Upcoming Events

Cookie Concert – Nova Scotia Songs and Folklore with Clary Croft

The concert will showcase Nova Scotia’s rich and diverse folk song heritage. Songs of love, sorrow, humour, and wit abound from the collection of famed folklorist Dr. Helen Creighton. Clary Croft will explore these songs from the Mi’kmaq, Acadian, Anglo, Celtic, German and African Nova Scotian repertoires.

Clary Croft is a performer, author, folklore researcher, recording artist, and producer. The Encyclopaedia of Music in Canada has recognized Clary’s contribution to Maritime folklore studies and his ongoing research into the traditional music of the Maritime Provinces. He is best known for his continuing work with the collection of his late mentor, Dr. Helen Creighton, the Nova Scotian-born, internationally renowned Canadian folklore pioneer. In addition to working with Dr. Creighton for the last fifteen years of her life, Clary was also responsible for cataloguing her collection at the Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management. The Halifax Mail Star calls him, “the acknowledged master of one of the richest repertoires in Canada.”

Enjoy a freshly baked cookie and added activities that often accompany our cookie events!

We Are Women!

A thrilling and poignant cabaret show with soprano Suzanne Rigden, mezzo-soprano Kristin Hoff and pianist Sarah Russell.

We Are Women! is a show where three women bring us on a musical journey of the female experience through excerpts from the musical theatre repertoire of the past century. Their relationships as sisters, parents, children, friends and lovers carry us through questions and stories about love, marriage, envy, loss, passion for life, and womens’ desire for independence and recognition.

Capella Regalis Men And Boys Choir

Performances in PEI and Nova Scotia’s Northumberland Shore, with a finale concert in Halifax

Capella Regalis Men and Boys Choir was founded in Halifax, Nova Scotia, by Director Nick Halley in 2010. The choir comprises ten men and twelve boys (ages 7–14) and is modeled on the great Anglican tradition of men and boys church choirs. While Canada was once rich with such choirs, Capella Regalis is one of only a handful of men and boys choirs in Canada today.

Capella Regalis is a registered Society under the Societies Act of Nova Scotia and is an educational programme of Musique Royale.

Celtic Mass for the Sea

Commissioned by the CBC in 1988, the ‘Celtic Mass for the Sea’ has become a contemporary choral classic. It has been performed numerous times since then in Canada, the US and Europe, capturing a cheering standing ovation at Carnegie Hall in New York in 2002 and enthusiastically received by audiences in the UK and Germany. This mass is a unique celebration of the sea’s majesty, ferocity and vitality, with words and music based on Celtic themes. Composed by Scott Macmillan, with libretto by Jennyfer Brickenden, it is a powerfully imagined work for chorus, strings, and Celtic instrumental quintet. 

Musique Royale is pleased to present this event in collaboration with weekend Canada Day celebrations in Lunenburg, the Lunenburg Academy of Music and support from the Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage 150 Forward Fund.

The Door You Came In

Drawn from stories in The Danger Tree by David Macfarlane and performed by the writer with award-winning composer Douglas Cameron, this unique blend of spoken word and music tells the funny and moving story of a Newfoundland family and the war that changed it forever.

About The Door You Came In. A writer visits his dying mother. He brings a book that he’d written twenty-five years ago to read to her. It’s about her family. But it’s also about the terrible battle – Beaumont Hamel – that sits at the heart of both Newfoundland’s and her family’s history. So begins The Door You Came In – a two-man performance based on David Macfarlane’s acclaimed memoir, ‘The Danger Tree’. The songs and the music of The Door You Came In are Douglas Cameron’s department. A seasoned, Genie-nominated singer and performer, Cameron plays banjola, mandolin, ukulele, and harmonica. His engaging, foot-tapping performance combines popular tunes of the day (“Pack Up Your Troubles,” and “If You Were the Only Girl in the World”) with original compositions. Macfarlane’s narrative weaves seamlessly throughout the music. The Door You Came In isn’t quite a play and it isn’t quite a concert. It’s a musical story – sometimes funny, sometimes tragic – that tells the tales of family, and memory, and war.

