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It all began in September, when after a roller-coaster of a year of health alarms, including losing my ability to sing, I rejoined the Victoria Choral Society in the somewhat forlorn hope of recovering my voice, and perhaps a few other missing faculties besides. Each Tuesday night rehearsal became a beacon in my week - no matter how much fatigue I had to resist to get there, I came away energized and a lot more hopeful. The repertoire, at first glance a disappointingly simple Christmas Pop programme to be sung with the Symphony, became a vehicle for focussing much more minutely on the quality of the sound itself. This was strong and effective medicine for me, and ultimately gave us the chance to cut through the miasma of overfamiliarity generated by thousands of sickly repetitions in every mall. The final test took place in Qualicum Beach on December 14th, where a small version of the choir, having faced almost everything that can go wrong on a road trip, especially over the Malahat in winter, had barely enough time to change before discovering we were to sing from off to one side, there not being adequate space to accommodate us behind or in front of the orchestra. This presented a serious challenge to our conductor, Brian Wismath, who had to keep his eyes firmly fixed on maestro Tania Miller, while we had to watch him, at the same time directing our sound out to the audience. Feeling very exposed (only a few feet from the front row) we nevertheless sang as if our lives depended on it . The sense of knowing we had exceeded even our own expectations gave way in the dressing room afterwards to a sense of the euphoria at having made it, and made it well, which remained with me till the small hours of the following morning, when we finally got back home to Victoria.
Two days later, on December 16th as part of the Advent Series at St. Mary's in Oak Bay, I attended a recital by soprano Monica Orso. I had been lucky enough in 2012 to be her only voice student in VCM's Vocal Pedagogy course under Nancy Argenta and Ingrid Attrot. It was clear then that she was one of the Conservatory's most promising voices, and I was anxious to hear her again now that she had achieved her Master 's degree from U of T under the tutelage of Mary Morrison O.C.
Her program included the thrilling excitement of the call to great rejoicing in Handel's summons to the daughters of Zion, the tender warmth of Schubert's ode to art in "An die Musik" and an almost unbearably poignant maiden's cry in his Ave Maria followed by the despair of loss in Gretchen Am Spinnrade. Selections by Liszt gave her a chance to take us with effortless skill from the light-hearted humour of a Victor Hugo folk song, to his romantically passionate Oh! Quand je dors. Another change of mood marked the delightful song cycle of the 20th century Catalan composer Fernando Obradors with its sensuous, almost mystical undertones, before recalling the advent season in the more contemporary, but deeply felt "I Wonder As I Wander" by J.J.Niles and "The Little Road to Bethlehem" by Michael Head. With a voice like spun silk and the ability to shape her sound with an onset like a small pearl to a heart stopping climax without ever losing its pearly shine, Monica Orso took me on an utterly absorbing journey from exhilaration, through spontaneous tears, humour, joy and finally peace with complete assurance. Combining a rare emotional integrity with seemingly endless resources of power, her ability to connect with the audience was masterfully and sensitively supported by her accompanist, Csinszka Redai, and the only sad thing about this gem of a program was that so few people knew about it - Orso is still at the beginning of her career, has a beautiful website, and should not be missed on her next visit. www.monicaorsosoprano.com
Every choir has its own audience, none more devotedly enthusiastic than the one that has grown up around Ensemble Laude, from its beginnings as a chamber sized group of twelve singers exploring mediaeval music 17 years ago to more than 50 singers today with a greatly expanded repertoire. Recent recipients of a CBC choral prize for adult women's choir, and now invited guests for their first international appearance at a music festival in Southern France next summer, the choir has continued to grow steadily. With much of her time spent in Seattle pursuing a doctorate in Choral Conducting over the last two years , Director Elizabeth MacIsaac has had to rely heavily on her very competent assistant Carolyn Howe. All of this goes some way to explaining both what at times felt like an overly experimental, somewhat uncoordinated program and the audience's undeniable willingness to cheerfully forgive the less successful moments: a too long and slow introduction with singers vocalizing in segments of pre-concert chatter behind the audience (as if we didn't have enough of that as we waited for the concert to begin) and the varying levels of assurance in the solo voices as, widely separated around the auditorium they tried to re-establish the enchantment of a mediaeval Gloriosa. The second piece was more successful - a good example of a contemporary composer, Eva Ugalde, using the thousands of years old convention of combining a beautiful solo voice over a drone. Coming from the Basque region of Spain, Ugalde's ability to effortlessly fuse an ancient sensibility with contemporary rhythms and dissonances was both thrilling and hypnotic. Unfortunately, the genuinely ancient piece which finally brought the singers to the stage, a 14th century conductus, felt much too slow in this context.
