The fourth annual Winnipeg Baroque Festival is set to provide Winnipeg music lovers with a buffet of musical offerings from the city’s best choirs and instrumentalists.
“The Winnipeg Baroque Festival strives to build a sense of community celebrating music from the past and showcasing it in exciting and new perspectives,” says composer and Dead of Winter's artistic director Andrew Balfour in a statement. “Dedicated to showcasing and collaborating with musicians from across the musical spectrum in Manitoba and beyond, the Festival’s mandate is to provide access to some of the most glorious music in the musical canon to all in the community.”
Over the course of three weeks, the Festival is set to present an unprecedented sixteen concerts which range from small groups to large scale ensembles, instrumental offerings to choral masterworks, Italian gems to German stalwarts.
The festival is set to begin with an intimate, freewill offering on March 30th at 7 p.m. from All the King’s Men. The resident ensemble of the College Chapel of St. John the Evangelist at the University of Manitoba first performed as part of the 2024 festival with a concert that ended up being standing-room only. This year, All the King’s Men presents a contemplative evening with Masters of the Early 17th Century, which showcases the best of the English and Italian musical icons like William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, Claudio Monteverdi and Giovanni Gabrieli.
One of the strengths of the festival is the creative spark that it provides Winnipeg’s best classical music performers to form new collaborations. This is the case with the Trio Leonarda, which will introduce themselves to Winnipeg audiences with their debut concert entitled Heaven Will Always Return on April 2 at 7:30 p.m. at Canadian Mennonite University’s Laudamus Auditorium. Composed of violinist Elation Pauls, keyboardist Leanne Regehr Lee and cellist Alyssa Ramsay, the trio will make that introduction to the Italian Ursuline nun Isabella Leonarda through her jovial violin sonata. The concert will also feature the vocal works J.S. Bach, which the trio will perform along with acclaimed local soprano Lara Ciekiewicz.
The Nonsuch Ensemble continues the period instrument showcase in the festival's first week on April 4 at 7 p.m. at All Saints Anglican Church. Cellist Blair Burns, flutist Nancy Hennen and keyboardist Carol Piller will help to usher in spring with Le printemps, a thaw-inspiring collection of rare gems from composers like Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, Germain Pinel, and Jean-Baptiste Drouart de Bousset. A French impression of Antonio Vivaldi’s Spring provides a familiar greeting to an old, much-missed friend.
Another beloved friend of the Winnipeg Baroque Festival will greet audiences just down the street at Young United Church the following day (April 5) at 1pm. The Royal Canadian College of Organists, Winnipeg Centre is proud to present its Bach Marathon concert, a beloved community celebration of amateur musicians performing their favourite pieces by J.S. Bach on a wide variety of instruments. J.S. Bach himself and his wife will return once again to host the pay-what-you-can festivities.
The weekend concludes with one of Festival’s founding members presenting a groundbreaking musical experience called Polyphony Meets the Prairies. Led by Andrew Balfour, Dead of Winter will in turn lead a journey through 14th and 18th century polyphony, from Hildegard von Bingen, Alonso Lobo and Manuel Cardoso, plus Mexican Indigenous composers Manuel de Zumaya and Geronimo Gonzales. Woven within is Balfour's groundbreaking Indigenous oratorio for chamber choir, viola, narrator and language keeper. Waa Waa Steewak (Northern Lights): A Sacred Ispiciwin (Journey) is the Eagle and Condor prophecy seen through the eyes of a young Cree girl flung into different time perspectives by a Trickster. Europe meets North and South America in this reimagining of the presentation of early music. Dead of Winter chose the acoustic beauty of St. John's College Chapel to heighten this unique experience.
The Festival’s second week opens on April 9 at 7:30 p.m. at the Crescent Arts Centre in Osborne Village. The Manitoba Chamber Orchestra will welcome violinist-conductor Aisslinn Nosky for a concert called Solace to remind us why Bach called music “a refreshment of the soul” in this escape to the otherworldly sounds of Bach and Vivaldi, but also Krzysztof Penderecki and Manitoba’s own Jocelyn Morlock.