Sydney – St. Patrick’s Museum
Sunday, July 9 at 7 pm
Information: 902-562-8237, 902-849-2245
Old Sydney Society: oldsydneysociety@gmail.com
Tickets are $20 for general and $10 (at the door only) for students

Baddeck - Greenwood United Church
Monday, July 10 at 7:30 pm
Tickets are $20 for general and $10 (at the door only) for students
Tickets available at 902-295-3273, at Blue Heron Gift Shop (Baddeck), and at Greenwood United Church Office; tickets also sold at the door

Parrsboro - Ottawa House Museum
Tuesday, July 11 at 7 pm
Tickets are $20 for general and $10 (at the door only) for students
Tickets available by reservation from the museum at 902-254-2376 or ottawa.house@ns.sympatico.com and at the door

Poplar Grove - St. John the Baptist Church
Wednesday, July 12 at 7 pm
Tickets are $20 for general and $10 (at the door only) for students
Tickets available by reservation from MR Box Office 902-634-9994 or musiqueroyale1985@gmail.com and at the door

Annapolis Royal - St. George and St. Andrew United Church
Thursday, July 13 at 7:30 pm
Tickets are $20 for general and $10 (at the door only) for students
Tickets are available at Bainton’s Tannery Outlet Mad Hatter Bookstore, 213 St. George Street, and at the door

Chester - St. Stephen’s Anglican Church
Friday, July 14 at 7:30 pm
Tickets are $20 for general and $10 (at the door only) for students
Tickets are available by reservation from the MR Box Office at 902-634-9994 or musiqueroyale1985@gmail.com and at the door.

Blue Rocks - St. Barnabas Anglican Church
Saturday, July 15 at 7:30 pm
Tickets are $20 for general and $10 (at the door only) for students
Tickets are available at Shop on the Corner in Lunenburg and by reservation from the MR Box Office at 902-634-9994 or musiqueroyale1985@gmail.com and at the door.

Shelburne - Osprey Arts Centre
Sunday, July 16 at 3 pm
Tickets available from TLC Pharmacy, 157 Water Street, Shelburne, 902-875-4852 OR Ticketpro 888-311-9090 (toll free), and at the door

Elmer Iseler Singers with Artistic Director Lydia Adams and Special Guest Dr. Roberta Bondar

The Elmer Iseler Singers is a professional chamber choir based in Toronto. The twenty-voice choir, conducted by Artistic Director Lydia Adams, was founded by Dr. Elmer Iseler in 1979 and is one of Canada’s leading choral ensembles. The choir has built an international reputation through its concerts, broadcasts and more than fifty recordings. The Elmer Iseler Singers’ repertoire spans five hundred years of choral music. The choir regularly commissions and performs new works, and appears at national and international festivals.

“When I was eight years old to be a spaceman was the most exciting thing I could imagine.” –– Roberta Bondar

In 2017 Dr. Roberta Bondar marks 25 years since she became Canada’s first woman in space. Building on her long-standing relationship and connection with the achievements of Alexander and Mabel Bell, Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site and the Elmer Iseler Singers led by accomplished Nova Scotia native Lydia Adams, Dr Bondar will help Nova Scotia celebrate its significant achievements in the areas of history, arts, science and technology– and how the coupling of art and science that began with Alexander and Mabel Bell continues today and into the future.

High Flight: Songs of the Stars is a multi-media choral performance of sonic splendour combined with captivating photographs and images of space, highlighting music of the spheres by Canadian composers Eleanor Daley, Imant Raminsh, Jason Jestadt, Ruth Watson Henderson, R. Murray Schafer, and Harry Somers, as well as the performance of a work by Lydia Adams, with text by Dr. Roberta Bondar describing her experience of leaving Earth and coming back once again to its sublime beauty. Dr. Bondar will speak at the event about the search in the stars for new possibilities for life on other planets.

Additional Events

A second performance with Dr. Bondar and the Elmer Iseler Singers, celebrating the life and legacy of Mabel Bell, takes place at the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site in Baddeck on Friday, July 21 at 7:30 pm.

The Roberta Bondar Travelling Photo Exhibition, Light in the Land – The Nature of Canada

Opening Reception at Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site in Baddeck on Thursday July 20.
Opening Reception at the Lunenburg School of the Arts in Lunenburg on Friday August 18.

These activities mark a first-time collaboration of Nova Scotia and national partners - the Alexander Graham Bell Foundation in collaboration with The Roberta Bondar Foundation, Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site - Parks Canada, the Elmer Iseler Singers, Lunenburg School of the Arts, Musique Royale and Cape Breton University.

Supported By

The Province of Nova Scotia - Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage’s 150 Forward Fund. The 150 Forward Fund supports opportunities for Nova Scotians to create, promote and participate in local and regional events that build a sense of pride in Nova Scotia during the celebration of Canada’s 150th anniversary of confederation. Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.

