Wednesday 15 October, 7.30pm
St. Augustine’s Church, Edgbaston
VESPERS OF ST. SEBASTIAN
Marìa Cristina Kiehr & Concerto Soave
Marìa Cristina Kiehr enjoys an outstanding international reputation as a singer of Baroque music. Here she and the ensemble Concerto Soave draw on the music of Monteverdi and some of the most talented of his contemporaries to create an intimate celebration of Vespers for the Feast of St. Sebastian as it might have been heard at a church in Venice in the early 17th century.
Saturday 25 October, 7.30pm
St Philip’s Cathedral, Birmingham
MUSIC FOR COMPLINE
Stile Antico
The young and dynamic vocal ensemble Stile Antico was prizewinner at the 2005 Early Music Network International Young Artists’ Competition. This programme of English music suitable for the late evening office of Compline includes uplifting settings of meditative texts, from the extraordinary complex sonorities of John Sheppard’s Libera nos to the simplest of hymns by Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, and culminates in Hugh Aston’s thrilling votive antiphon Gaude, virgo mater Christi.
Friday 31 October, 9pm
St. George’s Church, Edgbaston
LEÇONS DE TÉNÈBRES
Les Lumières de Ténèbres
The Holy Week service of Tenebrae is marked by the gradual extinguishing of candles, with the final part of the service said in darkness. The lessons of the title, taken from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, will be sung in the exquisite settings of the 17th-century French composer Marc Antoine Charpentier by soprano Julia Gooding.
Saturday 1 November, 7.30pm
Barber Institute of Fine Arts
COFFEE HOUSE MUSIC
Passacaglia with Julia Gooding
Renowned for the friendly and informative presentation of its programmes, Passacaglia combines insightful interpretations with spoken introductions that ensure the music is accessible to every member of the audience. Coffee House Music is one of Passacaglia’s most enduringly popular programmes. A thoroughly entertaining collection of music, it contains works by J. S. Bach, Telemann and Handel, as originally performed in the sociable atmosphere of the 18th-century coffee house, and takes a comic look at the intoxicating effects of coffee in France, as seen through the eyes of Marin Marais and Nicolas Bernier.
Thursday 6 November, 7.30pm
Barber Institute of Fine Arts
MEXICAN FANDANGO
Palimpsest
Singer Clara Sanabras, guitarist and dancer Steven Player, and harpsichordist Knut Johannesen bring vitality to the music of the past, reading between the lines of music and dance theory.
In Mexico the Fandango was an event, a place to meet, play and dance; a celebration and an excuse for a fiesta. The programme, which aims to illustrate the well-known ‘feast of the dead’ (the typical ritualistic dance of the skeletons), celebrates the meeting of European and indigenous populations and the music that stemmed from that meeting.
ASSOCIATED EVENT 2008
Saturday 8 November 2008, 7.30pm
The Oratory, Birmingham
Ex Cathedra Consort
Conductor Jeffrey Skidmore
Passion A Renaissance Remembrance
Lamentations for Tenebrae on Maundy Thursday Lassus
Tenebrae Responsories MacMillan
St Matthew Passion Lassus
Tickets available from 0121 236 4455 or www.birmingham-rep.co.uk; £25 (£23) / £20 (£18) / £15 (£13) / Unreserved £7
www.bemf.net