Daniel LevitinRenowned neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin paused as he sang the word “strings” and looked over the neck of his guitar to the audience in the University of Toronto’s Desautels Hall. The air felt charged. Instinctively, we knew what he wanted. For a brief moment, many of the two-hundred-plus gathered began singing along, some harmonizing at the end of a song we’d all just heard for the first time.

Read more: Music As Medicine: The healing powers of a song-filled life

Babεl Chorus - founded in 2018 by Elaine Choi - performing "Cultural Landscapes" at PODIUM National Choral Conference, Montreal 2024, singing in Arabic, Seriac, Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin and Malaysian.One day in the golden late ’80s in Hong Kong, almost past the reaches of Elaine Choi's memory, she balanced on her mother's piano bench. She was about three years old. Her mother helped one of her small fingers find middle C. The note resonated through the black upright Yamaha, as it did for the many piano students who filled Choi’s childhood home. Choi's own lessons with her mother turned out to be the beginning of an impressive international music career bridging East and West. But not as a performance soloist. Instead, Choi found success in one of music's most collaborative genres – as a conductor for choral music.

Read more: Community Through Song: Elaine Choi’s Choral Journey

Don Wright Faculty of Music ChoraleFor 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.

Read more: Vocal Music and Community Building

Sing Along Messiah, TafelmusikFor a classical work that features in only 19 of the 123 concerts in this issue’s listings that involve a choir (or choirs), Handel’s Messiah still commands a lot of Christmas concert attention. (I think the rule is I am allowed to say “Christmas” if I use “Messiah” in the same sentence.)

Read more: The 6.47% Solution - Handel’s Messiah still holds its own

musica intima. Photo by Wendy D.The 20th century term “postmodern” is often uncritically applied to a whole range of artistic expressions that are not easily compartmentalizable – wherever influences and traditions whose conceits lie on a continuum somewhere between antithetical and oppositional are blended together. Sometimes, though, it is entirely appropriate, as was the case with Andrew Balfour’s beautiful and important piece, NAGAMO (Ojibway for “sing”), recently presented on a coast-to-coast tour by Balfour and musica intima.

Read more: NAGAMO: Andrew Balfour & musica intima
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