Vancouver Youth Choir sings new music in multiple languages, fresh from World Choral Music Symposium program
Concert at Massey Theatre features works by local composers Hussein Janmohamed, Katerina Gimon, Corey Payette, and more
Vancouver Youth Choir sings at the Massey Theatre on June 16
EVERY THREE YEARS, the World Choral Music Symposium chooses 10 choirs from around the world to come sing in one city. This past April, the event took place in Istanbul—and Vancouver Youth Choir represented Canada with an adventurous program that spanned 15 languages and 19 composers.
Their hometown audience finally gets to witness what drew raves at the event in a concert coming up at the Massey Theatre.
“They worked incredibly hard, and presented a program that was really eclectic and full of heart and new,” reflects choir founder and artistic director Carrie Tennant. “The theme of the symposium was ‘changing horizons’. And so we brought a program that was mostly new Canadian music, and then music that reflected the fact that we’re very diverse.
“This choir is really diverse, too, with lots of first generation Canadians, and so we programmed music that reflected their cultures and their languages,” she adds. “We did a piece in Korean and Russian and Indonesian….And I think our youth left feeling incredibly proud to be Canadian—they were talking about how they articulated in reflected that.”
The 70-member choir, with singers aged 14 to 24, performed new and favourite compositions from the likes of Marie-Claire Saindon, Katerina Gimon, Andrew Balfour, Shireen Abu Khader, Tracy Wong and Sherryl Sewepagaham, and Vancouver’s Corey Payette.
To prepare each piece, the group would delve into the meanings and cultural backgrounds of the music. For a key work by Ismaili choral artist, composer and conductor Hussein Janmohamed, that meant drawing on the tradition of the Gujarati song and learning the Garba Raas to go along with it; for the prayer at the end of the piece, the singers learned kathak dance gestures to accompany the music.
“The Garba Raas dance is done at parties and weddings and celebrations, and it often happens in the circle. And so we sang together a little bit and then we ate together, and then they taught us this dance,” Tenant recalls of the Ismaili community event she and her youth attended. “We just cranked the tunes, and then we were dancing all together. And and so we made that part of the performance: you'll see that we made that part of the opening….But the piece is about a bus accident, actually—it’s programmatic—and it goes from that dance, and through the crash, and then there's the music that's more reflective. The music has multiple layers—for example, there's a quote from a Renaissance madrigal on top of Farsi.”
VYT founder and artistic director Carrie Tennant.
Dance also worked its way into a piece by Montreal’s Patrick Watson: Vancouver choreographer Lesley Telford helped the choir integrate movement and gesture into the piece.
“It’s this kind of metaphor for being overwhelmed and having to find the strength to carry on,” Tennant explains. “So we're trying to show that it's through personal strength and resilience that you are able to make it through these times—but also through connection and community. For anybody that comes to the concert, they'll be able to see what I'm talking about.”
The choir’s biggest hit in Istanbul is likely to exhilarate crowds here, too: Vancouver composer Gimon’s rhythmic, multilayered choral adaptation of Norwegian pop singer Aurora’s “Apple Tree”. Check out the video below to see exactly what all the buzz was about.
And Tennant was surprised to discover her team was the only choir to learn a Turkish song for the event, which took place in Istanbul’s grand new opera house.
“We connected with a Turkish soprano who just arrived, actually, from Ankara and she came and helped us with the language and like the spirit and the message of the piece,” Tennant says.
That, and all the other work the choir put into the massive undertaking paid off in an unforgettable experience in the storied city that straddles Asia and Europe.
“There’s this plurality of worlds there, and it’s just really vibrant, full of life,” says Tennant, whose choir has just opened registration for auditions next fall. “The opera hall is architecturally beautiful and it was full of Turkish people because Turkey has a really strong and vibrant choral culture.” And, as audiences will discover Friday night at the Massey, Vancouver does too.
Related Articles
