Sunday, April 21th , 2024 – 4 pm
Bourgie Hall
1339, Sherbrooke West
Montréal, H3G 1G2

Bus Bus : 24 – stop De la Montagne
Métro Stations Guy-Concordia, Peel or Lucien-L’Allier

SUMMARY

On the eve of Earth Day, this concert is devoted to Nature, as it is evoked, notably, in The Song of Songs. In this love poem from The Bible, which has frequently been set to music, the lovers are compared to all our planet’s many beauties: lilies and roses, an apple tree in the middle of an orchard, gazelles and stags, the song of the dove, fig trees, pomegranate trees, and vines… While John Taverner’s Western Wind Mass is based on a popular song that speaks of the western wind and its “small rain,” Nutshimit, composed by Maurice-Gaston Du Berger to an unpublished text by Innu poet Joséphine Bacon, convinces us of the importance of the Innu’s ancestral territories, places of myths, memory, and identity.

PROGRAM

Orlando di Lasso (v. 1532-1594)
Laudate Dominum omnes gentes

Jan Sweelinck (1562-1621)
Ecce nunc benedicite Dominum

Cipriano de Rore (v. 1515-1565)
Descendi in hortum meum

Jacobus Clemens non Papa (v.1510-v.1555)
Ego flos campi

Maurice-Gaston Du Berger (1987-)
Nutshimit – World premiere, unpublished text in Innu-aimun by the poet Joséphine Bacon, commissioned by the composer.
Supported by the CALQ, creation grant

John Taverner (v. 1490-1545)
Western Wind Mass (with reconstructed interpolations of the song Westron
Wynde)

DISTRIBUTION

Choir soloists
Marie Magistry, soprano
Josée Lalonde, alto
Michiel Schrey, tenor
John Giffen, bass

Choir
Ellen Torri and Megan Chartrand, sopranos
Marie-Josée Goyette and Kristen De Marchi, altos
Kerry Bursey and Nathan LeLièvre, tenors
Normand Richard and Pierre-Étienne Bergeron, basses

Yves Saint-Amand, Innu choral advisor
Andrew McAnerney
, musical direction