Nanaimo’s Island Bel Canto Singers are returning to mark their 25th year with a new artistic director.
This week the local women’s choir met to rehearse in person for the first time in two years with new artistic director Fiona Blackburn of Fanny Bay. The group is hoping to hold a concert in May, which would be its first since Christmas 2019.
Penny Mitchell, Island Bel Canto finance chair and a member since 2007, said it’s exciting to return to performance and many members are looking forward to it. She said it’s significant for the singers to be entering their 25th year and said it’s their camaraderie and shared love of singing that has kept them together.
“I think it is a big deal because a lot of choirs don’t necessarily make it that far and actually this is the first term that we won’t have original founding members in the choir…” Mitchell said. “I think now I’m probably one of the longest-term members in the choir.”
Blackburn is taking over for longtime member Sharon Sinclair, who became artistic director in 2014 after 11 years as the group’s accompanist. Mitchell describes Blackburn as “very energetic and positive” and said the singers sought her out because “we were excited by her talent and her energy and looking forward to taking the choir to its next level of performance.”
“We’re not just there to have fun and make music,” Mitchell said. “We really want to push the envelope and improve, to really do our best and … allow the music to come forward the way we really believe it was meant to be sung. To do it in its purest form.”
Blackburn is also artistic director of Malaspina Choir and the British Columbia Girls Choir, as well as a vocal adjudicator. She said it’s important to honour what the Island Bel Canto Singers have accomplished over the past 25 years while at the same time helping them build their future. She said she’s “very, very excited to be taking this on.”
“Sometimes they say that leaders lead from the front of the room but sometimes leaders are very good at being behind and pushing the group and helping them to go perhaps into places where they have not even thought they might like to explore,” she said. “So that’s my job: to listen to them and then help them build.”
The Island Bel Canto Singers are looking for new members. Those interested in joining the group can learn more here.
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