Our 2026 event, featuring Monteverdi’s wonderful L’Orfeo, was a great success. We thank the participants including the magnificent Furio Zanasi in the title role, as well as all those who helped out, and the audience.
The 2027 workshop (May 2-8) explores the musical connections between Heinrich Schütz, Claudio Monteverdi and Francesco Cavalli, three composers central to the development of the early Baroque. Through selected works by these three composers and their contemporaries, the workshop will explore how musical ideas travelled between Italy and Germany, and how rhetoric, text expression, dissonance, basso continuo and dramatic writing evolved across these interconnected traditions.
For the first time, the Denman Baroque Festival and Workshop turns to a programme of sacred music. The line between sacred and secular composition was very thin in the early Venetian Baroque, when both rested on the same basso continuo, the same 1doctrine of the affections, and the same command of harmony and counterpoint through which Monteverdi, Schütz and Cavalli arguably reached the summit of the style, a language Schütz himself carried north into Germany
Schütz travelled to Venice twice. His first visit, from 1609 to 1612, was devoted principally to studying with Giovanni Gabrieli. When he returned to Venice in 1628–29, Monteverdi was maestro di cappella at San Marco, and Schütz encountered the musical world that Monteverdi had helped shape. Although there is no firm evidence of a formal teacher–student relationship between Schütz and Monteverdi, Schütz’s later music clearly reflects his engagement with the Italian seconda pratica and the Venetian concertato style.
Cavalli, meanwhile, was a member of the musical establishment at San Marco and worked in close proximity to Monteverdi, developing these innovations into the emerging language of Venetian opera.
The workshop culminates with a concert of works by these 3 composers on the afternoon of Saturday May 8 in the Denman Island Community Hall.
Our 2027 event will be the 9th edition of the Denman Island Baroque Music Workshop and Festival and 10 years since the first event in 2017. That is something to celebrate! The program will once again be under the expert musical direction of the world-renowned baroque harpsichordist and composer Marco Vitale. In rehearsals, he will be assisted by instructors Gabriele Toscani (strings) and Marta Semkiw (continuo). The workshop instructors will be showcasing their talents during the week in a concert of baroque chamber music.
The workshop provides a unique opportunity for accomplished instrumentalists and singers to meet, play or sing with other musicians in the baroque style, as well as receive instruction from world-class tutors. This year, we shall perform at a pitch of A4 = 440 Hz. String players may use modern instruments if fitted with gut strings. Baroque bows are preferred. An application form for this workshop available on this website and on Denman Island at the freepost under B in fall 2026. Applicants will be informed whether they are accepted in January 2027. Tickets will be available on the website in spring 2027.
This event is organised by Denman Early Music, a committee of the not-for-profit Arts Denman. Any donations to help in funding of the workshop and festival are most welcome. Canadian residents may make donations by cheque (payable to Arts Denman with note ‘Baroque Festival Donation’, through this website at denmanbaroque.ca/support-us, or by e-transfer to (with a note ‘Denman Baroque donation’. We are keen to attract new workshop participants, including students, as well as returnees.