Musique Chez Nous concert series marks 35 years
The Musique Chez Nous concert series officially got started at the end of September with the annual Howard Brown Memorial Concert, but in many ways the shows begin tonight with a program from pianist Michel Franck. While Franck is the headliner, Music Department Chair Jack Eby said that there is another performer that members of the faculty are eager to hear from: the department’s recently refurbished Steinway piano.
“It’s a wonderful, wonderful instrument, and an uncommon one,” Eby told The Record, explaining that there are few pianos like it in North America. The instrument was donated to the department in 1985 by the Bandeen family. “It was a sensational instrument then,” he continued. “We never heard it in its prime in Bandeen (hall) because by the time we moved in it already had ten years of hard labour on it.”
After a $26,000 makeover, paid for in part by the family and also with some of the funds from the sale of the university’s Knowlton campus, the instrument is essentially brand new.
“(Franck) is playing pieces that demand an instrument like this,” Eby added, “he couldn’t have played on this instrument last year.”
According to Sonia Patenaude, who worked on coordinating the series, Franck is returning to Bishop’s with a program of sonatas by Beethoven, Scarlatti, Scriabin and Chopin.
“Michel Franck was our guest last year,” she said. “It’s rare that we have the same musicians come year after year, we try to switch it up a little bit, but we were looking for someone who would play this first concert with lots of love and integrity, so Franck was a nobrainer.”
After tonight’s concert, the series continues on October 18 with a visit from jazz vocalist Kellylee Evans, and again on October 25 with Baritone Jeremy Huw Williams.
Williams’ show is one of two this season, along with the Duo François at the end of January that will premiere a new composition by Andrew Macdonald. This, Eby highlighted, is something people may want to come out and hear because of the fact that it is likely to be more rare in the future.
“Andrew’s retiring this year, you know,” said the department chair, who is also taking his leave of the school this year. “Without him here, the odds of hearing him will diminish.”
On November 1, Olivier Hebert and the Lofi Octet will play in Bandeen Hall, with Les Voix Humaines taking on Vivaldi’s four seasons the following week.
After that the series goes quiet for most of the month before coming back at the beginning of December with the familiar festival of Lessons and Carols at St.-mark’s Chapel and the BU Singers’ Christmas concert.
“In December they welcome guest conductor Jean-philippe Dutil, who is a very sought-after choral conductor,” Patenaude said, sharing that the program includes works by Britten and Rutter, as well as a work called Frostiana that sets some of Robert Frost’s best known works to choral music.
Going back to their roots, the choir will be performing that concert in Bandeen, limiting audience capacity to about 300 over the course of two nights, although the show will be televised by MATV.
In the New Year the Duo François takes to the stage in Bandeen at the end of January, and Bishop’s own Fannie Gaudette plays the hall on February 21.
“She’s written music to the poetry of her uncle, Normand Achim, and she’ll be recording an album soon,” Patenaude said, enthusiastic about the idea that the local crowd will be among the first audiences to hear Gaudette’s work.
The last visiting artists of the Musique Chez Nous series will be the Sam Kirmayer Sextet on March 27, although the series officially comes to a close, as usual, with the Bishop’s University Singers’ spring concert in April, the theme of which will be “Broadway.”
More information about the individual concerts and the subscription program is available through the Centennial Theatre box office at 819-8229692.