The Eastern Mennonite University Faculty Artist Series opens Friday, Nov. 2, with Alkemie, a medieval music group that includes Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival director David McCormick.
The free concert begins at 7:30 p.m. in Lehman Auditorium. Donations are welcome for the EMU music student scholarship fund.
The concert program “Love to My Liking” features music of the trouvères of northern France, including songs of public and private adoration, and choreographies based on contemporary sources.
“I’m thrilled to bring Alkemie to EMU this November,” said McCormick. “This will be a unique concert experience. We bring medieval music to life with creative arrangements, dancing, and an emphasis on improvisatory and folk styles of the period. Fans of the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival will recognize four of our members as guest artists from the 2018 Festival.”
Founded in the spring of 2013 by five friends with a zeal for medieval music, Alkemie’s mission is to share the life-affirming and alternative perspectives to be experienced in the sounds of centuries past. Alkemie specializes in medieval music for high voices and instruments, with a particular interest in exploring the porous boundaries between the “high” and “low” music of the period.
A June 2018 performance at the Indianapolis Early Music Festival was lauded as “enchanting” and “indicating [the] future health” of the field of early music.