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The Toronto Consort presents Listen, Daughters of Light TORONTO, January 31, 2007 —The Toronto Consort invites audiences behind the veil of medieval female monastic life with two concerts entitled Listen, Daughters of Light at 8:00 pm on February 23 and 24 at Trinity St. Paul’s Centre. The program reaches back more than 900 years to evoke a mysterious world that comes alive through its music. Listen, Daughters of Light features music for voices, flute, harp and fiddle including everything from sacred chant composed in convents, to secular songs about girls who thought twice before taking their vows of chastity. Tickets for Listen, Daughters of Light are available through the box office at 416 964-6337. The idea for this all-female concert came from Toronto-born singer and medieval fiddler Katherine Hill, who has been a regular performer with the Consort since 1997. The title Listen, Daughters of Light comes from an epithalamium or “wedding song” sung when novices would take the veil. Hill has invited singers and instrumentalists Rebecca Bain, Andrea Budgey, and Stephanie Martin to join her and the other female members of the Consort, Michele De Boer, Laura Pudwell and Alison Melville. They perform Gregorian chant, music by female monastics Hildegard of Bingen, whose mystical visions inspired music that is still widely heard today, Birgit of Sweden, Anna van Coeln, and other European devotional music composed by nuns from the 13th to 15th centuries. Katherine Hill splits her time between Canada and Northern Europe, where she has performed with groups that specialize in nun’s music from the Middle Ages, including sequentia ensemble for medieval music. In Toronto, she assists an order of Anglican nuns called The Sisters of St. John the Divine with their singing. Hill also performs early baroque, renaissance and Scandinavian traditional music, appearing in Europe with Gabriel Garrido's Ensemble Elyma and the Collegium Vocale Gent. She has appeared at early music and alternative performance festivals in Germany, Poland and the Netherlands. Closer to home, Hill collaborates with the Toronto Consort, the Toronto Continuo Collective, the Sine Nomine ensemble for medieval music, and the Arctic-fusion band Polaris. Listing information: Media Contact:
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The Toronto Consort
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