and on the eighth day ...

Having enjoyed all 25 hours of All Saints' Day (thank you day light savings time - see you in the Spring!) I'm wondering if we can just keep that extra hour in the day, every day, and while we are at it, add one extra day in the week? I could get SO much more accomplished!

Great concert yesterday afternoon with Da Camera. In particular, the Mendelssohn Sechs Sprüche was a highlight for me, and much of the audience I think. The rest of the program was also well received, and the choir's first attempt at Jesu Meine Freude was full of highlights. Bravo to all I say.

So what's next you ask?

• Next weekend is a "dark" weekend for me - in the sense that I can actually get my tux to the cleaners and not worry about needing it for at least 14 more days. I do have a full slate of rehearsals to prepare for a Pro Coro Concert, the annual "Men's choir" concert, which is becoming a mainstay for the choir and is always a personal highlight for my concert year. That concert is on the 15th.
• Then in a blink of an eye Richard Eaton Singers performs the Verdi Requiem on the 22nd (a first sing for me, if you can believe it, and I'm loving it!)
• Then six days later I have to prepare the choir for the annual Christmas Wish Foundation concert with the Royal Canadian Artillery Band, not really a musical highlight, but good old fashioned fun, and anytime you get to sing the Sir David Willcocks' descants with the Davis Organ makes it worth it.
• A day later it is Advent I, which includes the Advent Carol Service.
  
• A week after that Da Camera sings with Alberta Baroque on their Christmas show, with BWV 140 (apparently I have to sing the tenor recit - frankly, I'm scared). Also on this program I get to conduct Haydn's Missa brevis Sancti Joannis de Deo (aka the "little organ mass")- which has one of the most beautiful Benedictus (Benedicti?) movements in any of his masses.
• A week and a half later I'm singing with RES for the Edmonton Symphony's lighter Christmas Classics concert. Again, not particularly musically fulfilling, aside from RVW's Fantasia on Christmas Carols, which will always have a firm place in my heart, however the Christopher Rouse "Karolju", is just not doing it for me. Perhaps worth a later blog post. It will, however, attract a good sized audience, and they are sure to love it all.
  
• On all weekends in December I got talked into doing a few caroling gigs, something I haven't done since I left Ottawa, and figured I was pretty much done, but the fee for this is almost embarrassingly good, too good to turn down. And the other three singers are great friends, so aside from the financially rewarding aspect, it's going to be a hell of a good time, even if it is four hours a day singing in a shopping centre.
  
• Then it is Christmas! Two Christmas eve services and one Christmas morning service.
• Then my wife and I are packing up the car and heading HERE for two nights for our annual "sit in the lodge, swim outside in the huge heated pool while the snow falls, enjoy the mountain backdrop, skate on the lake, play cribbage, eat good food, drink good wine, leave our computers at home, and DO NOTHING for three days. A good way to spend the extra money made on caroling!
  

Of course, by the time we get to the Lodge, it will probably look like this, but you got to trust me on this one - there is nothing like swimming in a 90 degree pool when it's below freezing outside!

Da Camera Concert and CD Release

If you are in the Edmonton Area - you might be interested in attending Da Camera's first concert of the season.

It is called "Bach and Mendelssohn" and features works by ... well, I'll let you guess.

Date: Sunday, November 1st at 3 PM
Place: First Baptist Church, Edmonton.

The Featured works on the program are Bach's motet "Jesu Meine Freude" and Mendelssohn's "Hear My Prayer" for Soprano soloist, organ and chorus. It should be great! Dress rehearsal is tonight

By the way - I've been using Google Calendar as my chief calendar for a while now - and I put the calendar at the bottom of my blog as a widget, for no other reason than just because I can! However, it does include all my concert dates (as well as dentist appointments?) which some of my family who read this may find interesting.

At the concert this weekend, we will be releasing our latest CD entitled "Eulogies" - which contains the first ever recording of John Estacio's monumental choral work of the same name, as well as Eleanor Daley's award winning "Requiem". The CD also includes two commissioned works by Canadian composers, and without tooting my horn too much, I'm awfully proud of this recording!

(Click to enlarge)

If you are interested in getting a copy for yourself, the price is $20 CDN, and you can email info@dacamera.ab.ca for more information. Right now, only "Hard" copies of the CD are available, we are looking into iTunes, but it will be some time before we go that route, as we would like to sell as many copies of the CD as possible first. We are still working out domestic and international shipping issues, as well as the possibility of online ordering through PayPal, but for now just email the choir and we'll figure out shipping details on a case by case basis.

Audio clips of the CD will soon be available on our webpage.

Great Show!

The inaugural concert of the Scona Chamber Singers was a great success yesterday. A near capacity house, and the choir was in very fine form!

