Bruce Vogt, one of Canada’s finest pianists, has received praise internationally for his mesmerizing performances, inspiring audiences across Canada and abroad.  He has given recitals across Europe, as a soloist and with chamber ensembles, in London, Paris and Prague, as well as in venues in Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania. Fifteens times he visited to Japan with his tours. He has also performed and taught in China.

The Times writes: ‘Rare grandeur…I was mesmerized by Vogt’s sheer control’. Le Républicain writes: ‘the audience was literally enraptured’.

In addition to his career as a soloist and chamber musician, Vogt is Professor at the University of Victoria. Because he sees teaching and working with young pianists and teachers as an important commitment, he leads master classes and workshops and adjudicates for festivals.

In recent years, he has received many invitations in Canada and abroad to indulge another of his passions – improvising accompaniments to great films of the silent era.  He has played for and lectured on films by Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Griffith, Murnau and others. 

After graduating, Vogt continued his education in England, before returning to Canada. He began his successful academic and concert pianist career in Victoria in 1980.
His silent movies improv days went silent until 2000 when Vogt was asked by a friend at a conservatory in Paris to accompany a couple of Chaplin films as part of a year-end celebration for the students. The students loved it. Vogt was reenergized and soon performed similar shows in Germany, England and Japan. 
“For the films, I’m pretty lazy. I don’t plan a score,” said Vogt, adding the performance is a much lighter feel than playing highly disciplined concerts. “The way I prepare is I make sure I know the film so well that I know exactly when to come in. I’m doing it for the first time every time I play, but I know the films very well. I’d stare at them (films) with great intent and have learned to play without taking my eyes off the movie. (by Paul Mayne, Western News)

Programme – Charlie Chaplin’s The Rink (1916)
Buster Keaton’s Our Hospitality (1923).

Maria Konoshenko, the Russian born mezzo-soprano, performed in Norfolk many times, she is very well known to the audience of Trunch Concerts. In  spring 2022 Maria raised her voice against Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and performed at “Songs for Ukraine” fundraising concert in Trunch (video below).

Maria currently lives in Finland and works at the University of Helsinki. She is not only a wonderful singer, but also a linguist and in this concert she will sing her favourite cabaret style music in English, German, French, Spanish and Russian. Maria loves to perform the music of many different styles including Baroque, music of C20, Traditional slavic songs, Jazz and even African folk music.

Piano – Mary Howard

This concert celebrates the extraordinary find of the HMS Gloucester in Norfolk, a famous warship that sank near Great Yarmouth in 1682, creating political ripples that shaped the nation we live in today. 

This very exiting baroque programme is designed as a musical companion to the upcoming exhibition on the Gloucester at the Norwich Castle Museum – which will be open at the same time as the concert in Trunch – and with the help of the exhibition’s curators, Prof. Claire Jowitt and Dr. Benjamin Redding of the UEA.

James Stuart, Duke of York and Albany survived the ship’s sinking – to become King James II and VII in 1685. It was an important ‘almost’ moment in British political history: a royal shipwreck causing the very near-death of the Catholic heir to the Protestant throne at a time of great political and religious tension.

The programme would have two parts: an exquisite selection of consort music that would have been played aboard the Gloucester and similar ships in the 17th century (Purcell, Locke, Lawes), and a suite from Matthew Locke’s incidental music to Shakespeare’s Tempest.