Stir Cheat Sheet: Five things to know about Vancouver Chamber Choir's FIFTY celebration
A look back at five decades of touring and recording, and a program that looks forward with new commissions
For the first time in 50 years, the company has a new accessory: masks. Photo by Diamonds Edge Photography
The Vancouver Chamber Choir presents FIFTY at Pacific Spirit United Church on November 19 at 7:30 pm; also streaming on VANCC DIGITAL
IT’S NOT OFTEN that a Vancouver arts group turns 50 years old. But the Vancouver Chamber Choir is marking a half century of music-making—making it Canada’s longest-existing professional choir.
The ensemble is celebrating the occasion with FIFTY, complete with the return of its legendary founding maestro and a program full of works that the choir has premiered over the years.
Founder and conductor emeritus Jon Washburn (who led the choir for an astonishing 48 years) is on hand to share the podium with artistic director Kari Turunen (who came aboard in 2019). Together they’ll take a musical journey into the past and present. Here’s a look at that program, and at the last five incredible decades.
Albums and airplanes
In a prepandemic world, the Vancouver Chamber Choir went on more than 90 tours to cities as far afield as Moscow, Beijing, Prague, Tokyo, and Helsinki. In that time it’s also laid down more than 55 albums, almost unimaginably diverse: think Love Songs for a Small Planet’s peace-themed works by Canadians Alexina Louie, Srul Irving Glick, R. Murray Schafer and Imant Raminsh; Baroquefest with L’Ensemble Vocal de Lausanne and the CBC Vancouver Orchestra; or The Miracle of Christmas, with holiday music from Central and South America, featuring the ensemble Ancient Cultures.
Breaking new ground
Over its 50 years the Vancouver Chamber Choir has made its name pushing the choral form forward, commissioning an astounding 400 works in that time. Longtime boosters of Canadian music, the company is responsible for commissions and premieres of 334 choral works by 145 composers and arrangers, most of whom are Canadian. Over the years the choir has sung over 4,000 performances of works by Canadian composers, in addition to its extensive international repertoire.
Conductor, composer, and former chamber-choir singer Kathleen Allan.
A choral singer turns composer
The FIFTY program features a piece commissioned in 2015 by a former singer in the choir. Newfoundland-born Kathleen Allan is now a conductor who helms the Amadeus Choir of Greater Toronto and Winnipeg’s Baroque-minded Canzona; you’ve also seen her guest-conduct at Early Music Vancouver and appear as a soprano soloist with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Now adding in-demand composer to her resume, the multitalented artist’s work on the program here is Stars, set to an early-20th-century poem by Marjorie Pickthall.
Fostering future talent
Promising young Vancouver composer Katerina Gimon premieres her new commission she was wilderness on the FIFTY lineup. It’s a setting of a powerful poem by Saudi-Arabia’s Waad Tariq. And its themes on the human impacts on the climate could not be more urgent and timely. The main focus here: deforestation. Soprano Emily Cheung and alto Fabiana Katz are the featured performers. Best of all, Gimon’s eclectic music will push your traditional definitions of choir music: her inspirations range from Eastern European folk music to indie rock, and she’s a founding member of the multimedia new music and AR/VR collective Chroma Mixed Media.
The Finnish connection
With Finland being one of the world’s cutting-edge centres for contemporary choral music, it’s no surprise that the chamber choir has had a long association with the country. Now that Turunen is on the podium, that bond is even stronger. And the influences of Canada and the Nordic country meld together beautifully on the FIFTY program in Matthew Whittall’s Canadian premiere Lauantaisauna—a beloved “Saturday sauna” (say it “sow-na”, please) for those familiar with Finn culture. The Canadian composer arrived in Finland in 2001 for graduate studies at the Sibelius Academy, where he crossed paths with Turunen. Asked to provide a short piece for a concert whose themes were warmth and togetherness, Whittall says in the program notes that he “thought immediately of the binding ritual that encompasses those words in the spirit of Finnishness: the sauna. It is a holy place of peace, meditation and closeness, best experienced in the cathedral of nature on a summer evening.” It’s not too easy to travel there in person quite yet, but Whittall and the choir’s voices can at least take us there in spirit.
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