochure ready. Email us at musinord@sympatico.ca if you'd like a copy mailed to you or a pdf emailed to you.

Her Leaves be Green – Oct 30, 2010 – 8PM
The above rhyme is from the dedication of John Danyel’s Book of Ayres of 1606. We present a concert of music written for Miss Anne Greene and the Egerton sisters, students, and later patronesses of songwriters Danyel, Henry Lawes and John Bartlet. Lute pieces from the manuscript collection of Margaret Board will round out the program, and John will have prepared by practising the exercises in that book in the hand of her teacher, John Dowland.

New Year’s Day – January 1 – 8PM and 2 – 2PM, 2011
Our immensely popular celebration of the New Year with music of 17th and 18th century Vienna, with cantatas and sonatas by Conti, Vivaldi and Caldara. An instrumental ensemble will be led by Christopher Verrette.

Blame Not My Lute – February 5, 2011 – 8PM
John plays lute solos from Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Pavans, galliards, jigs, fancies and dumps.

Rococo! – March 12, 2011 – 8PM
In the Parisian intellectual salon, men like the encyclopaedist Diderot, liberal thinkers like Rousseau and even a pre-imperial Napoleon would gather, literally, at the foot of the bed of great ladies. And after a hard afternoon’s reporting to one’s patron how the encyclopaedia or the thinking or the revolution plotting was coming along, one would need to unwind with some chamber music. Hallie sings, John plays Baroque guitar and Christopher Verrette joins us on violin.

A Sa Lyre – Apr. 16, 2011 – 8PM
The Renaissance saw the lute and guitar as their substitute for the Classical lyre. Indeed, Ronsard (who the French call the Prince of Poets) wrote odes to all three instruments, using ‘lute’ and ‘lyre’ interchangeably in one poem, depending on what rhymed. This concert will see us singing settings of the great poets of 16th century France, Saint-Gelais, and Clement Marot set by Sermisy, Goudimel and others, with dances from the country that invented ballet.

The picture above is by Gerard van Honhorst. It's painted on a ceiling so it looks like the musicians are playing down to you from the balcony. There is a theorbo and another lute and a parrot outside the crop. You can see that the blonde singer supports the Boston Red Sox as does Hallie.