One of the stalwart features of the Winnipeg Baroque Festival over the last few years has been\u00a0the Choral Evensong\u00a0contributed by All the King\u2019s Men. The resident choir of St. John\u2019s College at the University of Manitoba is preparing\u00a0a\u00a0slightly\u00a0different\u00a0offering\u00a0with their evensong this year\u00a0as they focus on a single composer.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
With the help of the instrumental ensemble Fidem in Fidibus and organist Lottie Enns-Braun, the choir will share an evening\u00a0comprised\u00a0solely of the music of Orlando Gibbons. The Cambridge-based composer\u00a0was steeped in the\u00a0court\u00a0music of King James I, working at the Chapel Royal and, eventually, as organist at\u00a0Westminster\u00a0Abbey.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe decided to focus on Gibbons this year because he contributed so much to the new reformed English Church of the 17th\u00a0century,\u201d says Charles Horton, conductor of All the King\u2019s Men,\u00a0highlighting the composer\u2019s use of the English language as opposed to Latin and the use of the then-new King James Bible.\u00a0<\/p>\n
An early-17th\u00a0century immersion\u00a0<\/p>\n
To\u00a0properly celebrate Gibbons\u2019 contributions to English church music, All the King\u2019s Men will perform music as the composer himself may have written and shared it in his time. \u201cWhen you come to the service, it will be as if you\u2019re sitting in the Chapel Royal in the first 25 years of the 17th\u00a0century,\u201d Horton explains. \u201cYou\u2019re going to get the entire experience of the music, the instructions that are in the program \u2013 what we call the rubrics \u2013 the readings, it will all be exactly what you would have heard at the time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not just an exposure to the music, but\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0the context of the music in a service that it would have been intended for.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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This immersion experience will be\u00a0assisted\u00a0by Fidem in Fidibus \u2013 violinist Momoko Matsumura and Tatiana Friesen, violist Jennifer\u00a0Thiessen\u00a0and cellist Nathaniel Froese \u2013 in a first-time collaboration for the ensemble.\u00a0Along with assisting in the concert\u2019s church music,\u00a0Fidem in Fidibus\u00a0will share instrumental consort music written for the court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Horton says that working with an ensemble like this has allowed to come at this music with a different approach than usual. \u201cIt changes the way we approach articulation,\u201d he says, \u201cthe way we approach the shaping of line, because to play with a string ensemble using Baroque bows, Baroque tuning, Baroque articulations, you\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0help but be swept up by that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Trans-Atlantic experience brings inspiration\u00a0<\/p>\n
The other major inspiration for All the King\u2019s Men as they prepare their Gibbons evensong is\u00a0their most recent trip to perform in cathedrals in England. A biennial occurrence, the group\u2019s 2025 journey saw them perform at the historic Ely Cathedral.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an experience of knowing what it\u2019s like to be a musician who\u2019s on call every day, to sing services every day,\u201d say Horton, likening it to the experience that Gibbons himself would have had. \u201cI think traveling together and doing these\u00a0services\u00a0helped to bind the group together and give them a commitment to the process of what we\u2019re involved in.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
All the King\u2019s Men\u2019s Choral Evensong\u00a0will take place at 7 p.m. on April 12 at the College Chapel of St. John the Evangelist. Admission is available on a pay-what-you-can basis. More information can be found at the\u00a0Winnipeg\u00a0Baroque Festival\u2019s website.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the stalwart features of the Winnipeg Baroque Festival over the last few years has been\u00a0the Choral…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-592692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}