National Youth Orchestra Ensemble

For more than fifty years, NYO Canada has enjoyed an iconic reputation as Canada’s orchestral finishing school, providing the most comprehensive and in-depth training program available to our country’s best young classical musicians. The orchestra, as part of Canada’s 150, plans an extensive cross Canada tour in summer 2017. While in Halifax, an ensemble of young musicians will travel to the south shore for a performance at Cecilia’s Retreat in Mahone Bay.

Best of Boxwood 2017

Featuring artists from Boxwood’s world renowned summer workshop and festival in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, the 2017 Best of Boxwood tour features an ensemble whose repertoire spans traditional music of Maritime Canada and beyond. Led by the brilliant and imaginative flute playing of director Chris Norman, the musicians of Boxwood are frequently praised for their energy, originality and sheer mastery.

Chris Norman - flutes, pipes, voice
Lisa Ornstein - Quebecois and Old-Time fiddle
Magnus Holmström - nyckelharpa
Tomas Limpan Lindberg - guitar, bozouki, mandolin
Rachel Johnston - cello

Shelburne - Osprey Arts Centre Sunday, July 30 at 3 pm
Tickets available from TLC Pharmacy, 157 Water Street, Shelburne, 902-875-4852 OR Ticketpro 888-311-9090 (toll free), and at the door

Ste. Anne du Ruisseau - St. Anne’s Church
Monday, July 31 at 7 pm
Tickets are $20 for general and $10 for students at the door
Information: 902-942-8765

Iona - Highland Village Museum
Tuesday, August 1 at 7:30 pm
Tickets are $20 for general and $10 for students (at the door)
Tickets are available from Highland Village Museum Gift Shop, 4119 Highway 223, Iona 902-725-2272 and at the door

Tatamagouche - Sharon United Church
Wednesday, August 2 at 7:30 pm
Tickets: $20, available at Fulton’s Pharmacy or at the door
Information: 902-257-2519

Port Williams - St. John’s Cornwallis Church
Thursday, August 3 at 7:30 pm
Tickets are $20 for general and $10 for students (at the door)

Bridgetown – Dawn Oman Art Gallery
Friday, August 4 at 7:30 pm
Tickets are $20 for general and $10 for students (at the door)
Tickets are available at Bainton’s Tannery Outlet Mad Hatter Bookstore 213 St. George Street; Dawn Oman Arts Gallery, 7383 Highway 1Upper Granville, and at the door.

Northern Lights: Songs Made in Canada

Patricia O’Callaghan; Andrew Downing, double bass; Robert Kortgaard, piano

Canada has a lot to celebrate in song. Fabulous musicians through the decades have helped to define for us all what it means to grow up in this vast, varied and beautiful land we call home. Ever aware of this rich landscape of musical possibilities, Patricia O’Callaghan continues to build a repertoire of songs that speak to her heart and must be sung. From the classics of Leonard Cohen and Robert Charlebois, historic Canadiana and hits of contemporary pop sensations like Matthew Barber and Sarah Harmer…. to such revered artists as Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot…. plus some delightful surprises!

Nostalgia, toe tapping, and a twist on great tunes from our past…. we celebrate Canada’s long tradition of great music making.

Mahone Bay – Cecilia’s Retreat
Monday, August 14 at 6 pm
Tickets are $35 and are available by advance reservation, please email: barbara.butler@ns.sympatico.ca
An evening meal follows the performance overlooking a scenic view of Mahone Bay.

Margaretsville - Evergreen Theatre
Tuesday, August 15 at 8 pm
Tickets available on line at www.evergreentheatre.ca, by phone at 902-825-6834 and at the door

Annapolis Royal - St. George and St. Andrew United Church Wednesday, August 16 at 7 pm
Tickets are $20 for general and $10 for students (at the door)
Tickets are available at Bainton’s Tannery Outlet Mad Hatter Bookstore 213 St. George Street; and at the door

Wolfville - Manning Memorial Chapel
Thursday, August 17 at 7:30 pm
Tickets are $20 for general and $10 for students (at the door)
Tickets are available by reservation at 902 582-3933, and at the door

Nova Scotia Youth Orchestra

The Nova Scotia Youth Orchestra is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1977. For thirty- three years, the NSYO has provided students with educational opportunities not available at any university, public school, or conservatory in the province. The Orchestra has been described by renowned professional conductors and musicians as one of the finest in Canada. 85% of our alumni have gone on to jobs in music-related fields. The NSYO now boasts nearly 1000 alumni. Past Music Directors include: Robert Raines, Stan Fisher, Georg Tintner, Gregory Burton, and present Music Director is Dinuk Wijeratne.

