Elektra Women's Choir returns to the stage with The Light of Hope Returning
The work’s Canadian premiere features a storybook-like video projection of visual artist Kevork Mourad’s hand-drawn animation
Elektra Women’s Choir.
Elektra Women’s Choir presents The Light of Hope Returning on November 26 and 27 at 7:30 pm at Pacific Spirit United Church.
THE TITLE OF Elektra Women’s Choir’s upcoming performance couldn’t be more apt: The Light of Hope Returning marks a return to live performance for the local 45-member choral ensemble. The very act of stepping back onto the stage is just one reason Elektra artistic director Morna Edmundson is excited about the show. So is the fact that the Vancouver run will not only be the Canadian premiere of the 70-minute work by Shawn Kirchner but also the first time ever that its visual element will be shared with a live audience—the hand-drawn animation coming from globally renowned Syrian-American artist Kevork Mourad, a collaborator of Yo-Yo Ma’s.
“It is epic,” Edmundson says in a phone interview with Stir.
And it likely never would have come to light had it not been for the pandemic.
With COVID-19 having brought choral music to a silence, Ofer dal Lal, artistic director of U.S.-based WomenSing, had approached Edmundson to collaborate on the recording of the monumental work by Kirchner, a composer-arranger-musician who’s a long-time tenor with Los Angeles Master Chorale and one of its former composers-in-residence. (WomenSing had originally commissioned Kirchner to write the piece in homage to the holidays, which the group premiered in 2019.) Kirchner came on board with enthusiasm for the virtual rendition, the final digital effort featuring both choirs for a total of 70 female voices; performances by Canadian soloist Allison Girvan and instrumentalists from the San Francisco Opera Orchestra; and visuals by Mourad, who specializes in combining video and hand-drawn elements in live performances.
The virtual premiere of Light of Hope Returning took place on winter solstice 2020.
“It was really a silver lining of the pandemic,” Edmundson says. “It’s great to be able to look back on the pandemic and say ‘We did that.’ If I had been approached to do that whole project in a normal year, I would have said ‘We don’t have time.’ It was a happy outcome.”
A video still of Kevork Mourad’s hand-drawn animation in The Light of Hope Returning. Image courtesy Elektra Women’s Choir
The Elektra singers and Girvan are back, all masked, for this year’s live offering of The Light of Hope Returning. The work consists of folk-inflected new songs (such as “Remember”, “Holy World”) and familiar ones (“Bright Morning Stars”, “Angels We Have Heard on High”). Girvan takes on the role of narrator, while a video recording of Mourad’s hand while he is illustrating in response to hearing the score will provide a storybook-like backdrop. The video was captured last summer, to stunning effect.
Morna Edmundson.
“He was literally listening to the rough tracks of the recording and drawing at same time,” Edmundson says. “His hand appears on the screen and there’s a flow; his art is almost always moving. It is just beautiful.”
Constructed as a cathartic ritual in five parts, The Light of Hope Returning is about the triumph of light over darkness, good over evil, an overarching theme that most people are craving as the world starts to open up. Ironically, it was written long before anyone had ever heard the word “COVID” when Donald Trump was in power, a time when many people’s hopes for a better world were waning. While circumstances have changed, the piece acknowledges the current reality of global uncertainty while evoking trust in the cycles of life and the promise that no matter how dark the night, day always breaks.
Kirchner has said the work could be described a “solstice lessons and carols” or a Christmas folk oratorio; another way to view it is simply as another entry into the centuries-old midwinter tradition of festive events that people need to mark the end of the year and lift their spirits.
“It’s very meaningful as it signals what we’ve been through together,” Edmundson says. “It goes through all the cycles of dark and light, cold and warm, safety and danger, and resolution. It’s got that arc throughout, and I think the art really draws you into that arc.
“We are planning to bring it back as a Christmas tradition,” she adds, “something to look forward to every year.”
For more information, see Elektra Women's Choir.
Related Articles
