For those of you who haven’t tried it yet, the “Just Ask” feature under the Listings tab on our website is a handy way of filtering our daily event listings to show only the types of music that you are interested in. For example, select “choral” for the February 1 to April 7 date range covered in this issue’s listings, and you get details of 72 events – far and away the largest single category we list.
It’s not surprising really. Other than banging on things with spoons, the human voice is the instrument most people are born able to use and to hear from infancy. (Banging on things with spoons follows in a distant second place.)
The “choral” category as we define it in our listings typically covers a wide range of occasions featuring group singing — from vocal quartets, quintets, and chamber ensembles, to mass choirs; and from recreational, to congregational, to glorious art. The Roundup that follows gives a hint of this variety: details for anything that catches your eye can be found in the daily listings. (Easier to find once you know where you are heading.)
Appropriately enough, the title for this issue’s Choral Scene is a phrase, from the presenter’s website, describing the focus of the very first event in the roundup: the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir’s Exchange –an annual day of choral community workshops. It’s a phrase that captures the contribution that group singing in all its forms can make to community wellbeing.
Live choral music activity was the first victim of COVID-19 and the last to return. But it does so with a heightened sense of purpose – as an antidote to the isolation, terrifying or tempting as the case may be, of the COVID years. Of all the forms of music that we cover in The WholeNote, the presence of occasions for group singing in all its forms tells the story of the role music can play in community life.
CHORAL SCENE ROUNDUP
Feb 03 Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. Exchange: A Day of Choral Community Workshops.
Feb 03 Soundstreams. Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir.
Feb 04 St. Olave’s Anglican Church. Isaac Watts 350.
Feb 07 Royal Conservatory of Music. Vocal Concerts Series: Los Angeles Master Chorale, staged by Peter Sellars: Music to Accompany a Departure.
Feb 09 Toronto Consort. Songs of the Palace. (also Feb 10)
Feb 09 Chorus York. 4th Annual Fundraiser: Romantic Melodies.
Feb 10 Elora Singers. Soup and Song: Fauré’s Requiem.
Feb 10 University of Toronto Faculty of Music. Faculty of Music Gospel Choir: A Celebration of Black History Through Music.
Feb 11 Oriana Singers. Winter Frost, Snow and Ice.
Feb 13 University of Toronto Faculty of Music. Chamber Choir, MacMillan Singers, Soprano-Alto Chorus, and Tenor-Bass Chorus.
Feb 13 Don Wright Faculty of Music. Choral Concert Lunchtime Series: Chorale.
Feb 14 Don Wright Faculty of Music. Choral Concert Lunchtime Series:Western University Singers.
Feb 14 St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church. Ash Wednesday.
Feb 15 Don Wright Faculty of Music. Choral Concert Lunchtime Series: Les Choristes.
Feb 16 St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church. 150th Anniversary Dedication Mass.
Feb 16 The Isabel Voices. Craig Hella Johnson: Considering Matthew Shepard.
Feb 17 Nathaniel Dett Chorale. Voices of the Diaspora: Haitian Voices.
Feb 18 Apocryphonia. Rossi of Mantua: The Songs of Salamone.
Feb 24 Peterborough Singers. The Music of Elton John.
Feb 25 Toronto Beach Chorale. Vivaldi and J. S. Bach.
Feb 29 FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre. Choir! Choir! Choir!
Mar 02 Mississauga Chamber Singers. Mozart’s Requiem.
Mar 02 Jubilate Singers. Misa Criolla.
Mar 02 The Tallis Choir. A Renaissance Tenebrae.
Mar 02 Cantabile Chamber Singers. Light of Hope.
Mar 08 Tafelmusik. Bach Motets & Company.
Mar 09 Canadian Bandurist Capella. Word of Taras. (also Mar 10, Mar 17)
Mar 09 Toronto Chamber Choir. The Muse of Novara.
Mar 09 Orpheus Choir of Toronto. Poulenc’s Gloria: Jewels of the rench Repertoire.
Mar 10 St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church. The Fourth Sunday in Lent: Laetare Sunday.
Mar 10 OperOttawa. Gates of Heaven: Requiem for a Life of Peace.
Mar 15 PaperMills Productions. The Snow Queen: A Choral Musical Act I Workshop.
Mar 15 Friends of Music at St. Thomas’s. Diapente.
Mar 16 Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. Singsation: Mozart’s Requiem with Jean-Sébastien Vallée.
Mar 16 Royal Canadian College of Organists Toronto Centre. Toronto Bach Walk 2024: Celebrate Bach’s 339th Birthday!
Mar 16 Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. Winterreise.
Mar 16 The Annex Singers. Romantic Gems.
Mar 17 The Isabel Voices. John Burges: Flight 752 - Elegies.
Mar 23 Amadeus Choir of Greater Toronto. Celtic Kitchen Party: A Fundraiser with a Kick!
Mar 23 Etobicoke Centennial Choir. Offering.
Mar 23 Don Wright Faculty of Music. Choral Concert: Joyful, Joyful!
Mar 24 St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church. Palm Sunday.
Mar 24 Elora Singers. Ešenvalds: Passion and Resurrection.
Mar 27 St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church. Tenebrae.
Mar 27 Don Wright Faculty of Music. Choral Concert.
Mar 28 St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church. Maundy Thursday.
Mar 29 St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church. Good Friday.
Mar 29 The Edison Singers. Seven Last Words from the Cross.
Mar 29 Music at Met. Good Friday Choral Concert.
Mar 30 St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church. Holy Saturday.
Mar 31 St. Bartholomew’s Anglican Church. Easter Sunday.
Apr 06 Don Wright Faculty of Music. Choral Concert: Western University Singers - Part(ing) Songs.
David Perlman can be reached at publisher@thewholenote.com.
