The Sackville Festival of Early Music kicks off a series of three public concerts tonight with L’Harmonie des saisons at the Brunton Auditorium. But the musicians have already been busy this week, in locals schools and at Mount Allison, engaging young musicians and music lovers.
CHMA spoke to festival director Linda Pearse to get the lowdown on the 19th season for the Sackville Festival of Early Music.
For 19 years now, the Sackville Festival of Early Music (SFEM) has celebrated Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music, through performance, educational outreach, master class instruction, and amateur workshops.
This weekend features three public concerts: On Friday night, Ensemble L’Harmonie des saisons plays a program of Bach Concertos, and then on Saturday, Ensemble Constantinople presents a programme of early Indigenous musics entitled 'Breathings'. On Sunday afternoon, L’Harmonie des Saisons returns for a concert featuring Mount Allison’s new Klop continuo organ, a recent grant-funded acquisition.
Mount Allison University’s new Klop continuo organ. Photo: Linda Pearse, SFEM
“With this instrument, we can access so much more repertoire and our students get to have that opportunity to learn about historical performance practice,” says Pearse. “It’s very exciting.”
The Klop organ is the second addition to Mount Allison's music department inspired and organized by the festival. Last year, the department acquired a harpischord through a gift from a dedicated festival fan.
The musicians of L’Harmonie des Saisons have already been in the region all week, engaging with students at Salem Elementary School in Sackville and Sistema NB in Moncton. They also delivered a lecture-recital at Mount Allison on Wednesday.
Pearse says the educational mission of the SFEM is one of the things she loves about the festival. “I love the possibility to connect the experience of performed music with curricular happenings in classrooms,” says Pearse. “We often collaborate with faculty who are working on this period, but from a different lens,” such as literature or history. And there’s also the sheer joy of organizing concerts for the community. “There’s a lot of positive energy around this festival,” says Pearse.
While the Festival concerts are this weekend, a community engagement project called Aleotti: Now and Then will continue through October. The project involves recordings of three unique versions of a piece of music written by a renegade nun from the 16th century, named Raphaelle Aleotti. The pieces were then combined to create a musical installation in various spaces in Tantramar this month.
The installation will travel from the Marjorie Young Bell Conservatory this weekend, to the Fog Forest Gallery, the Mount Allison University Chapel, the Sackville Visitor Information Centre, and Marshview Middle School by the final week of October. More details are available in the program booklet for this year’s Sackville Festival of Early Music, and schedule and tickets for concerts are available at sackvilleearlymusic.com.