And now - I'm exhausted, but have to quickly change gears to conduct Mendelssohn and Bach with Da Camera next weekend, with dress rehearsal #1 tonight. So away from the English repertoire I go, and into the Bärenreiter editions I fall!

Will post more once the dust has cleared - and hopefully link some mp3's of the show.

And then, it was Monday

What a great weekend!

Scona Chamber Singers rehearsals started on Friday for our concert next Sunday, and even though a good portion of the choir was very tired, having not only had ten hours of rehearsals with me, but also a day long retreat with the University choirs for a production of Haydn's Creation which is coming up for them.

I was very pleased with the ensemble though - the focus during the rehearsals was very strong, and we accomplished quite a lot in the weekend process. There were a lot of notes left on the floor, but a substantial amount of progress was made from Friday to Sunday night. We have two more full rehearsals, and a dress rehearsal left next weekend before the concert on Sunday afternoon. Hopefully they will all take the few days away from the full choir rehearsals to look at a few notes. In general though, a lot of great music making was had this weekend.

Here is the program for the "Cathedral Music" concert:

O clap your Hands – Orlando Gibbons
Lift up your heads – Orlando Gibbons
Super Flumina Babylonis – Philip De Monte
Quomodo cantibus – William Byrd
Peccavimus a 7– Christopher Tye

Intermission

I Was Glad – Henry Purcell
O Lord, the Maker – William Mundy
Evening Hymn (solo)– Henry Purcell
Turn Thee unto me, O Lord – William Boyce
O Where shall wisdom be found? – William Boyce
O God Thou Art my God - Henry Purcell

In particular, the De Monte, Byrd and Tye set are proving to be the most challenging, but for most of the younger singers, they haven't been exposed to a lot of this high renaissance polyphony, so it doesn't come naturally. It is however, agreed by all that the music is absolutely beautiful!



Time to put this aside for the day though, and concentrate on Da Camera rehearsal tonight, we are only two rehearsals away from that concert too - and there is a fair amount of work to be done on Jesu Meine Freude tonight.

Introducing ...

The Scona Chamber Singers!

After a busy fall preparing and planning the aforementioned project choir, everything is now rolling forward! We chose "Scona Chamber Singers" as the name of the ensemble for a few reasons. Back when I did my Doctor of Music recitals, I named my pick up choir the Scona Chamber Choir, which was a group of about twenty four singers. We did two concerts, one a mixed bag of repertoire from de Victoria, through Hindemith and Schnittke, and the other a fairly ambitious production of Bach's Johannes Passion, both of which were quite successful.

This new incarnation of the ensemble will vary in size from project to project. Anywhere from one to a part singing to mid-sized chamber choir numbers, so we decided to go with "Singers" rather than "Choir" to allow for this flexibility. The name "Scona" comes from the area of Edmonton where we will rehearse and perform for the time being, known as Old Strathcona. There are a few other venues and buildings that take on the Strathcona name, including Edmonton's largest farmer's market, a theatre, and a historic Victorian era three story hotel, one of the last remaining wooden structures in the area. And although the hotel's structure is beautiful, it's modern reputation now somewhat sketchier, I still feel it identifies the ensemble as local, without carrying a bold lettered "Edmonton"moniker. If the future is bright (and yes, I have pipe dreams here - but without dreams, where would we be?) the name will carry a national (international?) uniqueness.

The first concert will be on Sunday October the 25th at 3 PM at Holy Trinity Anglican Church (in the heart of Old Strathcona). The ensemble is made up of seventeen of the best choral singers in the Edmonton area, and a few who now make their home in Calgary. The concert is called "I Was Glad - Music from the English Cathedral" and will include music of Orlando Gibbons, Christopher Tye, William Mundy, William Byrd, Henry Purcell, and William Boyce. Aside from Purcell and Byrd, most of these composers are not well known out of Anglican circles, and all of it is fantastic music! I'm quite excited for the first rehearsal next Friday - only one of four to put the nearly seventy minutes of music together.

In unrelated news. summer is officially over today in Edmonton (we tend to go from summer to winter without much of any autumn). Which means the golf clubs and shoes get removed from the trunk, to be replaced by the curling broom and shoes! Time to locate my tuque and mitts! (I had always thought it was spelled toque, but according to the Oxford Canadian Dictionary, tuque is the correct spelling - interesting!)

Here is our "long term" forecast for the next few days (0C = 32F)

(Click on image for a larger, and more depressing look).


It's worth noting that today, it isn't that bad - predicted to be about 15C, but when the cold front comes through this afternoon, we are expecting very high, potentially damaging winds of up to 90 km/h (55 mph). Any loose objects are being stored in the garage today! This has been the windiest summer and fall I can ever remember!