Early Music Vancouver (EMV) kicked off its 6th annual Bach Festival this week with the Opening Concert: Ebb and Flow at the Chan Centre for Performing Arts at UBC.
The 2022 Vancouver Bach Festival – Scottish Baroque and Other Traditions runs until Saturday, August 6 and explores the entertaining fusion of Scottish traditional music and the music of the Baroque masters that emerged in the 17th century.
For the June 27th Opening Concert: Ebb and Flow, the water themed concert featured the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, lead by music director Alexander Weimann on EMV’s historical Italian single-manual harpsicord.
The evening’s music opened with a performance from EMV 2022 Artists in Residence David Greenberg on violin and David McGuinness on another of EMV’s historical instruments, a French double-manual harpsicord.
Throughout the evening special guest Vancouver’s Poet Laureate Fiona Tinwei Lam recited her own original work Lost Stream honouring the hundreds of paved over streams that once covered our landscapes, as well she recited At the Fishhouse by Elizabeth Bishop and Lover on Aran by Seamus Heaney. The program for Ebb and Flow included works by William Christie, traditional Cape Breton and Scottish reels, and Handel’s much-loved Water Music was the featured works after the interval.
If you were not able to join EMV at the Chan Centre for the Opening Concert: Ebb and Flow in person, you can still enjoy the performance by subscribing to the Vancouver Bach Festival Digital Concert Package. For those not able to attend this year’s Bach Festival in-person, a digital subscription to three Bach Festival concerts is only $39, only available with a subscription.
The three concerts are:
Ebb and Flow – available online from Saturday, July 30 at 7pm through to Wednesday, August 31 at 11pm.
Next Generation: Baroque Innovations – available online from Wednesday, August 3 at 7pm through to Wednesday, August 31 at 11pm.
Bach: Kaleidoscope/Reimaginations – available Saturday, August 6 at 7pm through to Wednesday, August 31 at 11pm