2021 - 2022 Season
As the Plague raged on during this season, we continued to create and present more online content. We kept our ongoing commitment to presenting, promoting and celebrating Renaissance music and culture.
Early Music Lecture Series
We continue in embracing current technology to present internationally regarded Renaissance scholars in a series of online lectures for CRSP fans and early music enthusiasts to enjoy at home.
Cum jubilo: Singing in Women’s Communities in the Middle Ages
In November 2021 we released our second offering from this series features CRSP soprano Marcia Jenneth Epstein talking with Katherine Hill, the Artistic Director of the world-renowned Toronto Consort. These lovely ladies discuss the fascinating topic of women singing the Middle Ages. This interview is split into 2 videos. Both videos are now available for viewing on our YouTube channel . Some of the topics covered are: Medieval ideas about singing, women's lives in Medieval cloisters and villages, Medieval music notation and original music by Hildegard of Bingen and other female composers of the Middle Ages.
A Light In The Darkness
Originally streamed December 19, 2021
This virtual concert features the CRSP choristers singing works such as Palestrina's Tui sunt caeli, Abbie Betinis' Lumen, and the Canadian composer Ernest Gagnon's arrangement of Il est né.
Also featured are performances by guest jazz musicians Frank Rackow (clarinet, saxophones) and Andréa Petrity (piano) who play three carols and Jewish melodies of the Middle Ages and Renaissance and improvise on those themes.
Another guest artist on the video is Weyman Chan who sings bass with us. Weyman is a celebrated local poet who just won the Latner’s Writer’s Trust Poetry Prize.
Image courtesy of ESA/Hubble & NASA
Love, Love, Love
Originally streamed May 15, 2022
This concert celebrates Love in its many forms - spiritual and human. Drawing upon past recordings, we selected songs from the Renaissance (e.g., Palestrina's Sicut Cervus and Thomas Greaves' Come Away Sweet Love) and the modern era such as Maurice Duruflé’s Ubi Caritas.
This video also feature instrumental contributions from three friends of the choir, Ralph Meier, Mustafa Kamaliddin and Donovan Seidle - very talented Calgary-based musicians.
Rounding out the concert is love poetry from Cassy Welburn, Weyman Chan, and Roberta Rees, plus a poem by John Donne read by Katie O'Keefe of the Calgary Young People's Theatre.
