Da Camera Concert and CD Release

If you are in the Edmonton Area - you might be interested in attending Da Camera's first concert of the season.

It is called "Bach and Mendelssohn" and features works by ... well, I'll let you guess.

Date: Sunday, November 1st at 3 PM
Place: First Baptist Church, Edmonton.

The Featured works on the program are Bach's motet "Jesu Meine Freude" and Mendelssohn's "Hear My Prayer" for Soprano soloist, organ and chorus. It should be great! Dress rehearsal is tonight

By the way - I've been using Google Calendar as my chief calendar for a while now - and I put the calendar at the bottom of my blog as a widget, for no other reason than just because I can! However, it does include all my concert dates (as well as dentist appointments?) which some of my family who read this may find interesting.

At the concert this weekend, we will be releasing our latest CD entitled "Eulogies" - which contains the first ever recording of John Estacio's monumental choral work of the same name, as well as Eleanor Daley's award winning "Requiem". The CD also includes two commissioned works by Canadian composers, and without tooting my horn too much, I'm awfully proud of this recording!

(Click to enlarge)

If you are interested in getting a copy for yourself, the price is $20 CDN, and you can email info@dacamera.ab.ca for more information. Right now, only "Hard" copies of the CD are available, we are looking into iTunes, but it will be some time before we go that route, as we would like to sell as many copies of the CD as possible first. We are still working out domestic and international shipping issues, as well as the possibility of online ordering through PayPal, but for now just email the choir and we'll figure out shipping details on a case by case basis.

Audio clips of the CD will soon be available on our webpage.

Great Show!

The inaugural concert of the Scona Chamber Singers was a great success yesterday. A near capacity house, and the choir was in very fine form!

And now - I'm exhausted, but have to quickly change gears to conduct Mendelssohn and Bach with Da Camera next weekend, with dress rehearsal #1 tonight. So away from the English repertoire I go, and into the Bärenreiter editions I fall!

Will post more once the dust has cleared - and hopefully link some mp3's of the show.

And then, it was Monday

What a great weekend!

Scona Chamber Singers rehearsals started on Friday for our concert next Sunday, and even though a good portion of the choir was very tired, having not only had ten hours of rehearsals with me, but also a day long retreat with the University choirs for a production of Haydn's Creation which is coming up for them.

I was very pleased with the ensemble though - the focus during the rehearsals was very strong, and we accomplished quite a lot in the weekend process. There were a lot of notes left on the floor, but a substantial amount of progress was made from Friday to Sunday night. We have two more full rehearsals, and a dress rehearsal left next weekend before the concert on Sunday afternoon. Hopefully they will all take the few days away from the full choir rehearsals to look at a few notes. In general though, a lot of great music making was had this weekend.

Here is the program for the "Cathedral Music" concert:

O clap your Hands – Orlando Gibbons
Lift up your heads – Orlando Gibbons
Super Flumina Babylonis – Philip De Monte
Quomodo cantibus – William Byrd
Peccavimus a 7– Christopher Tye

Intermission

I Was Glad – Henry Purcell
O Lord, the Maker – William Mundy
Evening Hymn (solo)– Henry Purcell
Turn Thee unto me, O Lord – William Boyce
O Where shall wisdom be found? – William Boyce
O God Thou Art my God - Henry Purcell

In particular, the De Monte, Byrd and Tye set are proving to be the most challenging, but for most of the younger singers, they haven't been exposed to a lot of this high renaissance polyphony, so it doesn't come naturally. It is however, agreed by all that the music is absolutely beautiful!



Time to put this aside for the day though, and concentrate on Da Camera rehearsal tonight, we are only two rehearsals away from that concert too - and there is a fair amount of work to be done on Jesu Meine Freude tonight.

Introducing ...

The Scona Chamber Singers!

After a busy fall preparing and planning the aforementioned project choir, everything is now rolling forward! We chose "Scona Chamber Singers" as the name of the ensemble for a few reasons. Back when I did my Doctor of Music recitals, I named my pick up choir the Scona Chamber Choir, which was a group of about twenty four singers. We did two concerts, one a mixed bag of repertoire from de Victoria, through Hindemith and Schnittke, and the other a fairly ambitious production of Bach's Johannes Passion, both of which were quite successful.

