Vancouver Chamber Choir performs soothing SEA PSALM, September 23
Sea Psalm composer Stephen Smith is guest organist in mixed concert program that also features works by Byrd and Bach, among others
Vancouver Chamber Choir.
Vancouver Chamber Choir presents SEA PSALM at Pacific Spirit United Church on September 23 at 7:30 pm
VANCOUVER CHAMBER CHOIR launches its 2022-23 season with SEA PSALM, a mixed concert program that unfolded from its namesake piece.
Composer and organist Stephen Smith—who’s making a guest-artist appearance at the concert—wrote Sea Psalm in 2005. The music was commissioned for the first concert the Vancouver Chamber Choir performed following a major rebuild of the Pacific Spirit United Church organ.
Stephen Smith.
“The text of Sea Psalm includes verses from Psalms 93 and 29 [92 and 28 in the Latin Vulgate], chosen for their reference to the sea, and for the opulent sounds of the words themselves,” Smith has written of the work. “It begins with a composed melody in the style of Gregorian chant, sung very quietly over a barely-audible low drone supplied by the organ pedals. At the climax of the piece, the same tune is thundered out by the pedals, almost drowning out the choir’s fortissimo. In between, the organ gets to show off some of its most scintillating and diverse colours, as the choir suggests both the calming quality of the sea’s patterns and the awesomeness of its power.”
Born in Nova Scotia, Smith went on to study at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England, winning numerous awards while there. Based in Vancouver since 1990, Smith earned a doctoral degree in piano performance from UBC. He has become a fixture of the city’s choral scene, regularly accompanying the Vancouver Chamber Choir, Vancouver Men’s Chorus, Vancouver Bach Choir, Elektra Women’s Choir, and many other ensembles; he’s also an esteemed composer who has been commissioned by the National Youth Choir and the BC Choral Federation, among other organizations.
With Sea Psalm acting as the starting point for VCC’s season-opener, the rest of the music either has the sea as its subject or is a psalm setting; sometimes, it’s both. The first half of the concert focuses mostly contemporary compositions while the second consists of classical works dating between the 1680s and the 1720s.
Led by artistic director Kari Turunen, VCC will perform a work by its composer-in-residence for 2022-23, Canadian-Finnish artist Matthew Whittall. “Du kröner året” (You crown the year, Psalm 65), is from 2009’s Två Psalmer.
Jaakko Mäntyjärvi’ s Canticum calamitatis maritimæ (Song of Maritime Calamity) from 1997 recounts the tragedy of the sinking of the car ferry MS Estonia en route from Tallinn to Stockholm in September 1994. It combines three texts: the opening of the traditional Requiem Mass, news text reporting the calamity in Latin, and a psalm that is often called the Mariner’s Psalm (Psalm 107).
Estonian composer Evelin Seppar’s Seesama meri (The Same Sea) is set to a poem by Jaan Kaplinski, a prominent Estonian poet, philosopher, translator, and politician.
Also on the program motets by Moritz Hauptmann, Heinrich Schütz, J.S. Bach, William Byrd.
More information is at Vancouver Chamber Choir.
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