The comforting smell of coffee lingered in the air as conductor Jean-Sébastian Vallée listened to the fading notes of the morning’s final song. More than a hundred people had gathered in red-carpeted Yorkminister Park Baptist Church on a Saturday this past September for a special Mendelssohn Choir Singsation workshop celebrating the choir’s 130th anniversary. TMChoir, as Toronto’s largest and oldest choral organization is now known, has offered Singsations since 1999.
Anyone in the public can join to experience the joy of participating in a large choir—even if you simply want to immerse yourself in the body of voices without singing.
The room went silent. Vallée looked around the diverse group and could see that the song, Stephanie Martin’s Nothing Gold Can Stay, had connected with each person. An emotional, communal moment.
Two-way streets: There’s a common perception in the arts world, and the world generally, that the larger an organization becomes, the more disconnected it grows from the very communities it aims to serve.
But Singsations is a great example of how a big organization can challenge this notion. “We stopped using the word ‘outreach’,” Vallée says. “We felt that the word ‘outreach’ was one-way.” Instead, their focus is now on “exchange.” They don’t just think of themselves as serving a community. They are part of the community, and important experiences also move back to the choir through all of their events, helping them learn and grow, too. A two-way street.
The next Singsation is February 8 at 10:30am, also at Yorkminster. TMChoir welcomes conductor Scott Pietrangelo of newchoir and SoundCrowd for a high-energy session of rock and pop hits. Typical of Vallée’s approach: he discovered the work of Pietrangelo online and asked him to help offer a session of repertoire that’s usually outside of the choir’s wheelhouse.
That same evening, at 7:30pm, the TMChoir mounts a multimedia concert at Trinity St. Paul’s United Church featuring the TMSingers – the core of full-time professional singers within the choir, reconstituted at Vallée’s urging after a lengthy hiatus. Visionaries: Vivaldi & Da Vinci uses state-of-the-art video technology to sync words and drawings from Leonardo Da Vinci’s Notebooks with the sounds of Vivaldi’s Gloria.
Fresh outlook: Since Vallée joined as artistic director in 2021, the organization has had a fresh new outlook. In 2022, they tried introducing a Director of Community Engagement advisory role, which was in turn replaced by a two-person Community Engagement Team in 2023. For the current season, which began in 2024, there is no one individual or team tasked with community initiatives as a separate silo. Now it’s a collaborative effort across the organization with everyone working to make community engagement happen. “We must find ways to stay in the community,” Vallée says, “So we’ve been trying a number of things.”
One successful project that’s already come out of these efforts is the event they call the Exchange. TMChoir organized with other choirs in Toronto last year to offer a conference-style day where singers register as individuals. Last year, people from about 50 different singing groups showed up.
This same conference-style day for singers is coming up again this year. On February 22, TMChoir hosts a whole day of workshops, masterclasses, and lectures. Exchange: A Day of Choral Community Workshops explores different topics in choral music, vocal music, and musical community building. Venezuelan composer/conductor Cristian Grases will give the keynote talk. Workshop leaders include members of TMChoir, as well as members of Orpheus Choir of Toronto and Amadeus Choir of Greater Toronto. “There’s no prerequisite in terms of level,” Vallée says. “You just come and learn.”
Another example of a willingness to try new things is in their approach to mentorship. Within the conducting community, their traditional day-long Conductors’ Symposium has morphed into a Conducting Mentoring Program lasting several weeks this spring. It is an initiative to support young conductors, who are sometimes singers tasked to lead local singing groups but find it difficult to get extra training to do so.
“We want community engagement to also be about responding to needs we saw and heard about in the community,” Vallée says.
Big Sound: Of course, it’s worth remembering that, even though big isn’t everything, it is still something to behold! Amidst all the community engagement, the full TMChoir is still constantly preparing for large performances. You can hear them at Roy Thomson Hall on April 4, when Vallée will conduct Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, featuring several guest soloists and the musicians of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony.
BRIEFLY
Closer than they seem?
Nathaniel Dett Chorale’s two concert appearances, a month apart, will be rear-view mirror moments for Brainerd Blyden Taylor – back to early fall 1998.
He had been handed the conductor’s baton at already venerable Orpheus the previous season – a position he would hold for 25 years – and, now, a year later, the NDC had been launched with two principal aims: to promote (as Nathaniel Dett had done) “an awareness of Black North American heritage”; and “to honour and promote Afrocentric composers and their choral music in Canada.”
Both of these concerts reflect those aims to the full. First up is the NDC’s own concert, Saturday February 22, at Grace Church-on-the-Hill – the world premiere of God’s Trombones, a poetic song cycle commissioned by the NDC from Canadian concert pianist and composer Stewart Goodyear, who will also be the guest artist for the concert. Next, on March 22, the NDC joins the Thomas Burton-led Orpheus Choir of Toronto for Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s rarely performed sacred cantata, The Atonement.
A wintry reflection of a sharply contrasting moment in time: it was January 2009 when the Nathaniel Dett Chorale, with Blyden-Taylor in their midst, sang from the US Capitol steps at Barack Obama’s first inauguration.
CHORAL QUICK PICKS
Ontario Youth Treble Festival: March 1, 2025
Titled “Vibrance”, this full-day festival at Metropolitan United Church offers over 200 youth “the chance to connect, learn, and grow through engaging workshops and collaborative activities. The festival culminates in a spectacular evening concert where each choir will showcase their unique talents, followed by two powerful mass choral performances that unite all voices in harmony.” Join us for an unforgettable day of music, friendship, and community! Taken under the umbrella of Choirs Ontario for the first time in 2024, this year’s iteration of the festival involves nine Southern Ontario children’s choirs, and will culminate in a massed choir presentation conducted by Venezuelan conductor Cristian Grases, following his appearance as keynote speaker at the TMChoir’s February 22 Exchange, mentioned earlier.
Toronto Children’s Chorus: The TCC is one of the nine choirs participating in Ontario Youth Treble Festival, March 1, following two other significant engagements in February.
“Come Together in Song” is a three-choir pay-what-you-can showcase, February 7 at Calvin Presbyterian Church, with the TCC joined by two award-winning youth choirs from Eastern Europe: the St. Stanislav Youth Choir from Ljubljana, Slovenia, conducted by Damijan Močnik, and the Bulgarian Children’s Choir “Orpheus” from Haskovo, Bulgaria, conducted by Elena Cvetkova.
And on February 27, the TCC joins the U of T Chamber Choir and Soprano-Alto Chorus in a concert, at Eglinton St. George’s United Church, of Latin American choral music, again featuring guest conductor Cristian Grases.
And still on the topic of children’s and youth choirs, March 28-30, the Canadian Children’s Opera Company offers a new production of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, at Tapestry Opera’s new theatre at 877 Yonge Street.
Finally, Tafelmusik Chamber Choir joins Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra from March 28-30 for "Choral Splendours: Bach & Zelenka". Tafelmusik’s sing-along Messiah over the holidays features choruses by a massed audience in full cry. In contrast, this spring, you can enjoy the famed Chamber Choir’s signature sound.
As always, for full details on these offerings—as well as dozens of other opportunities to get out and hear great choral works—you can browse the listings in the middle of the magazine (in print or at kiosk.thewholenote.com) or you can visit “Listings/Just Ask” on our website and search by a broad range of musical categories or keywords.
Angus MacCaull is a Toronto-based journalist and poet. He is currently at work on a memoir about coming to terms with tinnitus as a promising young clarinettist.
