BY BRUCE FARQUHARSON
The Island Consort Chamber Choir celebrates its 10th anniversary this year with a program of classic choral music.
As the featured work, Bruce Farquharson, music director, has chosen this occasion to stage a performance of Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem. And to aid in this, an orchestra comprising of Nanaimo Chamber Orchestra string players plus two horns, harp and an organ will present the earlier 1893 version, but with omission of trumpets and bassoons. With a chamber choir and a compact orchestra, the work will be performed with the musical grace and balance that it deserves. Solos are to be sung by soprano Skye Donald and baritone Jeremy Roszmann.
The concert is titled, Faire Music of Remembrance and is Sunday (May 7) at 7:30 p.m. at Brechin United Church. In keeping with the theme, the choir will perform Orlando Gibbons’s 1612 madrigal, What Is Our Life? – set to a poem by Walter Raleigh, followed by Brahms’s Wie Lieblich Sind Deine Wohnungen, one of the movements from his German Requiem. This leads to an early 19th century eight-part madrigal, Robert Pearsall’s Lay a Garland. Next will be a very recent composition by American Jake Runestad, Let My Love Be Heard, which has been sung to honour last year’s victims of the shootings in Paris at the Bataclan.
William Harris’s Faire is the Heaven, composed for double choir, delivers an Edwardian musical palette set to the poetry of Edmund Spenser. Then American Steven Sametz’ contemporary When He Shall Die set to a verse from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. Finishing the first half will be Stephen Chatman’s And If Thou Wilt, Remember and Aaron Copland’s At the River. Piano accompaniment for the latter two, plus organ accompaniment for the Brahms will be played by Jenny Vincent.
The Requiem will be in the second half. Admission is $20 for adults, $5 for students and children under 12 years old are admitted for free. Tickets are available at the door.
For more information, please visit www.islandconsort.ca.
Bruce Farquharson is the music director of the Island Consort Chamber Choir.