The Project Choir

Over the past six months, I've been working closely with a soprano in the city putting together a professional, project based, choral ensemble. The choir will be sixteen voices and will concentrate on early, Medieval to Renaissance music, with a focus in the early English Tudor school, as well as early baroque German repertoire, including Schütz and his contemporaries. At least, that is the focus this year! We are mounting two concerts this season, one in late October, and one in early January. The choir is made up of professional choral singers from the Edmonton and Calgary area, the rehearsals will be intense, with only six full rehearsals for each concert.

Over the next few weeks, I will be blogging about the experience of putting together a new ensemble, managing schedules and budgets for a choir which currently has no membership and no capital.

There is a long term goal here, although for now, I think I will take it one concert at a time until we can solidify our membership, and build some kind of sponsorship base, and (hopefully) advances in the grant collecting department.

In other tidbits of news:

• it's my birthday tomorrow. My wife also celebrates her birthday tomorrow, and as hers will be the start of a new decade (the one I'm approaching the end of) I threw a sizable party for her over the weekend. It was a great party - and we sure enjoy the ease of having larger gatherings in our new, bigger, house!
• we have our Da Camera retreat this coming weekend - and it seems a good portion of the choir will not be at rehearsal tonight due to a variety of reasons. Does anyone else find that the rehearsals before and after weekend retreats have poor attendance?
• the deck I built last month has passed the county's building inspection with flying colours. I have never been so proud of something that I have built with my own two hands. I used to laugh at a former conducting teacher who after retirement turned to making wood furniture. However, I could see myself doing a lot more of this type of building in my life.
• Fall has arrived. It's so windy outside right (gusts of 80K) that I'm not sure at the end of the day, anyone on our street will end up with the same garbage can they put out for collection this morning. I also had to turn the furnace on this morning for a little while for the first time.

Hope you are all enjoying the first week of fall!

Autumn Musings

It is the day of the Autumnal equinox, and since I'm not busy trying to balance an egg in these perfect conditions, it felt like a good day to blog. (OK, so one year, I fell for this urban myth, and my sister and I balanced an egg on the spring equinox, only to discover later that with enough patience, it can actually be done any day of the year - we still felt pretty proud of ourselves).

It doesn't feel much like spring here in Edmonton. Normally frost would be setting in, and leaves would be blowing around, however we are experiencing abnormally warm temperatures, and with a promised high of +30 (85F) tomorrow, I will be enjoying the last of summer golf in the morning. Fall weather is expected to arrive by next week.

The past weekend was a busy one, spent in the northern Alberta city of Grande Prairie, my first visit to this city since I moved to Edmonton some twelve years ago. The purpose of the visit was to be part of a mentoring program for a vibrant male choir program in that city. The Grande Prairie Boys' Choir, an organization of five choirs, from the youngest singer through to first year college students, invited the men of Pro Coro Canada to spend the weekend rehearsing and performing with their high school and higher aged boys whose voices have changed, or are changing. A great opportunity for the young men to see where their future might take them - but also a fantastic opportunity for the men of Pro Coro Canada to see this incredible program - which currently has no equal in Alberta, in my opinion. I've written about the benefits of gender segregation in the high school and middle school aged choirs before, both in this forum, and in my Master's and Doctoral papers - and this program proves once again to me that it WORKS! In fact, the high school aged boys' choir, known as "The Men of Note" started because, as the webpage says, "the boys just kept coming back year after year!" (follow the tag "Boys Choirs" in my blog if you want to read more thoughts on the subject of choir segregation and voice changing).

To learn more about the Grande Prairie Boys' Choir - please do visit their webpage and browse around!

In another Public Service Announcement, don't forget to start buying your supplies to celebrate Michaelmas next week!

On the music stand

On the music stand this month with Da Camera is a copy of Bach's Motet "Jesu Meine Freude". It will be a bit of a challenge putting it together, along with a full program of Mendelssohn for November 1st, but it will be a rewarding one for the choir. As far as I know - the first Motet we've tackled, certainly the first one since I've been with them.

I was doing a little web search for some links to give to the choir as a practice resource, and found this one - which is just astounding!

Enjoy!

Evensong in the paper!

This is a repost of my blog entry today on ChoralBlog. Enjoy!

As an Anglican church musician - who loves the office of Evensong - this article from the Victoria Times Colonist caught my eye.

Christ Church Cathedral in Victoria managed to get their evensong services previewed as a "concert" in the local paper. An interesting concept I thought. Previewing what is a religious service as something that might interest classical music lovers with no religious affiliation. Both evangalism and concert promotion tied up in one!

They do have a point though. The office of Evensong does provide some of the best opportunity to showcase the music of England, from the Tudor tradition through to the 20th century. There are countless settings of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimitis that have found their way into standard concert repetoire that perhaps showing where they belong would be interesting to non-Anglicans. The service, in case you've never experinced its beauty, is pretty much wall to wall music, interspersed with readings and prayers. But mostly, just music!

A few years ago, I took a choir to Scotland and England, and we were to perform evensong at Beverly Minster while on tour. I decided that we would hold a pre-tour concert, which would begin with the service of evensong, in the setting of the Anglican church I work at. I was deeply surprised, and frightened, when I found out that the church was packed with people. Especially as many figured they were at a choral concert (I had failed to mention in the concert promotion that it would be Evensong, followed by a short concert), and they didn't realize that they were about to be subjected to a full choral evensong service, complete with sermon! To my delight, everyone enjoyed it immensely, and no one was put off by all those English prayers to the Queen!

We weren't trying to be evangelistic - all we wanted was a chance to run a real evensong before we got to England, so I could prepare the non-Anglicans in my choir what they should expect. Turns out, it was a great concert opportunity - and very well received by all.

So if you are in the Victoria area, Sunday's at 4:30 - consider stopping in. I should also add that if you are in England, and would rather not pay the few pounds to see Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's, show up in time for Evensong, see the building for free, and witness what is one of the most incredible and beautiful choral traditions of the Church of England.