Four of Vancouver’s premiere vocal ensembles have come up with different strategies for our back to (almost) normal autumn
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Unlike our musical home teams the Vancouver Symphony and Vancouver Opera as well as our major concert presenters, choirs use their own set of rules for the fall season.
Starting up after an extended summer hiatus, most vocal ensembles give their first performances in late September or early October. Remembrance Day is increasingly commemorated by choral events, and then comes the torrent of seasonal musics beginning in late November. This means that four of Vancouver’s premiere vocal ensembles have come up with different strategies for our back to (almost) normal autumn.
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Time was when choirs were considered to be rather staid and conservative in their programming. Not anymore. Contemporary music by a diverse selection of composers and a strong selection of premieres characterize Vancouver’s fall choral calendar.
The Vancouver Chamber Choir, directed since 2019 by Kari Turunen, is our own completely professional choral ensemble. Its concert season began last week but continues on Oct. 14 at St James Community Square with Time Bends, a program built around a new commission for choir and electronics, Runs Deep, Bends Time, by Peter Hannan.
Then on Nov. 4 at Pacific Spirit United Church (née Ryerson), the VCC celebrates the patron saint of music, St. Cecilia, with choral music by women including three contemporary Cecilias: Cecilia Livingston, Cecilia Damström and Cecilia McDowall. Benjamin Britten’s classic Hymn to St Cecilia, with a lovely text by W.H. Auden, rounds out the program.
The Vancouver Cantata Singers is a hybrid outfit mixing a few professionals with top amateur singers. This season the VCS celebrates the 10th year of Paula Kraemer as artistic director with a single event, Light of Humanity, on Oct. 22 at Christ Church Cathedral. There will be more Britten, and a work by Estonian master Arvo Pärt, plus works by five contemporary Canadian composers.
The concert highlight is the premiere of composer-in-residence Craig Galbraith’s Lux Humanitas (Light of Humanity). Galbraith’s previous VCS commission Coeli et Terra resulted in the ensemble’s Best Performance of a Canadian Work win in the 2019 Healey Willan Competition for Canadian Amateur Choirs.
On Oct. 29 at Christ Church Cathedral, Musica Intima’s program Hiraeth also spotlights contemporary repertoire, in this instance music inspired by nature and reflection, the nostalgic concept of longing for a place or moment that is summed up by the Welsh-language word hiraeth. The playlist includes music by Joanna Ward, Ramona Luengen and Gabriela Lena.
The Vancouver Bach Choir is our oldest vocal ensemble and definitely the biggest, encompassing a whole family of choirs. Its flagship ensemble presents Reflections for Our Times on Nov. 12 at St. Andrew’s Wesley United Church, a program featuring two major contemporary works, Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered and the world premiere of Frank Horvat’s Memories of Self-Isolation, both compositions very much informed by the trials and tribulations of the recent pandemic past.
Rushing the season just a bit, it’s worth noting that the VBC ends the fall with that juggernaut of traditional big sings, Handel’s ubiquitous Messiah. There’s a chorister’s agreement to share that treasure of the choral repertoire; this year it’s the turn of Leslie Dala and the Bach Choir to perform it at the Orpheum on Dec. 10.
The Messiah may be the grandest single piece on offer this fall, but there’s one last big event to mention: The Vancouver Chamber Choir’s A Choral Feast, on Nov. 27 at the Orpheum. Here the idea is to showcase the diversity and complexity of our choral scene: “A pop-up one-day festival of Vancouver’s superb smaller vocal ensembles: the Laudate Singers, musica intima, the Phoenix Chamber Choir, Vancouver Cantata Singers and the Vancouver Youth Choir in a tasting menu of choral music.”
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