elcome to the 2010-11 Season of the Toronto Consort! Choosing a season of early music to present to a modern audience is like the work of a curator at a great art gallery. You have a huge choice of exquisite music and a wonderful ensemble of modern musicians, and by placing the masterpieces of the past in a context or a frame, you bring them to vivid life, illuminating the similarities and differences of cultures and artists across hundreds of years. Each program in our season has been designed with this in mind. We start off the year with a new program designed by Alison Mackay, the wonderful creator of programs combining music, words and images, as she takes us into the world of Renaissance ambassadors, a world of intrigue, sophistication and surprising modernity. At Yuletide we present Praetorius Christmas Vespers, a beloved Toronto tradition which takes you back to 17th-century Germany for a Christmas Eve Vespers, resounding with voices, lutes, cornetti, sackbuts, strings and keyboards positioned about the church. A new Sunday matinee performance has been added to this popular offering.

In the new year, we present The Marco Polo Project: Part 2, in which we pick up with the travels of Marco Polo, beginning to make his way home from Cathay. This second leg of his journey takes him to India, and we have invited two special guests to join us for this concert: Suba Sankaran of Autorickshaw fame, and Sampradaya Dance Creations who so thrilled audiences when they appeared on our season three years ago. Speaking of an ensemble that has thrilled our Toronto audience, for our guest ensemble this year we are pleased to welcome back Constantinople, Montreal’s wonderful explorers of both early and world music, for their most recent collaboration Canti di a terra with Barbara Furtuna, which has been heard from Montreal to Morocco. And as the season finale we present Songs of the Celestial Sirens, featuring the rarely heard and magnificent music by women composers from the nunneries of 17th-century Lombardy, centred on the music of Chiara Margarita Cozzolani. I invite you to wander in our gallery of musical delights!

D A V I D   F A L L I S
Artistic Director

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