Heliconian Hall Series 

Heliconian Hall
35 Hazelton Ave. (near Bay Subway)
Tickets at the door $30/$20 students & seniors

For over a decade Hallie Fishel, soprano, and John Edwards, lutes and guitars, have brought Toronto very elegant songs which, though old, will be ‘new’ to many listeners. In some cases works from our raids of original prints and manuscripts which have lain on library shelves for centuries have been given their North American debut by us.

Nov. 15, 2014 at 8PM
New, Very Elegant Songs and Dances
French solo lute music (and some by Italian immigrants) of the 16th century played by John Edwards. As well as music published in Paris from the royal lutenists Albert de Rippe (the Mantuan Alberto da Ripa) and the homegrown Guillaume Morlaye you will hear the European union of lute music from Lyon (Jean-Paul Paladin/Paladino) and the now French, then German city of Strasbourg where Sixtus Kargel published his collection of dances and songs arranged for the lute Novae, elegantissimae, Gallicae, item et Italicae cantilenae, Mutetæ & Passomezo, adiunctis suis Saltarellis…

Jan. 1, 2015 at 2PM & 2, 2015 at 8PM
A New Year’s Day Concert
After all the pre-Christmas Messiahs and A Baroque Christmas programs, you will have a week off so you will be ready for our annual concert of High Baroque music  with Hallie Fishel, soprano and John Edwards on archlute, with Christopher Verrette and Patricia Ahern, Baroque violins and Borys Medicky, harpsichord. The only new year’s alternative to Strauss waltzes.

Mar. 7, 2015 at 8PM
Donne on Love and Death 
John Donne’s poem An Epithalamion, or Marriage Song On the Lady Elizabeth and Count Palatine Being Married on St. Valentine’s Day and his A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day read by scholar and author Seth Lerer with songs by Campion, Dowland and others sung by Hallie Fishel with John Edwards on Renaissance lutes. Music and sweet poetry will be demonstrated to be in such steadfast agreement that it will not be doubted that ‘One god is god of both, as poets feign.’

May 2, 2015 at 8PM
In Stile Moderno
Claudio Monteverdi has been called ‘the creator of modern music’ and Salamone Rossi has been credited with the invention of the trio sonata. We present the then avant garde music of Monteverdi and Rossi and their contemporaries at the court of the Dukes of Mantua. Hallie Fishel sings and John Edwards plays theorbo and lute, with Christopher Verrette and Patricia Ahern playing Renaissance violins.

The Principal’s Music Series at St. Michael’s College

Sing Praise Upon the Lute and Viol

Fr. Madden Auditorium, Carr Hall, 100 St Joseph St.
St. Michael's College, University of Toronto
Tickets $30, $20 students and seniors at the door.

One of last year's shows in Madden Auditorium

As Ensemble-in-Residence at St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto, we present a series of concerts 16th and 17th century sacred domestic music for voice, strings led by Christopher Verrette, and lutes. A pre-concert talk at 7:30PM puts the music in context. Concerts at 8PM.

In 1620 Monteverdi wrote to his opera librettist Striggio explaining why he couldn’t possibly get away to Mantua. Apart from his duties at St. Mark’s Church, ‘there is the Most Illustrious Primicerius, for whom every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, I make music in a certain oratory of his, to which half the nobility come.’ Similarly Byrd and other Elizabethan composers created domestic sacred music for voice and viols or violins. And of course, we can imagine the guilty melancholic evaporating his thoughts to his lute.

Psalms, Songs and Sonnets – Sep. 26, 2014
Consort songs, motets and In Nomines for strings, and lute music by Byrd, Lassus, Dowland and others with a violin band. Music from the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras which shows a bubbling stewpot of music sacred and secular, Catholic and Protestant, full of subtle craftsmanship and even a little dazzle.

Motets With Symphonies – Oct 24, 2014
In the dedication to the Holy Roman Empress, Monteverdi says her protection gave him the confidence ‘to bring to light this spiritual and moral wood’. We present his Confitebor Tibi ala Francese (‘if you like, with four violins, leaving the soprano voice solo’), Grandi’s O vos omnes and other music from Monteverdi’s Selva Morale e Spirituale and Grandi’s Motetti con Sinfonie and sonatas for strings and theorbo.

The Cure of Religious Melancholy – Jan. 30, 2015
Robert Burton published his treatise an Anatomy of Melancholy in the last years of the reign of James I, when religious melancholy, which Burton puts in the section of his book on Love Melancholy, was a real problem among the ‘Godly’. He also tells us one cure is ‘Music of all sorts aptly applied’. We combine the ‘passionate pavans’ of John Dowland’s Lachrimæ or seaven teares for violins and lute with some of his airs, consort songs and music in memory of his beloved friend Sir Henry Noel.