About

Musique Royale welcomes you to an evening of jazz and song with pianist and composer Peter-Anthony Togni and soprano Janelle Lucyk. Reuniting for an intimate house concert at Cecilia’s Retreat in Mahone Bay, the pair will revisit and reimagine songs from earlier collaborations, with music that blurs the boundaries between classical and jazz storytelling. The program includes original works and standards, with themes varying from nostalgia, chance, and devotion, all the while combining lyrical immediacy and maritime sensibility.

Praised for her luminous tone and expressive storytelling, Lucyk is one of Canada’s leading early music voices, performing internationally as a soloist and artistic director while bringing a uniquely versatile presence to repertoire spanning centuries. Togni, a JUNO-nominated composer and improviser based in Halifax, is renowned for music that is both spiritually contemplative and boldly exploratory, with works performed and broadcast worldwide. All proceeds will support the Capella Regalis Choirs tour in late May. Exciting details can be found at www.capellaregalis.com.

Musique Royale is pleased to support Capella Regalis in their upcoming tour to Quebec and Ontario by presenting some very special events - complete with wonderful music, delicious meals, and, for added fun - silent auctions and door prizes. Excitement has been building for months among the choristers but in today’s world we need to face the unfortunate reality of cutbacks in government funding. Rather than dim any prospects of a tour postponement, especially on the heels of a successful ‘Songs of the Sea’ CD release, we look to those silver linings. Your donations are so incredibly important and attendance at events is valued now even more. Live music is to be celebrated - we know you will agree!

About the Artists

Janelle Lucyk

Janelle Lucyk is a leader among an emerging generation of Canadian artists specializing in old music and historically informed performance, taking ideas from conception to the stage.

Janelle is Mécénat Musica’s 2025 Vocal Discovery of the Year. She has given concerts in all of Canada’s thirteen provinces and territories.

Janelle is the artistic director of Ménestrel, a Canadian early music ensemble combining ancient repertoire with research into Canada’s oral folk traditions. She is director of the series ArtChoral, featuring the professional vocal quartet in residence at Montreal’s iconic Art Deco concert hall Le 9e’s Grande Salle, which reopened in 2024 after a $15 million restoration. Following mentor and arts champion Barbara Butler, Janelle is Artistic and Administrative Director of Musique Royale (est. 1985), a music presenter based in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia which enriches historic spaces through the sharing of world class early music, and much more. Programming includes over seventy concerts throughout the year in venues across the spectacular maritime province.

Janelle was invited by legendary organist Xaver Varnus to perform two sold out performances in Hungary, including at the spectacular Bartók National Concert Hall in Budapest. She has had the good fortune of working as a soloist under five-time Grammy winner Paul Halley on many unforgettable concerts including Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 and Selva Morale e Spirituale and multiple Bach Passions.

Janelle graduated in 2014 with distinction from the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles in Belgium and completed her Masters in Management at Durham University in the UK, where she was awarded the Best Soloist by Music Durham, and Best Female Soloist by her peers. While in Europe, she formed Voces Desuper, an ensemble performing regularly in the magnificent Cathédrale de Saints-Michel-et-Gudule, and especially at the Te Deum ceremony for the King and Queen of Belgium.

Janelle is grateful to the Canada Council of the Arts, the Federal Department of Canadian Heritage, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Mécénat Musica, Arts Nova Scotia and Brent Rinaldi for their support.

Peter-Anthony Togni

Peter-Anthony’s music is spiritually rooted and contemplative. It ranges from the ethereally quiet to the explosive outer limits of contemplation. He is an award-wining composer, pianist, organist, conductor and former CBC broadcaster, who tours nationally and internationally; his music is regularly performed and broadcast worldwide.

Togni’s compositions have been released on XXI Records, CBC Records, Hänssler Classics, and Warner Classics UK. His Lamentatio Jeremiah Prophetae, a concerto for bass clarinet and choir offering a poignant interpretation of a prophet who speaks the truth and is disregarded, was recorded by bass clarinettist Jeff Reilly and the and released on the ECM label, produced by Manfred Eicher. Other notable CD releases include Peter-Anthony’s solo piano disc Piano Alone, Sanctuary Trio’s Estuary, Hymns of Heaven and Earth, Responsio, ’ Sea Dreams, and Lost and Found and Passages.

