From Vienna to Big Apple

Ottawa conductor enjoys a busy year

Travelling is great, but distinguished Ottawa choral conductor Laurence Ewashko is happy to be working at home again.

PAT MCGRATH, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN

Laurence Ewashko, who teaches at the University of Ottawa's music department and conducts the Cantata Singers of Ottawa and the Opera Lyra Ottawa chorus, appeared on Letterman's popular program last December, a few days after his Carnegie Hall debut.

It all happened as part of the conductor's year-long sabbatical from his Ottawa duties.

Ewashko, 41, started his year by conducting the renowned Vienna Choir Boys on a three-month tour of Mexico and the eastern U.S. in the fall of 1998. He had led the group on a 1986 tour, and was invited back by Agnes Grossman, the Montreal conductor who was the Vienna choir's director last year.

The choir performed at Carnegie Hall Dec. 13 and on the Letterman show a few days later.

Ewashko says Letterman was "very pleasant and supportive of the boys," but says the cold studio (the host keeps temperatures cool to keep audiences alert) affected the performance.

"The boys went a little sharp, but that's normal in such cold temperatures. They were actually shaking."

A poster for the Carnegie Hall concert, complete with "sold-out" sticker, hangs on his office wall.

"That was amazing. It's one of the greatest halls I've ever performed in. The acoustics are incredible, and the audience went wild."

Ewashko, who conducts the Cantata Singers tomorrow in his first concert since returning to Ottawa, admits that spending three months on the road with 24 pre-teens wasn't easy. His only assistance came from a choir official who travelled with the group to help run things.

"It's a challenge to travel that much. I had to act as their vocal coach, their accompanist and their father figure. We were sometimes doing six concerts a week in different centres. But the concerts went very well. I was happy that we met the challenge of making the boys work together as a team and that they also showed some sense of love for what they were doing."

After the concert tour, Ewashko spent two weeks in Stuttgart studying with Helmuth Rilling, the German maestro widely regarded as one of the world's finest choral conductors.

Ewashko had worked with Rilling in 1998, preparing the Ottawa Choral Society for a Verdi Requiem that Rilling conducted with the NAC Orchestra.

Rilling invited Ewashko to attend his training program, in which conductors work with singers from Rilling's Stuttgart choir and receive feedback from Rilling. They also watched Rilling rehearse.

"It was interesting to watch him work. He gives very little guidance to the singers at the beginning of the rehearsal. He listens and gradually adds an emotional quality which will inspire people. He also uses his time in rehearsals very precisely. The rehearsal segments are timed to the minute. They know exactly how much time they have to get through certain things, and they do it."

Ewashko later spent a month studying Italian in Florence. As director of the Opera Lyra Chorus, he wanted to be more comfortable in the language used in so many operas. He became fluent enough to accept an invitation from the Austrian Cultural Institute in Rome to coach a choir there for a few weeks.

Returning to Ottawa in August, Ewashko went straight to work preparing the Opera Lyra chorus for last month's production of Bizet's The Pearl Fishers.

The opera makes unusually big demands on the chorus, and at the curtain calls, the audience gave some of its biggest applause to Ewashko and the ensemble.

"The singers had extra challenges, but I used some of the skills I developed with Rilling. They had to produce, and they did it. The chorus has grown a lot over the past 10 years."

Tomorrow, for the closing concert of the Outaouais Festival of Sacred Music, Ewashko will conduct the Cantata Singers in Requiems by Gabriel Fauré and Toronto composer Eleanor Daley.

The serene Fauré Requiem is well known, but Ewashko also praises Daley's piece, which he first heard performed by the Ottawa Choral Society in 1997. The piece combines religious texts with poems by Canadian poet Carolyn Smart.

"It's beautiful and accessible music. The text is very poignant," Ewashko says. "The more that I hear and feel it, the more alive it becomes."

His year abroad, he says, left him feeling refreshed and re-charged after 10 years of intensive work in Ottawa.

"It allowed me to breathe and to feed myself culturally, spiritually and musically. I also made a lot of new contacts. But I'm glad to be back."