On April 12, 2014 I made a friend in a relatively unlikely place. This was backstage at the Vancouver Playhouse for an Early Music Vancouver concert featuring violinist Monica Huggett. I wrote about it here.

It was then that I was befriended by Portland bassist Curtis Daily. Since then my Rosemary and I have hosted him when he comes to Vancouver to play. He comes a few days before and I give him photographic lighting classes. We drink wine ( intelligently) on evenings and we have mate cocido for breakfast.

Today I went to a concert at the Chan. It was the last performance for the season of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra produced by Early Music Vancouver. It was called Coronation Anthems which meant that we listened to Handel choral (and orchestra) music expressly written for the coronation of English kings.

Most interesting for me was the fourth work (of the first half) My Heart is Inditing HWV 261 which was originally performed for the coronation of Queen Caroline (Caroline of Ansbach - 1683–1737). 

She was so beloved that Handel wrote The Ways of Zion Do Mourn HWV 264 for her funeral. And some might know that this funeral piece was also played for Admiral Horatio Nelson’s funeral, too.

The concert on a Palm Sunday was a tad strange if seen by a strict Roman Catholic (and I am not one). This was happy music before a coming sombre Good Friday. In years past EMV had Haydn’s the Seven Last Words of Christ.

As a little boy my grandmother and mother would get me in from playing in the street in Buenos Aires on Good Friday  (around 1 in the afternoon) and we would pray and my grandmother would read those last words. I was not permitted to turn on the radio.

The happy coronation music was even happier for me as many in the orchestra I know well including the tall Curtis Daily.

The best part of the concert happened in the second half when the PBO, the Vancouver Cantata Singers and soloists Danielle Sampson, soprano, Viki St. Pierre, mezzo soprano, Ross Hauk, tenor and Sumner Thompson, bass-baritone performed Eternal Source of Light Divine HWV 7 4. The work was in honour of Queen Anne’s birthday (February 6, 1713). This lively piece was written for a woman who was a most active patron of the arts. It seems she paid Handel a stipend even though he was still under contract in the Hanover court. She was a tragic figure of many pregnancies who died with no issue.

But both Curtis Daily and I knew something else about Queen Anne! In 1705 she made a land grant of 215 acres to a little church, Trinity, in New York City. According to Daily this church is only a tad less rich than the Vatican. It leases land to huge office towers as Trinity is buried right there in the financial district. It seems that with all the money they have there is an active concert season in the church. A lot of it is early music. Our intrepid Oregonian has played there a few times. And of course Alexander Hamilton is buried in the Trinity churchyard

Sometimes it is easy to take EMV for granted. I do my best not to. There are not too many places anywhere else that would have had the concert (free of the usual chestnuts) we enjoyed today.

But best of all (and knowing there would be three players on that wickedly difficult baroque trumpet) including one all the way from Sao Paulo, Bruno Lourensetto), and Pauld Dibnik and Kristine 

Kwapis was that sound aided by Corey Rae on timpani.

It was in the first movement that featured Vicki St. Pierre accompanied by Kris Kwapis on solo trumpet, that had me feeling I, too was wearing a crown. Kwapis plays with such precision while not abandoning a beautiful tone that made the evening worthwhile.

We rushed home after the concert so I could make pancakes and sausages. We had to feed Daily so that he could leave pronto by 6 for Portland.

Lucrezia Panciatichi - 1545 -Agnolo di Cosimo, Ufizzi - Florence - Bronwen Marsden - April 11, 2019

Sometimes the reinforcement of one’s style comes after the fact. For years my relatives were perplexed by the fact that I photographed our young daughters and then our young granddaughters with nary a smile.

Bia de'Medici -1542-1545 -Agnolo di Cosimo, Ufizzi - Florence, Rebeca Stewart July 2005

I would cite both 19^th century English photographers, the Reverend Dodgson

 and Julia Margaret Cameron, as examples of the tradition. And I would further explain that in the Victorian era children were seen as little adults and many had to work under appalling circumstances.

A few years ago I discovered 16^th century Florentine  painter Agnolo di Cosimo (November 17, 1503 – November 23, 1572) known as Bronzino. His portraits were stark and his subjects did not smile.

Laura Battiferri - 1560- Agnolo Bronzino, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence - Bronwen Marsden , April 11, 2019

Imagine going to Florence last month and being able to see the Bronzinos at the Ufizzi Gallery!  It was like meeting up with  the master.

Coming back from our trip to Italy I found myself in a conundrum. After seeing all those renaissance paintings how could I be inspired in Vancouver with its blue skies and frigid early spring weather?

Penitent Magdalene, 1533, Titian - Palazzo Pitti , Bronwen Marsden, April 11, 2019

I found the light and with my friend Portland baroque bassist Curtis Daily (here last week for an EMV concert at the Chan) we photographed my wonderful long time posing subject, Bronwen Marsden in the spirit of that renaissance artist. I was attracted to the idea because Marsden has severe short hair. She no longer owns a little black dress (for 21^st century shock value) but we managed. I believe that this project has legs and I will continue.

Saintly Magdalene, April 11, 2019