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Burnaby countertenor onstage in Monteverdi Christmas Vespers

A Burnaby native will be featured with Early Music Vancouver this Christmas season.
Nicholas Burns
Nicholas Burns is onstage with Early Music Vancouver in the Monteverdi Christmas Vespers, Dec. 23 at the Chan Centre.

A Burnaby native will be featured with Early Music Vancouver this Christmas season.

Nicholas Burns, a countertenor who is currently completing his master’s degree in early music vocal performance at McGill University, is one of the featured singers in Festive Cantatas: Monteverdi Christmas Vespers. It’s on Sunday, Dec. 23 at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts.

The performance promises to take audiences back to the glory of a lavish Christmas celebration from the Church of San Marco in 17th-century Venice. Claudio Monteverdi’s music includes eight singers, plus an ensemble of instruments that includes violins, cornetti, sackbuts, theorbos and organ. (If you don’t happen to be familiar with early instruments: the cornett is an early wind instrument popular from 1500 to 1650; the sackbut is a type of trombone from the Renaissance and Baroque eras, and the theorbo is a plucked string instrument related to a lute.)

“The concert will resound with the glorious sounds of a Christmas celebration you won’t soon forget,” says a write-up about the performance.

David Fallis is the music director.

The concert starts at 3 p.m., with pre-concert talk at 2 p.m.

For information and tickets, see www.tinyurl.com/EMVVespers2018.