This new incarnation of the ensemble will vary in size from project to project. Anywhere from one to a part singing to mid-sized chamber choir numbers, so we decided to go with "Singers" rather than "Choir" to allow for this flexibility. The name "Scona" comes from the area of Edmonton where we will rehearse and perform for the time being, known as Old Strathcona. There are a few other venues and buildings that take on the Strathcona name, including Edmonton's largest farmer's market, a theatre, and a historic Victorian era three story hotel, one of the last remaining wooden structures in the area. And although the hotel's structure is beautiful, it's modern reputation now somewhat sketchier, I still feel it identifies the ensemble as local, without carrying a bold lettered "Edmonton"moniker. If the future is bright (and yes, I have pipe dreams here - but without dreams, where would we be?) the name will carry a national (international?) uniqueness.

The first concert will be on Sunday October the 25th at 3 PM at Holy Trinity Anglican Church (in the heart of Old Strathcona). The ensemble is made up of seventeen of the best choral singers in the Edmonton area, and a few who now make their home in Calgary. The concert is called "I Was Glad - Music from the English Cathedral" and will include music of Orlando Gibbons, Christopher Tye, William Mundy, William Byrd, Henry Purcell, and William Boyce. Aside from Purcell and Byrd, most of these composers are not well known out of Anglican circles, and all of it is fantastic music! I'm quite excited for the first rehearsal next Friday - only one of four to put the nearly seventy minutes of music together.

In unrelated news. summer is officially over today in Edmonton (we tend to go from summer to winter without much of any autumn). Which means the golf clubs and shoes get removed from the trunk, to be replaced by the curling broom and shoes! Time to locate my tuque and mitts! (I had always thought it was spelled toque, but according to the Oxford Canadian Dictionary, tuque is the correct spelling - interesting!)

Here is our "long term" forecast for the next few days (0C = 32F)

(Click on image for a larger, and more depressing look).


It's worth noting that today, it isn't that bad - predicted to be about 15C, but when the cold front comes through this afternoon, we are expecting very high, potentially damaging winds of up to 90 km/h (55 mph). Any loose objects are being stored in the garage today! This has been the windiest summer and fall I can ever remember!

A New Routine

My wife and I decided last Wednesday night to finally check out Millennium Place, which is our hamlet's world-class recreation centre, only a dozen blocks or so from our house. After looking at all it has to offer. It has all the regular things you'd expect of a facility of this nature, a cardio room with bikes and treadmills and other hamster cage exercise activities; a weight room with both hydraulic resistant torture machines and free weights; racquetball and squash courts; a skating rink; and two indoor soccer fields (this is a huge place!) It also includes a very large pool, which includes swim lanes, and a larger recreational area with slides and a WAVE POOL for the kids (or in my case, young at heart).

Part of your entry fee includes the drop in fitness classes which include the usual aerobics, kickboxing and cycling classes - but also includes an adult swim-fit class! So, after signing all the release forms, having our pictures taken and giving a void cheque for monthly withdrawals, we now have a family membership! Turns out Sherwood Park actually has THREE facilities (the others not quite a big - although there is another one with a pool, including a diving area!) and our membership covers all three, for what works out to around $35 each a month - not a bad deal! With the end of golf season approaching, it's time I find something else to get active.

I'm not new to the whole gym membership idea - in fact, this will be the fourth gym in my life that I have joined. I had a membership at the YMCA in Ottawa when I was in my late teens, a membership at an athletic club which included squash courts and weights in my early twenties, and a large weight and aerobic club for a year in my early thirties - all of which carried costs far larger than what we are paying now. So, being only two years away now from forty, I'm sort of hoping that this one sticks.

Today will be my first day, I'm planning to arrive for the one hour adult swim fit class.

I've taken the liberty of traveling to the future and taking a picture of myself and posting it below.