2025 Festival Program
Event 1: Trumpet and Organ
John Foster (natural trumpet) and David Drury (organ) with a wonderful blend of well-known and lesser-known baroque works.
Event 2: David Drury - Channeling Bach
Brilliant organist David Drury can do things with an organ that have to be heard to be believed. Baroque masterpieces and improvisations on themes submitted by the audience.
Event 3: Marais Project Baroque and Beyond - Songs and Interludes from around the globe
Jenny Eriksson (viola da gamba), Susie Bishop (voice/violin), Tommie Andersson (theorbo, lute, guitar), The Marais Project has a focus on the music of the baroque era with a particular emphasis on the works of our namesake, Marin Marais, a performer and composer at the Court of Louis XIV. This performance will present 17th century vocal music from around the globe with instrumental interludes featuring songs by giants of the time, Monteverdi and Purcell, Bach, Handel as well as works by lesser-known composers such as Marais and the Swede, Johan Helmich Roman. As the title suggests the program reaches into the contemporary space with works by Australian composers Troy Russell, Elena Kats- Chernin, Jane Sheldon and Susie Bishop. These compositions have been carefully crafted to bring the old and new together. The concert will conclude with folk music from Sweden.
Event 4: The Coffee Cantata
Free dramatised performance of the Coffee Cantata, with a bonus aria by Vivaldi featuring Hester Wright (soprano).
Event 5: EphenStephen
For those of you who are New England Bach Festival veterans, you'll be familiar by now that a concert involving one, other, or both of EphenStephen (Stephen Tafra and Steve Thorneycroft) often means that you'll be hearing fresh transcriptions and insight into some favourite pieces. For those of you who are new to this, we do love to feature a new transcription challenge in our Bach festival concerts, as well as some interesting guitar combinations, so we're continuing to uphold and expand on those traditions for this concert.
Event 6: Armidale Organ Crawl
An ambulatory concert featuring four organs (Uniting Church, St Paul’s, St Peter’s, Saints Mary and Joseph) featuring Lena Schmalz, David Drury and Warwick Dunham. Like a pub crawl but with an organ recital in each church rather than a beer in each pub.
Event 7. Elysian Fields - Baroque Plus!
Australia’s only electric viola da gamba band! Jenny Eriksson, Matt Keegan and Matt McMahon are Elysian Fields. Mostly original works written by the band members, fusing together elements of Baroque and Jazz music. Piano, voice, violin, saxophone and bass create new sonorities as they blend with the electric viola da gamba in Matt McMahon’s setting of Renaissance poetry by Sir Thomas Wyatt in the Song Cycle, “What Should I Say”.
Event 8: In Bach’s Company
Join three of Armidale’s most compelling musicians as they present a beautiful array of works by Bach and Vivaldi, arranged for various combinations of violins, recorder, cello and harpsichord. The program includes movements from Bach’s Double Violin Concerto, Vivaldi’s Chamber Concerto, Trio Sonatas, and an arrangement of the dazzling Finale from the Concerto in D minor BWV 1052. With instrumentalists Sofia Debus, James Chen, and Robert Manley.
Event 9: Historical Stories
A new perspective on baroque music with a creative fusion of spoken word and music — the old, the new, the new-old and old-new — but all here, and in presence of the present. An interweaving poetry, prose and music. Includes a newly commissioned work exploring concepts of “place”, with texts by Sarah Lawrence, Steve Harris, Catherine Emerson and Katy Haselwood. Performed by Alana Blackburn (recorders), Steve Thorneycroft (guitars), Camilla Tafra (cello), and Sarah Lawrence (narrator).
Event 10: Festival Evensong
Bach’s sacred music performed in the context for which it was written. Featuring St Peter’s Anglican Cathedral Choir, Jack Stevens (baritone), and David Drury (organ).