Songs, Dialogues and a Glee,
by William and Henry Lawes, John Wilson and others
in a Cavalier Cabaret devised by John Edwards
Friday, September 19, 2025
Emmanuel College Chapel
75 Queen’s Park Cres E.
Toronto, ON M5S 1K5
Doors Open: 7:00pm
Pre-Concert Talk by Professor Deanne Williams and John Edwards: 7:15pm
Concert: 8:00pm – 9:00pm
General Admission $30 | Students Free with ID
Henry Lawes worked as household musician for John Egerton, the Earl of Bridgewater, where he taught the family music and, famously, wrote the songs and recruited John Milton for Comus – A Maske presented at Ludlow Castle which featured a young Alice Egerton as ‘The Lady’. After losing his court position in the Civil War, Henry Lawes turned his hand to publishing his songs and to public concert production in Oxford. Our entertainment imagines Henry delivering his first printed songbook to its dedicatees, the Egerton sisters, now great ladies and patrons in their own right.
Henry Lawes,
former music teacher to the Egerton family and former court musician sung by Bradley Christensen
Alice Egerton,
Henry’s former student, now Countess of Carbery sung by Juliet Beckwith
Mary Egerton,
Henry’s former student now Lady Herbert of Cherbury and Castle-Island sung by Vania Chan
with John Edwards, Lutenist
CRRS Fellow Deanne Williams is a Professor at York University who specializes in Medieval and Renaissance literature, especially Shakespeare, and is the author of pioneering work in the new field of Girls’ Studies. Girl Culture in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, recently published by Bloomsbury. She is also author of Shakespeare and the Performance of Girlhood (Palgrave, 2014), which was published in Palgrave’s Shakespeare Studies series, and many other books.
Bradley Christensen is a baritone, voice teacher, and guest clinician. He holds a DMA in Voice Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Toronto and has sung with with Opera Atelier, the Grand Philharmonic Choir, Guelph Chamber Choir, Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Orchestra Toronto, Ottawa Choral Society, Peterborough Symphony Orchestra, and Thirteen Strings to name a few.
Juliet Beckwith, soprano, debuted as a soloist with the Toronto Symphony at age eleven, performing I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas. She has sung with Tafelmusik, as well as programs such as The Beckwith Songbook (Confluence Concerts), Britten’s Five Flower Songs (Octet Victoria), Holst’s The Planets (Christ Church Cathedral Choir), Victoria Baroque Festival Evensong, Handel’s Coronation Anthems (Victoria Symphony), and Purcell’s The Fairy Queen (Toronto Masque Theatre).
Vania Chan is active in the fields of vocal performance and academia (M.M., Manhattan School of Music, PhD, York University). She made her Carnegie Hall debut as a 1st prize winner in the Barry Alexander International Competition (NY). In 2022, Vania completed a European tour with Soundstreams, premiered the role of Wenli in City Opera Vancouver’s production of Chinatown, and performed in The Glenn Gould Foundation’s Celebration of Gould’s 90th Birthday Anniversary, singing the music of Alma Deutscher, She has also sung Vivaldi: But “Not the Seasons” (Rezonance Baroque Ensemble) and Celia in Mozart’s Lucio Silla (Voicebox: Opera in Concert).
Lutenist John Edwards leads The Musicians In Ordinary which explores the repertoire of the Renaissance and early Baroque. He has played continuo for many orchestras and in the theatre and has been music director for productions of Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Cheeky Magpie’s Toronto Noir and Creation Theatre Company’s Shakespeare’s Saints and Sinners. He led a concert of music for a Restoration Tempest for the Shakespeare Association of America and has given lectures at universities throughout North America. For The Musicians In Ordinary he has produced a series of podcasts on the music, poetry and theatre of the 16th and 17th century and a ‘pod-play’ of John Milton’s Comus with its original songs and dance music.
