Early Music Events
Edmonton has a lively professional music scene, and from time to time a recorder player or early music ensemble will grace one of the local stages. We try to provide links to these concerts. If you know of an upcoming event and think it should be posted here, please contact us.
Alison Melville Concert & Workshop
Alison Melville will be giving a concert on Sunday, November 27, 2011 at 2:00 pm. (There will be a full-day workshop on the preceeding Saturday.) The concert will take place in the sanctuary of the Parish Church of Saints Faith & Stephen the Martyr Anglican located at 11725 – 93 Street, Edmonton, Alberta. Tickets are $20 for regular general admission and $15 for students, senior and ERS members.
‘The Bird Fancyer’s Delight’
Avian-inspired Music from the 18th to 21st Centuries
Ever since they were invented, flutes of all kinds have been regarded as the quintessential bird-imitator of the musical world, a fact to which Baroque music in particular bears witness. For several years Canadian recorder virtuoso Alison Melville has been performing avian-inspired solo recitals, drawing from diverse and cosmopolitan sources of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as from folk and modern traditions and the world of contemporary poetry.
Melville will perform The Bird Fancyer’s Delight, featuring music by J.S. Bach, Telemann, Boismortier, van Eyck, James Oswald, the ubiquitous Anonymous, traditional tunes from Scandinavia, and more. Also on the musical menu is a selection of tunes from an early 18th-century English tutor for the training of songbirds (!), from which this concert takes its title, and two short works for prepared sound and recorders. The program will be played on a variety of recorders and flutes, including the Norwegian seljefløyte (willow flute).
Alison Melville is a member of the Toronto Consort and Ensemble Polaris, a regular orchestral player and soloist with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, and Artistic Director of The Bird Project, a mixed-media ensemble for music, spoken word, visuals and video. Her playing can be heard on The Tudors, The Borgias, various movie soundtracks, and on over 50 CDs. She has several critically acclaimed solo recordings to her credit, and was a professor at the Oberlin Conservatory from 1999-2010. For further information please see below.
Join us on November 27 for a rare opportunity to hear one of Canada’s leading historical flute players in an unusual and unique program inspired by the avian world!
Toronto-born Alison Melville’s musical career as a performer on historical flutes and recorders has taken her across Canada and the USA and to Iceland, Japan, New Zealand and Europe. Her extraordinary breadth of experience comprises solo and chamber music recitals; music for dance, theatre, film and television; orchestral work with modern and period instrument orchestras; concerts in venues more varied than you can imagine, from Boston’s Jordan Hall or Tokyo’s Bunkamura Theatre to inner-city schools, ferry boats and prisons; musical repertoire from the 12th to 21st centuries, composed, arranged and improvised; and music from Celtic and Scandinavian traditions.
Trained in Toronto, London (UK), and in Basel as the winner of numerous awards from the Canada Council, Alison is a member of the Toronto Consort and Ensemble Polaris, and Artistic Director of the multi-arts ensemble The Bird Project. She also appears regularly as a soloist and orchestral player with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, and as a guest with other groups. She has played on over fifty CDs including five critically acclaimed solo recordings, and her playing has been heard on the CBC, BBC, NPR, Radio New Zealand, ABC (Australia) and the Iceland State Broadcast Service. Alison is also featured on the soundtracks of The Tudors and The Borgias, films by Atom Egoyan, Ang Lee and Amnon Buchbinder, and for several years she was a fixture on CBC-TV’s The Friendly Giant.
On the teaching faculty at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music (Ohio) from 1999 to 2010, Alison Melville is currently on faculty at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music.
Western Canadians may be interested to know that although Alison was born in Toronto, she spent the early years of her life, until the age of 6, in Calgary and Winnipeg!
‘Where Melville especially shines is in the seven solo tunes from Oswald’s Caledonian Pocket Companion…Here the sound is close and intimate, and she shapes the phrases marvelously; music, breath, and ornaments are as one. This is art beyond time – the moment might last forever.’ (Early Music America, Winter 2008)
‘The Bird Fancyer’s Delight’
Avian-inspired Music from the 18th to 21st Centuries
Ever since they were invented, flutes of all kinds have been regarded as the quintessential bird-imitator of the musical world, a fact to which Baroque music in particular bears witness. For several years Canadian recorder virtuoso Alison Melville has been performing avian-inspired solo recitals, drawing from diverse and cosmopolitan sources of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as from folk and modern traditions and the world of contemporary poetry.
Melville will perform The Bird Fancyer’s Delight, featuring music by J.S. Bach, Telemann, Boismortier, van Eyck, James Oswald, the ubiquitous Anonymous, traditional tunes from Scandinavia, and more. Also on the musical menu is a selection of tunes from an early 18th-century English tutor for the training of songbirds (!), from which this concert takes its title, and two short works for prepared sound and recorders. The program will be played on a variety of recorders and flutes, including the Norwegian seljefløyte (willow flute).
Alison Melville is a member of the Toronto Consort and Ensemble Polaris, a regular orchestral player and soloist with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, and Artistic Director of The Bird Project, a mixed-media ensemble for music, spoken word, visuals and video. Her playing can be heard on The Tudors, The Borgias, various movie soundtracks, and on over 50 CDs. She has several critically acclaimed solo recordings to her credit, and was a professor at the Oberlin Conservatory from 1999-2010. For further information please see below.
Join us on November 27 for a rare opportunity to hear one of Canada’s leading historical flute players in an unusual and unique program inspired by the avian world!
Toronto-born Alison Melville’s musical career as a performer on historical flutes and recorders has taken her across Canada and the USA and to Iceland, Japan, New Zealand and Europe. Her extraordinary breadth of experience comprises solo and chamber music recitals; music for dance, theatre, film and television; orchestral work with modern and period instrument orchestras; concerts in venues more varied than you can imagine, from Boston’s Jordan Hall or Tokyo’s Bunkamura Theatre to inner-city schools, ferry boats and prisons; musical repertoire from the 12th to 21st centuries, composed, arranged and improvised; and music from Celtic and Scandinavian traditions.
Trained in Toronto, London (UK), and in Basel as the winner of numerous awards from the Canada Council, Alison is a member of the Toronto Consort and Ensemble Polaris, and Artistic Director of the multi-arts ensemble The Bird Project. She also appears regularly as a soloist and orchestral player with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, and as a guest with other groups. She has played on over fifty CDs including five critically acclaimed solo recordings, and her playing has been heard on the CBC, BBC, NPR, Radio New Zealand, ABC (Australia) and the Iceland State Broadcast Service. Alison is also featured on the soundtracks of The Tudors and The Borgias, films by Atom Egoyan, Ang Lee and Amnon Buchbinder, and for several years she was a fixture on CBC-TV’s The Friendly Giant.
On the teaching faculty at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music (Ohio) from 1999 to 2010, Alison Melville is currently on faculty at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music.
Western Canadians may be interested to know that although Alison was born in Toronto, she spent the early years of her life, until the age of 6, in Calgary and Winnipeg!
‘Where Melville especially shines is in the seven solo tunes from Oswald’s Caledonian Pocket Companion…Here the sound is close and intimate, and she shapes the phrases marvelously; music, breath, and ornaments are as one. This is art beyond time – the moment might last forever.’ (Early Music America, Winter 2008)
