Two recently founded concert series will launch new seasons on Sunday. Outwardly, the series are very different, one focusing on early music, the other on contemporary repertoire. But they are alike in their devotion to intimate music-making — small-scale works performed in small-scale venues that put performers and audience in close contact and encourage concentrated listening. There is considerable overlap between the early-music and new-music crowds here, so it is fortunate that one of the concerts is in the afternoon, the other in the evening.
The afternoon concert will feature Les Amusements de la Chambre, the duo formed in 2010 by violinist Emily Redhead and keyboard player Katelyn Clark, both of whom grew up here and now divide their time between Victoria and Montreal. (Clark plays piano, harpsichord or organ, depending on the repertoire.)
This year, the duo presented three “salon concerts” inspired by the small private recitals commonplace in major European cities in the 18th century, though, of necessity, they did so in a large, resonant church. For Sunday’s concert, they have found a much more appropriate, truly salon-like venue: Merlin’s Sun Home Theatre.
This 50-seat theatre is in a private home on Fairfield Road, owned by Tim Gosley and Petra Kixmöller (she is an actor, he an actor and puppeteer). In support of local artists, the couple makes Merlin’s available for plays, shows and all sorts of concerts.
On Sunday, Redhead and Clark will explore the instrumental music of 17th-century Italy, with a program comprising works for violin and harpsichord by Fontana, Castello, Frescobaldi and Veracini, plus harpsichord solos by Frescobaldi and Picchi. Only one of these names, Frescobaldi’s, counts as familiar, but that’s no surprise: Much 17th-century repertoire still languishes in obscurity, even though (or perhaps because?) the century was rife with gloriously eccentric, unpredictable, unclassifiable music. Redhead and Clark are particularly excited to be performing some of the earliest violin sonatas with a fully written-out harpsichord part.
The duo plans to offer three more concerts in 2014, all in small venues and featuring some guest performers. (For details, go to amusementsdelachambre.com.)
Les Amusements de la Chambre also has several newly commissioned works in the pipeline by local pianist and composer Daniel Brandes, to be performed next spring.
It was Brandes who founded A Place to Listen, a contemporary-music series launched last fall that has offered nine concerts to date, in the charming, cosy confines of James Bay United Church. A Place to Listen is less a concert series than “a listening series,” Brandes says. The emphasis is on creating an atmosphere of “deep quietness and immersed listening.”
The second season of A Place to Listen will begin Sunday evening, with a concert (co-sponsored by Open Space) featuring local soprano Catherine Lewis, who has been a fixture on the Canadian contemporary-music scene for almost 40 years, and including what is arguably the most intimate kind of music: the unaccompanied human voice.
Lewis’s program will open with five chants by the 12th-century abbess Hildegard of Bingen and continue with contemporary works by Barbara Monk Feldman and two Toronto-based composers with connections to Victoria: Linda Catlin Smith and Anna Höstman. (Both studied composition at the University of Victoria, and Höstman was a composer-in-residence with the Victoria Symphony from 2005 to 2008.)
Two pieces on the program — the only ones with accompaniment (Brandes at the piano) — were composed especially for Lewis: Smith’s every petal, after a poem by William Carlos Williams, and Höstman’s What Her Friend Said, after a poem by Kollan Arici.
A Place to Listen has four more concerts scheduled this season (For details, go to aplacetolisten.tumblr.com.)
