ANIMA

Dear friends: we cordially invite you to join ANIMA on Friday, 24 October 2025 at 8pm for BORDER BALLADS - an evening of fluid(folk) songs of work, love, and rebellion! Following hot on the high heels of ‘Wedded Pride’ earlier this month, we continue down our ever-metamorphising path of q***r friendship with these folk songs old and new at The Registry Theatre in Kitchener. Tickets are available at registrytheatre.com or via phone at 519-578-1570. We so look forward to singing with you there!

Featuring Lesley Emma Bouza, Daniel Cabena, Paul Genyk-Berezowsky (Paul Genyk-Berezowsky, Conductor), Luke Hathaway, and Henry Oswald Peirson. Thanks and credit for poster design to Anisa Francoeur.

We’re so looking forward to sharing The Sign of Jonas (by Benton Roark & Luke Hathaway) on March 20th at 7pm at 10C Shared Space in Guelph. This beautiful ‘apocalypse folktale’ will be performed by Mother Country (Benton Roark, Andrew Ivens, Phil Albert & Chris Hull, with Daniel Cabena & Luke Hathaway). Tickets will be available at the door - pay what you can.
You are warmly invited!

ANIMA presents a concert in celebration of Pride

Thursday, June 27th, 2024 | 1:00pm | Metropolitan United Church (56 Queen Street East, Toronto)

Membra Jesu nostri: a sung devotion

Music by Dietrich Buxtehude
Poetry by Luke Hathaway & Arnulf of Leuven

featuring:

Elijah McCormack, male soprano
Lesley Emma Bouza, soprano
Daniel Cabena, countertenor
Chris Fischer, tenor
Paul Genyk-Berezowsky, baritone
Jonathan Oldengarm, harpsichord & organ
Joëlle Morton, violone
&
The Cardinal Consort of Viols
Sheila Smyth, treble viol & violin
Linda Deshman, tenor viol
Sara Blake, bass viol
Valerie Sylvester, bass viol & violin

*

Our Membra Jesu nostri is a q***r and trans-y reenactment of the devotional rhythms of this beautiful Medieval hymn, as set to music by Dietrich Buxtehude in 1680.

A work of spiritual reclamation and erotic celebration, this work also celebrates the quotidian rhythms of caregiving, and acknowledges the agony of grief.

This sung devotion is a coming together of music and texts and of friends old & new. It’s a work of breath and movement and of heartfelt listening.

The gentle conversation of this première performance has been made possible by the Canada Council for the Arts and the kind offices of composer James Rolfe (https://www.jamesrolfe.ca), who edited our musical scores.

A chapbook with new words by Luke Hathaway and an afterword by Daniel Cabena is printed and published by Karen Schindler, Baseline Press (https://www.baselinepress.ca).

Please feel free to write to us at [email protected] or visit ANIMA (https://www.animaearlymusic.com) to learn more about our work.