In 2006, Togni’s Illuminations, a concerto for bass clarinet and string orchestra, was nominated for a Juno award in the category Classical Composition of the Year. 2011 brought two nominations for , for an East Coast Music Award in the Classical Music category, and for a Juno award in the category Classical Composition of the Year. The work was also a finalist in 2010 for the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award, celebrating outstanding works of contemporary art that inspire and promote the development of artistic endeavour in Nova Scotia. In 2012, Togni’s , the result of a project with the Latvian Youth Choir BALSIS, was published by Musica Baltica. Also in 2012, Peter-Anthony was the recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee Medal.

The project, a contemporary response to the medieval composer Guillaume de Machaut written for bass clarinettist Jeff Reilly and vocal quartet, premiered 2013. The work is the grand prize winner of the 2014 Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award and was nominated for a 2016 Juno Award for Classical Album of the Year: Vocal or Choral Performance. , a work for percussionist Jerry Granelli and choir premiered in Bolder Colorado in 2014, with its Canadian premiere taking place in 2015 with the Elmer Iseler Singers in Toronto. In 2016 Peter’s opera , based on the libretto of Sharon Singer and in collaboration with Opera in Concert, premiered to critical acclaim in Toronto.

Sea Dreams, drawn from the texts of T. S. Elliot’s four quartets, is a reflection of a journey of faith in relation to the ocean and premiered in Calgary in 2018 with Luminous Voices and flutists Sara Hahn-Scinocco and Sara Geick. The work is part of , which was nominated for a Juno award, and won the 2021 ECMA for Classical Composition of the Year. Togni’s Living Flame of Love premiered in 2019 with Edmonton’s with harpist Nora Bumanis and accordionist Joseph Petric, and two commissions for the RCCO premiered during its 2019 National Competition. 2020 brought the work Magnificat for the .

Togni’s Voice of the Weaver, commissioned by Jeff Reilly for bass clarinet and choir, with texts by Mi’kmaq poet Mary Louise Martin, premiered in Canada in 2022 with the . This work will be performed at the and at the Millbrook First Nations, featuring Jeff Reilly and The Elora Singers, with a commercial recording to follow. His newest endeavour is The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, which premiered in November 2024 in Toronto and Guelph with the Elmer Iseler Singers and the Elora Singers in joint concert.

Peter-Anthony is a pianist, improviser, conductor and organist and has given many performances across Canada and in Europe. In 2015, he took part in the 53rd Magadino International Organ Festival in Switzerland, which was co-founded by his late father, Victor Togni. He has also worked extensively in Canada as a church musician. He was music director at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Calgary, an organist at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Toronto and organist and choir director at St. Mary’s Cathedral Basilica in Halifax. Togni was the organist in the internationally acclaimed trio Sanctuary alongside bass clarinettist Jeff Reilly and cellist Christoph Both. Sanctuary formed in 1999 and performed across Canada and around the world, at venues such as St. John’s, Smith Square in London, Saint- Séverin in Paris and the Dom Cathedral in Riga, Latvia. In 2008 they were the first Canadians since Glenn Gould to play at Philharmonic Hall, in St. Petersburg Russia. They have released several recordings including their acclaimed CD The heart has its reasons for Warner Classics UK. Peter-Anthony also collaborates with artists such as jazz saxophonist Mike Murley and cellist Jeffrey Zeigler. He is currently half of the duo with bass clarinetist Jeff Reilly and who recently perform with cellist, composer and improviser India Gailey. Their debut recording of original music, Lost and Found, was nominated for two ECMA awards, and their latest release Passages came out in November 2024. Peter-Anthony tours his solo piano works.

Born in Pembroke, Ontario in 1959, he spent his early years in Toronto where he attended St. Michael’s Choir School. He later went on to study at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, studying organ with Frederick Geoghegan and composition with Stephen Chatman. He furthered his studies in organ and improvisation in Paris, France with the great French organist Jean Langlais. Togni also studied composition with Allain Gaussin at the in Paris where he was awarded first prize in composition.

For over twenty years, Peter-Anthony was a broadcaster, hosting radio programs for CBC Radio 2 in Canada, including That Time of the Night, the award-winning Stereo Morning, Weekender and Choral Concert. Peter-Anthony teaches at Acadia University’s School of Music in Wolfville, and is the Director of Music Ministries at Saint Mary’s Cathedral Basilica in Halifax. He resides in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.