Victoria Baroque
Cello Landscapes
October 4, 2025

Salt Spring Baroque is excited to present Victoria Baroque in CELLO LANDSCAPES.

Saturday, October 4, 4:00 pm
All Saints by-the-Sea Anglican Church
110 Park Drive, Salt Spring Island

This program celebrates the warm, expansive, bass frequencies of Victoria Baroque. Dutch-Canadian cellist Diederik Van Dijk joins Amy Laing and Katrina Russell to perform Baroque concertos, including Vivaldi's Concerto for Cello and Bassoon, RV 409, a piece full of evocative landscape painting very like Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

On the program, you will also hear new compositions by two Canadian women: Indigenous composer Cris Derksen, whose piece Land Bach is a response to the timeless music of Bach's Cello Suites; and composer and zoomusicologist Emily Doolittle, whose piece Utah 1996 explores the shapes and patterns of the song of the hermit thrush.

To balance the bass, Soile Stratkauskas offers Vivaldi's celebration of the song of the goldfinch in his concerto named "Il gardellino", and the program will close with Diederik Van Dijk's performance of Porpora's magnificently lyrical cello concerto. Porpora was a renowned voice teacher and opera composer, whose generosity to his students left a lasting imprint on the musical landscape of the eighteenth century.

Click here for the concert programme.

If you don't wish to purchase tickets online, send us a note at info@saltspringbaroque.com and we will gladly reserve seats for you and you can pay by cash or card at the door.

PERFORMER BIOS

DIEDERIK VAN DIJK

Diederik van Dijk is a Dutch-Canadian cellist with a broad range of musical activities and interests who is equally at home on the Baroque and the modern cello. Based in Utrecht, the Netherlands, he divides his time mostly between chamber music and orchestral playing. With a practice spanning four centuries of music history and crossing over into various genres, his musical life has taken him from the Amsterdam Concertgebouw to outdoor stages in Newfoundland; from performing internationally at major Early Music festivals to recording in Abbey Road Studios.

Diederik studied cello with Ian Hampton, Eric Wilson, and Marc Destrubé, and Baroque cello with Viola de Hoog, acquiring in the process a Bachelor of Arts from the University of British Columbia and a Bachelor of Historical Instruments from the Utrecht Conservatory. He is a core member of Combattimento, the Van Swieten Society, and inter-arts ensemble Dark by Five and is frequently engaged as principal cellist with the Nieuwe Philharmonie Utrecht. In recent years he has also performed with the Orchestra of the 18th Century, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, the Metropole Orkest, Insomnio, Holland Opera, and the Pacific Baroque Orchestra.

AMY LAING

Originally from Nanaimo B.C. Amy earned her Bachelor of Music degree from the HARID Conservatory in Boca Raton Florida, and her Master of Music degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Prior to the arrival of COVID, Amy was delighted to be in her first season as Principal cellist in the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra. She played regularly with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, as well as with the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Canadian Opera Company, the Windsor Symphony, Niagara Symphony, Thunder Bay Symphony, and also held a six-month contract with Symphony Nova Scotia in Halifax.

In 2011/12 Amy served as acting principal cello in the Victoria Symphony and taught at the Victoria Conservatory of Music, and again joined the orchestra playing principal cello for the second part of their 2016 season. Amy is an active chamber musician, and was a member of the Madawaska String Quartet, specializing in the performance and cultivation of contemporary works. Amy has also been the solo cellist in numerous major musical theatre productions, most recently "Hamilton".

Beyond the strictly classical music genre Amy has worked with Toronto's Art of Time Ensemble, SoulPepper Theatre Company, Toronto Dance Theatre, the Stratford Festival and Music in the Barns. She has performed or recorded with leading artists including Stevie Wonder, Blue Rodeo, Jesse Cook, The Barenaked Ladies, Jim Cuddy, Steven Page, Sarah Slean, Molly Johnson, Royal Wood, Amelia Curran, Donovan Woods, and played a Canadian tour with Blue Rodeo including a performance in the JUNO's.

Amy has played in music festivals around the world including the Spoleto Festivals in Italy and in Charleston, The National Orchestral Institute, the Banff Arts Festival, Musica Nel Chiostro in Tuscany, Cork Opera Festival Ireland, COSI festival in Italy, the Northern Lights Festival in Ajijic Mexico, Festival of Sound in Parry Sound, the Phil Dywer Music Festival in Qualicum BC, Salt Spring Chamber Music Festival, Tafelmusik's Winter Institute, and also toured China with her cello quartet.

