As a teenager in Canada in the 1990s, Greg Skidmore could not fully pursue his passion for Renaissance polyphony. Having since become a London-based baritone, he founded the Canadian Renaissance Music Summer Schools to offer others what he himself had lacked: the opportunity to study, sing and pass on this repertoire at the highest level.
In Valenciennes, northern France, Yannick Lemaire and the ensemble Harmonia Sacra have been spearheading the festival “Embar(o)quement immédiat” for the past twenty years (anniversary edition, 6–31 May), and more recently an ambitious project to establish a music centre at the Hôtel de Barneville. In this former mining region, could the city be emerging as a major new hub for early music?
Beyond the aurora borealis that have made the Yukon region in Canada’s Far North famous, other lights appeared in 2025: those of Yukon Early Music, an emerging music scene, and a small community determined to promote early music in these freezing cold lands (-55°C!), making a different kind of name for the territory.
What if The Four Seasons were not just a classical hit, but a time to be experienced through writing? In her book The Rolling Year, Hannah French explores Vivaldi through the rhythm of the months, landscapes and the listening body. An investigation where music, seasons and experience respond to each other, far from abstraction.
Every December, Toronto sees Handel return from beyond the grave to conduct Messiah, roared at full voice by 2,700 spectators. With its legendary Sing-Along, Tafelmusik transforms the 1741 oratorio into a collective celebration where history, humour, and musical fervour collide like nowhere else. Our contributor Kate Helsen, a member of the Tafelmusik Choir for over 20 years, describes the unique event.
They are between 12 and 20 years old and play Vivaldi, Bach, or Zelenka on period instruments: the Bayerisches Jugend-Barockorchester upends the idea that Baroque music is a matter for specialists. An artistic and human adventure that reveals the zeal and high standards of a new generation.
With their ensemble La Rêveuse, Florence Bolton and Benjamin Perrot have devoted ten years to exploring English music of the eighteenth century. Their project, “London,” brought to life in the form of four recordings, stands out for its singular ambition: to link the musical history of that period with contemporary movements of populations and artists.
Three hundred years ago, the composer wanted more singers—and didn’t get them. But now, the Tölzer Knabenchor – as part of Ultra HIP music’s BACH-ENTWURFF-PROJEKT- is recording several of Bach’s cantatas using the vocal forces he wished for.
Designed at the Hochschule in Weimar, KATI generates choral harmonisations in the seventeenth-century style at the click of a button. A “chorale machine” that both relieves musicians and challenges the very notion of human creativity.