Once on stage, singing a 15th century Castilian villancico by Juan del Encina, very effectively arranged by MacIsaac to feature the depth of the low voices and the scintillation of the high ones, the choir, supported both by a confident drone and drum, brought a robust and vibrant joy to its final tutti which banished any remaining doubts before introducing us to a suite of contemporary Canadian composers, who will no doubt be forming a significant part of what the choir plans to take to France next August. Don Macdonald's Winter Sun, Jeff Enns' Tree of Life, and Ian Tamblyn's Woodsmoke and Oranges, performed without a break, all made me feel as if I were in a Group of Seven painting, colours and brushstrokes washing over in a shimmering play of light: Macdonald's clean, spare sound, staggered with silences; Enns' rippling dissonances and dramatic brushstrokes with beautiful deep alto sound in the meditative ending; and the narrative arc of a canoe journey, complete with a loon call on a whistle and the whispered ending on the wind sending shivers up my spine.
The first half ended with a contemporary evocation of a mythic Finnish encounter from the Kalevala between a shaman and Pakkanen, an evil Frost Spirit set by Soila Sariola. Beginning on a sybillant sssssh, conveying the icy bleakness of a desolate landscape, breast tapping, swaying and drum beating drove the mood into an ever deepening trance, ancient language sounds, shouts and shrieks bringing the battle to its wild climax in a very convincing performance.
The second half opened with a charming old English invitation to come and participate in song and dance - sung with a very warm sound by a smaller version of the choir - about 25 singers. Two more Canadian Composers, Georgina Craig (composer in residence with EL) and Sara Quartel, formed the core of this half. Craig's piece, titled Beyond the Violet Rays evoked a dreaming consciousness, layers of colour ebb, ebb, ebbing, then flow, flow, flowing with a delicious balance between the three or four part harmonies of altos and sopranos. Then a shift into overtone droning, a fabric of sound punctuated by wings of flame and repetitive low sweeping; a vivid altered state returning to the soothing sweeping, punctuated, almost painfully by another wing of flame, brought to a close with a xylophone chord, and a final dissonance resolved into a drone.
Quartel's piece "Here On These Branches" created an altogether different kind of magic, the magic of a child's imagination. Beginning with the innocent simplicity of a fairy tale, the melody and tale gathering momentum as the child enters the enchanted forest and wonders. Surrounded by the songs of forest birds, the beguilingly melodic sounds and harmonies evoked all the innocent joy of discovery of a laughing child lost, yet not lost, in the natural world. <.p>
Continuing the theme of the comfort of birdsong, a setting of an Iroquois lullaby by Mark Sirett, another Canadian composer opened with the astonishingly effective pattering of rain achieved by delicate finger drumming on their music folders as the choir hummed and whistled, birdcalls accompanied by a rainstick and a drum, shaking and tinkling as Ho Ho Watane rose to a more robust rendition - foretelling a future warrior perhaps? The last chant sung by Jessica Graham brought the attention back to the singing mother herself in an exquisitely beautiful and tender moment.
And then there are Zulu mothers. The final song, all about honouring mothers, had the whole choir weaving in and out of each other 's positions, clapping, calling and sinuously (some more sinuously than others!) enjoying themselves mightily. The audience loved it too.
I do have a lingering regret, which gives rise to a question. I know it is shared by many others as it often comes up in conversation. Devotees of Mediaeval and Early Music were thrilled to have or discover a choir in Victoria that focussed on exploring that repertoire, and had in its director a woman with a great gift for it. Now that Ensemble Laude is exploring so many other genres and epochs, and understandably Canadian composers, there is a sense of having lost something. The question is whether MacIsaac might develop a second choir devoted exclusively to Early Music, adjust her programming so that once a year at least half or more of the performance was dedicated to it, or whether someone new might step in and fill the gap with a brand new choir. Montreal, after all has several such choirs - why not Victoria?