Audiences are invited back to All Saints Anglican Church for April 11 at 7 p.m. to recount a pivotal piece of music in the life of J.S. Bach. Back in 1705, a young Bach walked over 400 kilometers to hear the music of Dietrich Buxtehude. The All Saints Anglican Church Choir will recreate the awe Bach felt at the end of his journey by performing Buxtehude's "Membra Jesu Nostri" as well as his organ Magnificat interspersed with Gregorian chant. The choir will be joined by the ensemble Fidem In Fidibus on period instruments.
April 12 marks the only day on the 2025 Winnipeg Baroque Festival calendar with multiple offerings to enjoy. The day gets underway at 2 p.m. at St. Margaret’s Anglican Church in Wolseley with Fidem in Fidibus's own concert. The ensemble formed for the 2024 Festival, and they now return for an afternoon of period chamber music they've named La Folia. The title comes from Antonio Vivaldi's violin sonata of the same name, and also features the music of Andrea Falconieri and Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber.
To follow up the afternoon of northern Italian stylings, Canzona invites audiences to a musical nightcap of relaxing sounds called Bed, Bach & Beyond, the first-ever Festival concert in the new Desautels Concert Hall at 7 p.m. Alongside a program of Bach motets, the concert also features slumber songs by Eric Whitacre and Nicholas Ryan Kelly, lullabies by Brock McEwan and Shawn Crouch, and even some teddy bears from Winnipeg’s own Sid Robinovitch.
April 13 sees Festival-goers going from a two-concert day to a two-ensemble concert. The Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir and Winnipeg Singers are joining forces to present The Seven Last Words of Christ at 3 p.m. at the St. Boniface Cathedral. Under the baton of Yuri Klaz, the two groups will share Haydn’s masterwork with musicians from the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.
The Festival’s third week officially begins on April 14th and 16th with two unique concerts by two inimitable performers marking the first-ever transatlantic collaboration in the Festival’s history. Winnipeg’s own Karl Stobbe and Berlin pianist Benjamin Moser will be presenting two concerts centering around two of the most beloved pieces of the Baroque era” Bach’s Goldberg Variations and a unique rearrangement of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s Rosary Sonatas. Both concerts take place at 7:30 p.m. in the Laudamus Auditorium at Canadian Mennonite University.
Fresh off their debut album Sing to Me Again being released in January, Fierbois - the duo of oboist Caitlin Broms-Jacobs and pianist Madeline Hildebrand - will be making their Winnipeg Baroque Festival debut. Their program Love and Madness shares bold music from the French Baroque to channel the spirit of their namesake - the sword of Joan of Arc. Featuring the works of Francoise Couperin, Louis Couperin, Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, and Jean-Baptiste Lully, the duo will be joined by celebrated Winnipeg flutist Jan Kocman and bassoonist Katie Brooks.
Another first-time contributor presents a previously-unheard element in the Festival: brass. Led by Richard Gillis and Andrew Balfour, the Winnipeg Baroque Festival Brass Choir will take the stage of the Desautels Concert Hall on April 18 at 7:30 p.m. Their debut program features the antiphonal music of Venetian master Giovanni Gabriel, brass transcriptions of Elizabethan composers William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons, and new arrangements for brass choir of the music of J.S. Bach. This concert celebrates the rich brass tradition of arranging and transcribing Baroque music as well as the pedigree of Winnipeg’s brass community.
The 2025 Festival concludes on April 19 at 7 p.m. at Westworth United Church in River Heights with one of the most celebrated works in the Baroque repertoire. Led by Dr. Janet Brenneman and featuring the CMU Festival Chorus and soloists from the community, this performance of the St. John Passion will be a unique offering steeped in a decades-long tradition of performance in the Mennonite community.
For tickets and more information, be sure to visit www.winnipegbaroquefestival.com, or follow them on Facebook and Instagram at @wpgbaroquefestival!