The Winnipeg Baroque Festival is a collaboration between three Winnipeg choirs who are passionate about Baroque music: Canzona, Dead of Winter and Polycoro. This unprecedented collaboration celebrates the return of choral singing after the lengthy restrictions due to COVID-19. We will lift our voices together in music that has resonated with listeners for centuries – music that has stood the test of time and now serves to restore our souls once again.

Each choir will produce its own concert (April 8, 9 and 10, 2022) focusing on early music from a different region: Canzona – England; Dead of Winter – Germany; and Polycoro – Italy. [N.B. Each choir is responsible for the production and artistic costs of its own concert.] The following week will include workshops, masterclasses, panel discussions and lecture-recitals that illuminate different facets of early music and historically informed performance. The festival will culminate on April 15, 2022 with a performance of J.S. Bach’s St John Passion with Vancouver’s Pacific Baroque Orchestra, Baroque soloists Jane Fingler, Vicki St. Pierre, Haitham Haidar and Jonathon Adams, and a combined force of the most powerful Manitoba choristers. We believe this will be the first-ever performance of this monumental piece on historical instruments in Manitoba. 

The inclusion of period instruments is integral to our vision of this festival. The Pacific Baroque Orchestra visited Manitoba for the first time in 2018 to great acclaim. These musicians are world-class experts in “historically informed performance” (HIP), an approach that uses instruments and techniques as close as possible to those used in Bach’s time. With the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, we propose to transport the audience back in time to Leipzig, Germany to hear this Passion performed the way Bach would have heard it at its première on Good Friday in 1724 – just as glorious, visceral and relevant today as then. 

Canzona, Dead of Winter and Polycoro are excited to be partnering in this way for the first time. We believe that strengthening the ties between our organizations will benefit the larger choral community. We hope to draw national and international attention to the significant choral talent in Manitoba and establish the Winnipeg Baroque Festival as a nexus of world-class early music performance.