Concert Notes from Our Music Director, Laurence Ewashko

This, the choir's final performance of this year's concert series, was entitled Beyond Rubies because it is our fortieth anniversary year and the ruby is used to celebrate forty years of being together.

We were honoured to have countertenor and former Cantata Singers' member Daniel Taylor join us for this 40th Anniversary celebratory concert. We performed works by Leonard Bernstein, Antonín Dvorák, Toronto's Eleanor Daley and another former Cantata Singers' member, Margrit Cattell.

In 1965, Chichester Cathedral commissioned Leonard Bernstein to write the Chichester Psalms for its annual Southern Cathedrals Festival. The text, all in Hebrew, is taken from six different Psalms. Daniel Taylor sang with the choir for this work that moves between the tranquility of Psalm 23 and the greater energy of many of the other psalms.

The choir performed Antonín Dvorák's Mass in D to mark the occasion of the centenary of his death. He originally wrote it for organ and choir alone, the form in which the choir presented it.

Daniel Taylor sang two arias from operas by Handel, one from Rinaldo and the second from Julius Caesar in Egypt.

Margrit Cattell, who was in the choir for over 30 years, composed the suite A Bunch of Nonsense for the choir and its director on the occasion of the choir's anniversary. In this, she set six nursery rhymes to music, rhymes such as Sing a Song of Sixpence and There was an Old Woman. When listening to the music, it's possible to recognize fragments of past pieces we've sung, bits from the Ukrainian carol Scedryk (Carol of the Bells), Dido's Lament from Dido and Anaïs, and the Messiah

We have performed a number of Eleanor Daley's works over the years. Through the generous contributions of our dedicated fans, we were pleased to present her new work, Veni Creator Spiritus, specially commissioned for this concert.