On the positive side of the reconfiguration this pandemic has caused in her life, Amy is now happy to call Vancouver Island home once again and is thrilled to be joining Victoria Baroque this season. Amy plays on a Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume cello.

KATRINA RUSSELL

Katrina Russell has a diverse performance background with repertoire ranging from the Renaissance to contemporary music, and from orchestral playing to solo appearances. Having located to Vancouver Island in 2010, she previously lived in London, England where she spent many years playing both modern and historical bassoons. As a specialist in historical performance, she has played and recorded with many of the period instrument ensembles in Britain and Europe, including The English Concert, The King's Consort, The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, The Academy of Ancient Music, The Hanover Band, The Gabrieli Consort and Players, L'Orchestre de la Champs Elysees, The Orchestra of "The Sixteen", and The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, amongst others. As a member of many of these groups Katrina has toured widely, appearing at many leading festivals around the world including Perth (Australia), Aix-en-Provence, Salzburg, Mostly Mozart (Lincoln Center, New York), and the BBC Proms. She has also performed with The London Chamber Orchestra, and in North America with New York Philomusica, the Vancouver Symphony, Victoria Symphony and the Vancouver Island Symphony. She also appears regularly with various West Coast period instrument ensembles, including Early Music Vancouver, The Pacific Baroque Orchestra, and Victoria Baroque.

As a teacher, Katrina has been teaching privately since 1987 with students ranging in age from 11 to 80. As well as bassoon instruction, she has given specialist classes in reed making techniques and been involved with school and community based educational workshops, including most recently the Early Music Vancouver "Online School – Encountering the Baroque Orchestra". She taught for several seasons at the Comox Valley Youth Music Centre summer music camp, and has been the Baroque Bassoon instructor for the Summer Baroque Academy at the Victoria Conservatory since 2017. Katrina is currently on Faculty at the Nanaimo Conservatory of Music, and teaches as part of the Baroque Orchestra Mentorship Programme at the University of British Columbia.

In addition to performance and teaching, Katrina also works with her husband, horn player Andrew Clark in their joint business – clarkbrass.ca – making both historical and modern horns, and other brass instruments.

VICTORIA BAROQUE presents dynamic, personal, and engaging performances of music from the Baroque and Classical periods.

Bringing Baroque music to life, Victoria Baroque inspires Vancouver Island audiences through exciting live performances. Victoria Baroque's home venue is Church of St John the Divine in downtown Victoria. Invitations for guest performances have included Early Music Vancouver, Early Music Society of the Islands, Cowichan Symphony Society, Artspring, Denman Island Concerts, and Vancouver Island Chamber Music Festival. Victoria Baroque's début CD Virtuosi of the Baroque on Marquis Classics was nominated for a Western Canadian Music Award in 2014.

Playing on the instruments of the 18th century Victoria Baroque brings audiences closer to the soundworld of the period, embracing the dance-driven rhythmic vitality, as well as the lyrical aspects and conversational aspects of baroque music. The mellower tones of the baroque instruments – gut strings on string instruments, shorter bows, mellifluous wooden flutes, oboes and bassoon with fewer keys, natural horns without valves, etc – respond in a more intimate, conversational manner than their modern equivalents.

Victoria Baroque brings together early music specialists from Vancouver Island and beyond for explorations of chamber, orchestral, vocal and choral works. Victoria Baroque enjoys ongoing collaborations with the St John's Chamber Singers and many visiting guest artists. Victoria Baroque's guest directors have included Pacific Opera Victoria's Timothy Vernon; Tafelmusik's Jeanne Lamon; the leader of the English Baroque Soloists, Kati Debretzeni; and British harpsichordist Steven Devine. Guest soloists have included internationally acclaimed singers soprano Nancy Argenta and tenor Benjamin Butterfield in vocal works by Bach, Purcell and Handel.

Nurturing emerging talent is close Victoria Baroque's heart. The choral collaborations with St John Chamber Singers give emerging young singers invaluable opportunities to perform with a professional period instrument orchestra, including works such as Bach's St John Passion and Cantatas, and choral and solo works by Handel, Vivaldi, Telemann and Buxtehude. Victoria Baroque's educational workshops with the Greater Victoria Youth Orchestra and Baroque Instrument Summer Program at the Victoria Conservatory of Music have exposed and immersed local music students in Baroque performance in an hands-on manner.