The Higher Canada Choristers and their Latin ensemble Cantemos supply a night of seasonal and Christmas music on December 5. A spotlight of this system is Britten’s joyful A Ceremony of Carols, with a multi-lingual mixture of accompanying works.
Laurie Evan Fraser conducts the mixed-voice choir and its Latin ensemble Cantemos, with pianist Hye Received (Cecilia) Lee and visitor harpist Liane James.
Personnel
Laurie Evan Fraser
Fraser is the founding inventive director of the Higher Canada Choristers, in addition to its Latin ensemble, Cantemos. A busy freelance musician, she additionally works as a collaborative pianist, trainer, adjudicator and workshop clinician.
A local of Troy, New York, Laurie first got here to Canada as a scholarship pupil on the Royal Conservatory of Music. She has pursued choral music by means of a number of positions, together with as Soprano Soloist and Part Lead at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church and Forest Hill United Church, Organist and Choir Director at Davenport-Perth United Church, and Music and Choir Director at First Unitarian Congregation of Toronto.
Liane James
Liane James is the Principal Harpist of the Ontario Philharmonic. She additionally often performs with different ensembles, together with the Kingston Symphony, Peterborough Symphony, and Orchestra Toronto. Alongside her orchestral repertoire, Liane performs works for choir and harp, and has labored with choral ensembles such because the Younger Singers, Espressivo Singers, and the Toronto Seashores Youngsters’s & Youth Refrain, amongst others.
H.W. Lee
Lee is a various freelance musician specializing in piano, harpsichord, and organ, together with collaborative Piano/harpsichord/organ and continuo. Lee additionally works on the School of Music, College of Toronto and Glenn Gould College, Royal Conservatory of Music. Along with her work as a musician, Lee is a regular contributor to Ludwig-Van.
Program
This system provides a variety of music with a seasonal flavour.
O come, O come, Emmanuel
The live performance opens because the viewers is invited to affix in with O come, O come, Emmanuel (Latin: Veni, veni, Emmanuel). The textual content for this Introduction carol was initially written in Latin in concerning the eighth or ninth centuries. The melody comes from a fifteenth century French processional hymn, one which will have been used as a funeral hymn for Francisan nuns.
Philip Stopford: Lully, Lulla, Lullay
Philip Stopford’s 2008 up to date setting of the Sixteenth-century Coventry Carol follows. The haunting association makes use of numerous musical methods to embody the story of the unique Carol — the lament of a mom mourning her little one in the course of the Bloodbath of the Innocents, when King Herod ordered the homicide of all male kids underneath the age of two.
Elaine Hagenberg: Sweetest Music, Softly Stealing
American composer Elaine Hagenberg’s Sweetest Music, Softly Stealing is a piece for choir and piano celebrating the miracle of Christ’s delivery. The hymn-like melody and emotional choral traces have been written to the textual content by G.W. Brindley, an American who wrote the textual content for a number of hymns printed in 1916.
Laurie Evan Fraser: Dormi Jesu
Cantemos will carry out this work by Creative Director Laurie Evan Fraser. Together with textual content taken from historic Latin sources, Higher Canada’s president Jacqui Atkin, a frequent collaborator of Fraser’s, has written further phrases in English. The track got here out of inspiration from Fraser’s journey to France on summer season trip a number of years in the past. In Paris, she attended a service in Gregorian chant on the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral, and likewise visited the Thirteenth-century Carcassonne Cathedral. The expertise impressed each the music and textual content.
César Alejandro Carrillo: Nana para una luna despierta (Lullaby for a sleepless moon) & O magnum mysterium
César Carrillo is a local of Caracas, Venezuela. His research took him from Caracas to Sweden, Belgiu, the US, and Brazil, and his works have received a number of awards. Along with his work as a composer and arranger, he’s the conductor of Cantarte Coro de Cámara and assistant conductor of Orfeón Universitario de la UCV. His Nana para una luna despierta is ready to poetry by his spouse, Laura Morales Balza, and is devoted to his late son, Simon. O magnum mysterium units an historic Latin textual content to music.
Benjamin Britten: A Ceremony of Carols, Op. 28
Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, Op. 28 is an prolonged choral composition that he composed in 1942 on an ocean voyage from the US to England. Written for three-part treble refrain, solo voices, and harp in 11 actions, the textual content is taken from The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems, edited by Gerald Bullett. Britten had purchased the guide whereas he was on the way in which of Halifax previous to setting sail. The phrases are are largely in Center English, blended with Latin and Early Fashionable English.
The composer had initially supposed the piece to be a collection of unrelated songs, however later unified the work into one piece by including a gap processional, and shutting recessional chant. Each are primarily based on a Gregorian antiphon, and the harp solo relies on the mantra, together with different parts.
Initially printed in 1942 for SSA (soprano, soprano, alto) kids’s choir, it was organized and printed for SATB (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) blended choir in 1943. The choir and Liane James, as harp soloist, will carry out an SATB model written by Julius Harrison in 1955.
It’s a jubilant work, with feelings that vary from serenity to ecstatic rapture.
The Live performance
Higher Canada Choristers’ Christmas live performance, This Little Little one takes place on December 5 at Grace Church on-the-Hill in Toronto.
Together with in-person attendance, you possibly can stream the live performance dwell through the choir’s web site.
- Free Streaming [HERE] or [HERE].
- Discover tickets and different particulars for the in-person live performance [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is the Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. Beforehand, she was a contract author with a specialty in tradition and journey for 3 a long time, and a inventive writing teacher for Ontariolearn.
