About

Musique Royale is delighted to feature Kalliope, a duo of multifaceted instrumentalists Ellen Torrie and Kerry Bursey who will explore song and storytelling through the ages. From the oldest known song in Western history to Pink Floyd, Kalliope illustrates the timelessness of the storytelling tradition. Vocals and numerous plucked string instruments will be used to expand beyond the traditional confines of early music and create a seamless performance incorporating many aspects of their artistic interests. These include medieval, renaissance, and baroque musics, early and contemporary folk music, and original compositions self accompanied on a diverse array of instruments.

About the artists

Ellen Torrie

Ellen Torrie is a Montreal-based soprano and singer-songwriter currently completing a master’s in early music performance at McGill University. Her first inspiration and longest love affair is with Lake Ontario beside which she was raised in the harbourtown of Cobourg. In 2018, she earned her bachelor’s degree in Music Therapy at Acadia University in Nova Scotia. It was there she learned the important magic of storytelling and released her first album “Like Coming Home” in collaboration with three other maritime songwriters. Through her newly formed duo “Kalliope” with Kerry Bursey, Ellen is exploring the practice of self-accompanying early music on baroque guitar. As a queer musician, Ellen is inspired by the possibility that her queer ancestors had their own musical traditions and that through research and performance, she can help bring those to life and in turn, tell a more inclusive and rich story about our humanity.

Kerry Bursey

Kerry Bursey is a young tenor and multi-instrumentalist from Montreal, particularly active in the Early music scene throughout Canada. A herald of the lost art of self-accompaniment, he is one of the few to simultaneously sing and play early repertoire. He regularly sings with groups such as Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal, Ensemble Caprice, Theatre of Early Music, Harmonie des Saisons, Arion Baroque Orchestra, Clavecins en Concert and Aureas Voces. He also sings with the choirs of Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Métropolitain, I Musici, les Grands Ballets and the Church of St. Andrew & St. Paul. He has participated in Tafelmusik’s Baroque Summer Institute, and has studied and performed sacred cantatas of Bach in Germany and Italy at the renowned Bachakademie in Stuttgart and Bachkantatenakademie in Weimar. Kerry is a graduate of the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal in classical guitar and has performed as a soloist with the Orchestre symphonique des jeunes de Montréal (in which he played the viola for 2 years) and was a finalist at both the 2011 Grand Prix de guitare de Montréal and the Concours de musique de Sorel.