Mission

The Sackville Festival of Early Music offers outstanding musical  experiences to audiences in the Tantramar region through performance, educational outreach, master class instruction, and amateur workshops. Our annual series of early music performances showcases Canadian and American musicians of international repute.

Our Youth Outreach Program enables a selection of these artists to perform for students in area schools, in keeping with our belief that young people in small towns and rural areas should have access to excellence in music.

The Sackville Festival of Early Music aims to:

• promote public appreciation of period music;

• introduce young people to their cultural heritage through live performance of early music;

• provide master classes in historical styles for students of music students;

• organize popular discussions and demonstrations of the arts for general audiences;

• support the growth of New Brunswick artists by offering opportunities for performance and for collaboration with outside artists. 

Artistic Vision

The artistic vision of the festival is to promote exceptional performances of and education about early music through engagement with works of the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods, and to support artistic excellence within our community. We primarily engage with professional musicians specializing in historically informed performance and performing on period instruments.

History

The origins of the Sackville Festival of Early Music date back to 2004, when Réjean Poirier organized a program of early music performed by Acadian, French and Québécois artists in conjunction with the 400th anniversary of the founding of l’Acadie.

Over the next two years the Festival was held in Dieppe NB, before extending gradually to Sackville. With support from the Town of Sackville and the Mount Allison University Music Department, the Festival relocated permanently to Sackville in 2007. The Town and University provide a cultural infrastructure that enables the Festival to present its concerts under optimum conditions in a variety of acoustic environments: gardens, parks, churches and concert halls.

Founder Réjean Poirier continued to guide the Festival until his retirement in 2014, when he was succeeded by Artistic Director Linda Pearse and Administrative Director Shawn Bostick.