L'Harmonie des saisons, an early-music ensemble based in Granby, Québec, has sold out all seven of its Burlington concerts since its music director, Eric Milnes, first brought the lively and highly trained group to town two years ago. Now confident of the Queen City's taste for early music, particularly of the baroque era (roughly 1600 to 1750), Milnes has launched the first-ever Burlington Baroque Festival. Starting Thursday, September 26, it offers four days of music by the era's enduring stars: Claudio Monteverdi, George Frideric Handel, Antonio Vivaldi, Alessandro Marcello and Johann Sebastian Bach.
A baroque music festival "has been part of my hopes and plans since I arrived" in Burlington in 2020, Milnes said. That year, he started directing the College Street Congregational Choir, and in 2022 he added director of the Vermont Choral Union to his job titles. Milnes assembled the festival's 14 vocal soloists, 27 musicians and 24-member chorus by combining L'Harmonie's professional members, who include invited early-music specialists from around the world, and 24 Vermont singers.
It's a grand undertaking that wouldn't be out of place in a baroque-era church teeming with sculpted putti, gilded columns and lavishly painted surfaces. Alas, Burlington has no such treasure, so the festival will take place in the next-best venue: the clean-lined 1972 Cathedral Church of St. Paul.
Baroque music is no rarity in the Green Mountains; Upper Valley Baroque of Hanover, N.H., often brings its concerts to Randolph, and various classical series occasionally feature works of that era. What distinguishes the festival is that its musicians will play period instruments and sing in historically appropriate vocal styles. Musicologists have painstakingly researched such performance techniques of the time over recent decades.
Milnes, who earned his master's at the Juilliard School, has likewise spent decades implementing that research as director of numerous early-music ensembles in his native New York City, around the U.S. and abroad. Following historical practice, he directs from the harpsichord bench while playing. Two of L'Harmonie's albums have won JUNO Awards — the Canadian equivalent of the Grammys — for best classical album of the year.
"I'm a hard-core early-music person, and Eric is as hard-core," said invited violinist Scott Metcalfe, who has performed with Milnes since 1986. Artistic director of the Boston early-music ensemble Blue Heron, Metcalfe will be the festival's concertmaster on Monteverdi's "Vespers of 1610"; Handel's two-act masque, or concert-style opera, Acis and Galatea; and the final, all-Bach concert, which includes two Brandenburg concertos and the Magnificat.
The violinist will play two instruments: for the Monteverdi, a replica of a famous Nicolò Amati violin from 1640 that suits the higher pitch of early 17th-century music; and for the rest, a mid-19th-century high-baroque-style violin. Both are strung with gut instead of metal or synthetic strings, which makes them sound "grittier, less smooth in articulation [with] a different overtone set" from modern violins, Metcalfe said.
According to Metcalfe, who grew up in Burlington, the city is "the perfect place" to launch a baroque festival. That's partly because it's situated between "two of the important poles of early music in North America" — Boston and Montréal.
"This is a rare opportunity for people in Burlington to hear things at a level that is unusual outside of major urban centers," Metcalfe said.
Milnes has written extensive program notes about each piece, including Handel's masque. Acis was far more popular than the Messiah during the composer's lifetime, he said.
But Milnes is not so hard-core that he can't step outside the realm of strict authenticity. Saturday's matinee concert, "Beatles Baroque!," features Milnes' arrangements of the Fab Four's hits for baroque ensemble. The director has made four such albums since 1999 with ATMA Classique in Montréal; the first was a bestseller for the label. The idea is not so far-fetched, Milnes said: The Beatles used harpsichords, recorders and even baroque trumpets in their songs.
Music enthusiast Kevin Toohey looks forward to it all. He and his wife, Laura, cofounded and run NU Chocolat in Burlington, which frequently sponsors several local arts organizations, including the University of Vermont Lane Series and the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival, and donates to the Burlington Baroque Festival. The Tooheys are L'Harmonie regulars.
"We've been to their two Messiahs, the Fauré Requiem and Bach's St. John Passion. I think people don't really realize the tremendous opportunity they bring and the wonderfulness of these performers," Kevin said.
Both Tooheys were music majors at Southern Illinois University, where they met; Laura played violin and Kevin bassoon. Kevin's engagements during college included playing with the Memphis Symphony while Ella Fitzgerald sang and training under Leonard Slatkin with the St. Louis Symphony youth orchestra. He started an apprenticeship with a Swiss chocolatier immediately after college, but the couple and their five children continue to value music; daughter Gwen Russell is a harpist and often attends L'Harmonie concerts with her organist husband.
Toohey understands Milnes' historically informed approach from the inside, including the director's sometimes dramatic tempo variations. In the baroque era, Toohey noted, "the meter would expand and contract in an improvisatory way; the tempo would speed up and slow down, pause, then take a breath and start up again."
For audiences without his level of training, Toohey said baroque music's wide appeal lies in its "focus ... on beauty and goodness" — the same qualities he aims for in his chocolates. "There's a purity and sincerity that's conveyed" to listeners, he continued. "It speaks to their hearts and enlists the mind in a way that's comforting and inspiring."
"We're born human," he added; baroque music "helps us to be humane."