Baroque Smorgasbord for Spring

An accomplished performer on both modern and baroque violin, Christi Meyers has played a prominent role in the musical life of Victoria for 20 years. She has been Assistant Concertmaster of the Victoria Symphony since 2001 and has appeared frequently as soloist with the orchestra, most recently in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons for Ballet Victoria in March and this summer in Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 2 & 5.

She is a founding member of the period performance group, Victoria Baroque and is a member of Vancouver’s Pacific Baroque Orchestra, and in chamber music for Early Music Vancouver. In 2011, while on sabbatical in the Netherlands, she was assistant concertmaster of Sinfonia Rotterdam (NL), and a member of European Camerata (UK). Over the past 3 decades Christi has played in major halls all over Canada, and in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, France, the Netherlands, Britain, Columbia, Mexico, and the USA.

A dedicated educator, she has been on faculty of University of Victoria, Victoria Conservatory of Music, and had a long association with the Greater Victoria Youth Orchestra as a violin coach.

In 2021 she became the Artistic Director of Township Classics, an Esquimalt based chamber music concert series that funds the Youth Mentorship Program, an initiative that provides scholarships, mentoring and concert opportunities for talented musical teens from the public school system in the greater Victoria area.

Born in Montreal and raised in northern Alberta, Christi holds music performance degrees from McGill and Western Universities, under the tutelage of Gwen Thompson-Robinow and Sonia Jelinkova.

She is married to a great guy, and is the mom of two teenagers and one ginger cat with attitude.

Violinist Chloe Meyers performs with early music ensembles across North America as leader, orchestra member, and chamber musician. She is the concertmaster of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra in Vancouver and co-concertmaster of Arion Baroque Orchestra in Montreal. She has led or appeared as soloist with groups including the Victoria Baroque Players, Pacific MusicWorks, Ensemble Les Boréades, the Theatre of Early Music, Ensemble Masques, and Les Voix Baroques, of which she was a founding member. She has had the pleasure of sharing the stage with international violin stars, performing double concerti with Stefano Montanari, Enrico Onofri, Amandine Beyer, and Cecilia Bernardini. Chloe’s playing may be heard on many award-winning disks, including the 2022 Juno award winning recording “Solfeggio”… in which she leads the orchestra L’Harmonie des Saisons as concertmaster. In 2023 she was nominated as Best Musical Director for her work in Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater with the Edmonton Opera.

Alongside Chloe’s passion for performance and directing, is her love of teaching. As adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia, she trains young artists in the Baroque Orchestra Mentorship Program, chamber music and solo lessons. She has years of teaching children, university and students of all ages and levels! She is an active teacher in the summer Victoria Conservatory teaching programs, as well the UVic Collegium orchestral program.

Chloe lives in Ladner, BC, with her ever growing family and dog.

Alexander Weimann is one of the most sought-after ensemble directors, soloists, and chamber music partners of his generation. After traveling the world with ensembles like Tragicomedia, Cantus Cölln, the Freiburger Barockorchester, the Gesualdo Consort and Tafelmusik, he now focuses on his activities as Artistic Director of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra in Vancouver, and as music director of Les Voix Baroques, Le Nouvel Opéra and Tempo Rubato.

Recently, he has conducted the Montreal-based baroque orchestra Ensemble Arion, Les Violons du Roy, and the Portland Baroque Orchestra; both the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra have regularly featured him as a featured soloist. In the last years, he has repeatedly conducted the Victoria Symphony and Symphony Nova Scotia, most recently with Handel’s “Messiah”.

Alexander Weimann can be heard on some 100 CDs. He made his North American recording debut with the ensemble Tragicomedia on the CD Capritio (Harmonia Mundi USA), and won worldwide acclaim from both the public and critics for his 2001 release of Handel’s Gloria (ATMA Classique). Volume 1 of his recordings of the complete keyboard works by Alessandro Scarlatti appeared in May 2005. Critics around the world unanimously praised it, and in the following year it was nominated for an Opus Prize as the best Canadian early music recording. Recently, he has also released an Opus Award-winning CD of Handel oratorio arias with superstar soprano Karina Gauvin and his new Montreal-based ensemble Tempo Rubato, a recording of Bach’s St. John’s Passion, various albums with Les Voix Baroques of Buxtehude, Carissimi and Purcell, all with rave reviews. His latest album with Karina Gauvin and Arion Baroque Orchestra (Prima Donna) won a Juno Award in 2013, and a complete recording of Handel’s Orlando was released in the fall of 2013, with an exciting group of international star soloists and the Pacific Baroque Orchestra performing.

Alexander Weimann was born in 1965 in Munich, where he studied the organ, church music, musicology (with a summa cum laude thesis on Bach’s secco recitatives), theatre, medieval Latin, and jazz piano, supported by a variety of federal scholarships for the highly talented. In addition to his studies, he has attended numerous master classes in harpsichord and historical performance. To ground himself further in the roots of western music, he became intensely involved over the course of several years with Gregorian chant.

Alexander Weimann has just moved to the Vancouver area with his wife, 3 children and pets, and tries to spend as much time as possible in his garden and kitchen.

Host or Publisher Wentworth Villa