Concerts

Two marvelous concerts to end our season. Our director, Janet Gaskin, has a reputation for “raising the bar” for the performances of our unauditioned community choir, and this season it has gone way higher! Janet put together a great programme for our Canada 150 concerts and there were many highlights. A big thank you to Rusty Swinehammer for being our guest artist at the concerts.

It was our particular privilege to bring to performance our accompanist John Plant’s work “Voices Answering Back: The Vampires”. Ken Vaughan’s thoughtful reading of the poem set the scene for the concert performance. This is an amazing piece, extremely challenging, yet really interesting, very enjoyable to perform, and from audience feedback, to listen to. A big thank you to John and Janet for their creativity and perseverance working with us on this piece.

Here are some photos from the East Chezzetcook concert at St. Genevieve’s Church:

Here are some photos of the preparation for the Sherbrooke Village concert:

Here are some photos from the Sherbrooke Village concert:

 

We’re excited to be in the final month preparing for “This is My Home”, our Canada 150 Concert we’ll be presenting at St. Genevieve’s Church, East Chezzetcook on the evening of Saturday 27th May, and at St. James Presbyterian Church, Sherbrooke Village, the following afternoon, on Sunday 28th May.

 

Both concerts will feature guest artist Rusty Swinehammer and the performance of a newly commissioned work for the Choir by our accompanist John Plant. The work will be premiered at the East Chezzetcook concert. The Choir has an all-Canadian repertoire to celebrate the Canada 150 anniversary. How wonderful it will be to sing Barrett’s Privateers “…..How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now! ….” in Sherbrooke Village. At the Sherbrooke concert John will also play Froberger’s Toccata in D minor on the 1917 Casavant (Quebec) pipe organ.

Despite the wet snowy weather we had a very good turnout and a great enthusiastic audience for our concert at the Royal Canadian Legion in Sheet Harbour on Sunday afternoon.

 

The choir songs were supplemented with solos from tenors Tim Lambert and Peter Hennigar, and our accompanist John Plant. Tim and Peter sang English and Canadian folksongs and John played a Bach Prelude and Fugue, a fine demonstration of our new keyboard. Gordon Hammond’s original poem stirred thoughts on how fortunate we are to live in this region with its wilderness areas and rich history. The intermission proved The Lions Club desserts were indeed delicious and the tea most refreshing!

Here are two short video extracts from the concert. Please click for samples of the elegance of “Ave_Maris_Stella” and the power of our final piece “The_Mighty_Men_of_Song”.

Thank you to Ashley, wife of 1st tenor Curtis, for the videos.