It was a last minute decision to take in A Child's Christmas in Wales, especially as I had heard Dylan Thomas on the CBC a day or so earlier. I had also been a few years before, sitting in the balcony with two not very engaged children which did nothing to enhance my appreciation of the event. This year I found a perfect spot in the main auditorium and was swept up immediately by Melville Jones' wonderful storytelling. Truly, it was better than Dylan Thomas, whom I had grown up with every Christmas, and I registered images and snatches of humour that I had never heard before. The truth is that the overwhelming cascade of imagery in Thomas' poem benefitted enormously from the the pauses in the narrative offered by Vox Humana's wonderful selection of Christmas music, perfectly calibrated to create its own arc of enjoyment, while echoing themes or moments from the poem. Beautiful arrangements by Gjeilo making brand new jewels out of such chestnuts as "The Holly and the Ivy", "Away in a Manger" and "The First Nowell", plus the pure and gorgeous traditional "Suo Gan" or "All Through The Night" sung in decent Welsh, arrangements by Denis Donelly and Diane Loomer, an amber toned mezzo solo in Eli Jenkins' prayer echoing the benign face of a god imagined by a child all contributed to a programme that was completely satisfying. The braiding of the two elements, sung and spoken, seemed to give more space for a fuller appreciation of both, neither distracting nor threatening to overwhelm the other. Like a well chosen pairing of wine and food, with neither too little or too much of anything - a particularly apt prelude to Christmas when such a balance is rarely achieved.
Barely back home and settling down to a cup of tea, I got a call inviting me to Shoko Inoue's concert at St. Vincent de Paul for the benefit of their clients. Inoue had done this a couple of years ago for a wildly appreciative audience of downtown's least favoured citizens. Once again, Tom Lee Music had generously provided the concert grand piano, and a post concert supper lay ready in an adjoining room for those for whom music without food could well be a meaningless gesture. Inoue sat at the piano, no music in sight, like a tornado gathering its force in the eye of an off shore storm, preparing to deliver a full programme of Chopin which would take us on a stunning journey from the exquisite tenderness of the opening Nocturne Opus 9 No.2 to the brilliantly joyful Grande Polonaise of the finale. Of the seven pieces she performed, or rather, channelled, the centerpiece was the Barcarolle, Opus 60. She introduced it as an exploration of love to the rhythms of a rocking boat and the experience of listening to it, in that small room, was like entering into the scarlet blood vessels of the heart of the composer, the player, the hearts of all who have ever reached such ecstasies of transcendence with another, the heart of the ocean and all it has ever given birth to. Curiously, the only other performer I have ever witnessed engaging so fully with a power so much mightier than themselves was a celebrated Japanese calligrapher and monk, visiting the Victoria Art Gallery many years ago, Mr.Yamaguchi (if I remember correctly). It was the first time I had ever been in the presence of intention arising in the solar plexus, gathering force as it travelled down his arm, through every hair on his brush, and onto the prepared rice paper in a dazzling display of the dance of creation. And then a day or so later I watched the annual Kennedy Centre awards, and recognized the same phenomenon in the conductor, Seiji Ozawa. Is it part of the Japanese cultural heritage, I wonder, that some of their artists have both the humility, the faith, the discipline and endurance to surrender their talents to this mysterious force? The small audience was overjoyed by this unexpected feast - unfortunately, many of the intended recipients would have been lured to another location offering Christmas dinner at the same time. I can only hope that Shoko Inoue's repeat performance on Christmas afternoon reached a few more of them.
It is a curious way to end this musical journey towards the light, but it reflects one of the unintended consequences of fully immersing one's attention into the unique qualities of sound, especially in the era of mixing cultures, languages and music in which the world is irreversibly involved. Towards the end of Christmas Day, I decided to drop in on a party arranged by some lovely friends for a group of 18 Tibetan refugees whom they had contributed to sponsoring to Canada 15 months ago. As I entered the house a joyful hubbub of Tibetan laughter and language poured out of the kitchen and the dining room. As I was introduced to each person around the table, they spoke their names to me, which I repeated as well as offering my own. When I got to the last young woman, she greeted me with a huge smile and said "you speak our names as if you know our language", the young woman beside her nodding in agreement. In that moment, I knew we had exchanged a great gift of mutual recognition, and not knowing any Tibetan at all, silently thanked all the language teachers and choir conductors of my life who spend so much energy on perceiving subtle differences in vowel sounds and how to produce them.
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