Camerata Nova & Skye Consort Celebrate the Live Tradition of French Folk Music with 'Nova France'

Camerata Nova is a group known for consistently providing audiences with rich, cultured musical experiences. The vocal ensemble presented their latest musical venture on Saturday night in tandem with Festival du Voyageur, Winnipeg's annual festival celebrating the city's Franco-Manitoban heritage. Camerata Nova kept up the spirit of Festival with Nova France: 1000 Years of French Song - featuring a delightfully unique collaboration with Skye Consort. Headed by the multi-talented Sean Dagher, Skye Consort is an early music instrumental group based in Montreal.

Dagher was the master behind the program's arrangements, which were full and generous, enlivening the French folk genre as both innovative and educational.

"There is great diversity within traditional French folk music," said Dagher. "It was developed for living and working, which makes it an ongoing part of the living tradition today."

The repertoire ranged from troubadour music of the High Middle Ages to traditional songs of Quebec, Acadia and Metis. The collaboration between the choir and the ensemble was festive and humorous, and also not limited between the two groups on stage. Along with twelve or so other audience members, I had the opportunity to participate in the debut of Winnipeg's largest Spoon Choir! As a feature of Andrew Balfour's Le voyageur, the choir clacked homemade wooden spoon devices against whatever body part could endure a five minute pounding.

Homemade spoon tongs were, surprisingly, not the only unusual instruments featured in the concert. Skye Consort showed off a gadgety-looking Swedish key fiddle – a medieval instrument with a portable acoustic. "Even in the driest of rooms it brings its own cathedral," said Deghar.

The evening's program was full of this kind of charming eclecticism. As an audience we were invited to enjoy music as quirky and diverse as the original attached texts. A l'entrada del ten clar, written in the old Occitan language of Southern France, tells of a haughty young queen and a grizzly king, while Qui veut chaser une migraine offers some good old fashioned anecdotes in the form of a 17th century drinking song: "If you want to get rid of a headache, you only have to drink wine and keep a table full of sausage and ham!"

Ross Brownlee, Camerata Nova's early music director, propelled the program forward with high enthusiasm. He told the audience that he and Deghar had met in Montreal by happenstance during a bike tour. "It's amazing what can come out of funny little encounters," said Brownlee.

Deghar was equally as excited as Brownlee about the collaboration: "The choir is so good, I could really write anything for them – I would love to collaborate with them again."

The musical alliance was wonderfully successful in redefining the experience of traditional music as one that can be both interactive and inventive.

I also had the chance to talk with Camerata Nova's Andrew Balfour, who made a noteworthy remark. "This is a great collaboration not only because it makes sense in a community with a large Francophone population," said Balfour, "but because it works to open up that cultural insulation. It opens doors not only within the Franco community, but also within the Ukrainian, German and Metis communities, to name a few."

Balfour is absolutely right. The most striking and memorable aspect of the concert was the way in which both the performers and organizers worked to transform an unfamiliar cultural space into a familiar one – keeping Manitoba's multi-cultural reality alive and well.

Sara Krahn is a music student at Canadian Mennonite University here in Winnipeg.

 

For more information  on Camerta Nova, visit their website HERE.  For more information on Montreal's Skye Consort, visit their website  HERE.

 

Last week members of both groups stopped by the Classic 107 studio to talk with Morning Light host Michael Wolch.