News and current projects

In October, BV will be touring NZ for Chamber Music NZ with early instrumental ensemble Phantastic Spirits, performing a  programme of Italian and English music from the dawn of the Baroque era entitled "Love is in the Ayre". Click on the Chamber Music NZ link above for tour details, and/or, visit our Concert Schedule page for details of our special pre-tour concert in Wellington on Thursday 2nd October.

This will be a busy year for BV: we have our usual line-up of innovative concerts, including the now annual "Alleluia: a newё work!" performance of Medieval European & Contemporary NZ works, and the Musica Sacra Concert Series in St Mary of the Angels in Wellington. But we also have two especially exciting pieces of news...

Towards the end of 2007 we received notification that we had successfully secured funding from Creative NZ, to commission four NZ composers - Jack Body, Helen Bowater, Carol Shortis & yours truly Pepe Becker - to write new works for our "Alleluia: a newё work!" concert in May 2008. This is great news for us, as we have decided to do a concert of this nature (and title) every year now, and this funding endorses and ackowledges our commitment to NZ Music - of equal importance and interest to the group as our Early Music performances.

Earlier in 2007 we were invited by Chamber Music NZ to do a tour of the country in October 2008 - Baroque Voices, with early music instrumental group Phantastic Spirits (top NZ early music players brought together by viola da gamba player Robert Oliver), will perform in seven centres around NZ, giving those audiences a taste of the sort of music and performance that the famous European ensemble Hesperion XXI will deliver to only Auckland and Wellington audiences. This is a great honour for us to be promoted alongside this world-class group, and we look forward to being able to do multiple performances of our programme of early Baroque Italian and English music, entitled "Love is in the Ayre".