The NSYO’s season runs from the end of August until the end of April, and includes a 10-day Summer Workshop. The Orchestra usually performs 6 - 8 concerts in a typical season.

The Sri Lankan-born, Canada-based composer-performer Dinuk Wijeratne has been described by the Toronto Star as ‘an artist who reflects a positive vision of our cultural future’, and by the New York Times as ‘exuberantly creative’. His boundary-crossing work sees him equally at home in collaborations with symphony orchestras and string quartets, tabla players and DJs, and takes him to international venues as poles apart as the Berlin Philharmonie and the North Sea Jazz Festival.

Helios Vocal Ensemble

Helios Vocal Ensemble is Atlantic Canada’s premier vocal ensemble, performing sacred and secular music, specializing in Renaissance polyphony, a fluid and unifying musical language defining its time. Their “Madrigal Mystery Tour” concert offers rapturous, rambunctious and raunchy songs from across Europe, with a cappella works by some of the finest composers of the 16th and 17th centuries.

The five members of the vocal group all have affiliation with the choir at St. George’s Round Church in Halifax and its director Garth MacPhee.

Blue Rocks – St. Barnabas Church
Thursday, Sept 7 at 7:30 pm
Tickets are $30 for general and $10 for students. Tickets are available at Shop on the Corner in Lunenburg and by reservation from the MR Box Office at 902-634-9994 or musiqueroyale1985@gmail.com and at the door.

Wolfville - Manning Memorial Chapel
Friday, Sept 8 at 7:30 pm
Tickets are $20 for general and $10 for students (at the door)
Tickets are available by reservation at 902 582-3933, and at the door

Lake Charlotte - Memory Lane Heritage Village
Saturday, Sept 9 at 5 pm
Tickets available from Memory Lane Heritage Village, 902-845-1937, 877-287-0697
A meal is also offered in the cookhouse at an added price

Saulnierville - Sacré Coeur Church
Sunday, Sept 10 at 3 pm
Tickets are $20 for general and $10 for students at the door

Toronto Consort

Since its founding in 1972, the Toronto Consort, under the direction of David Fallis, has become internationally recognized for its excellence in the performance of medieval, renaissance and early baroque music. Some of Canada’s leading early music specialists have come together to form the Toronto Consort whose members include both singers and instrumentalists (lute, recorder, guitar, flute, early keyboards and percussion).

“Since the founding of The Toronto Consort in 1972, Canada can boast a world-class early music ensemble worthy of the attention of any musically literate ear… Their closely matched phrasing, intonation and tonal shading was worthy of the finest string quartet.” Chronicle Herald, Halifax

The Toronto Consort is heard frequently on Canadian and international radio and television and has appeared with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra as well as the North German Radio Orchestra. Its many recordings include The Praetorius Christmas Vespers, The DaVinci Collection, The Queen: Music for Elizabeth I, The Way of the Pilgrim, Mariners and Milkmaids, The Little Barley-Corne, Nowell Sing We, the Juno-nominated Full Well She Sang, Orlando di Lasso: Chanson and Madrigals, and O Lusty May. Unusual for an early music ensemble but further evidence of the Consort’s versatility and virtuosity, is its contemporary repertoire. Canadian composers such as John Beckwith, Lothar Klein and David Keane have written pieces especially for The Toronto Consort. The Toronto Consort recorded the soundtrack for Atom Egoyan’s award-winning film The Sweet Hereafter. Whether portraying the haunting emotion of a minstrel’s ballad or capturing the sparkle of a rollicking madrigal, The Toronto Consort brings alive the glorious music of earlier times.

Toronto Consort

More information to come.

Nova Scotia Youth Choir

The Nova Scotia Youth Choir is a program on the Nova Scotia Choral Federation. Through auditions, approximately 40 of the province’s most talented young choral singers ages 16-25 are chosen each year to work with a faculty of fine musicians dedicated to excellence in vocal performance and musicianship. These young musicians are provided a challenging opportunity to work, develop and perform choral music together at a very high calibre. Choristers work with the faculty during two rehearsal periods in May and August.