Choirs team up for last concert

Ring Out Wild Bells is Da Camera Singers season closer coming this Sunday at First Baptist Church and is aptly titled after a Tennyson poem.

“It’s one of his larger works and explores the passing of the year, the change of the seasons and in a metaphysical way, the passing of our lives,” says musical director John Brough.

In closing the season, Brough has selected a repertoire that focuses on the epic work of Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir and Jonathan Dove’s The Passing of the Year.

And in helping to give these works life, Brough has invited Spiritus Chamber Choir, a 40-member mixed choir from Calgary to share the honours. Of the 35-member Da Camera choir, three St. Albert ambassadors include Robert King, Wendy Vanderwel and Rosemary Barns.

The Passing of the Year is a very accessible modern work born from hybrid minimalism, a form of repetition that became a popular fad in the 1970s. “It uses some of the same ideas but with richer motifs.”

And Mass for Double Choir written in the 1920s is an epic work for two a cappella choirs. “It’s widely considered one of the most important choral works in the last 100 years because of the use of harmony and the powerful way it sets the text to music. It’s very different than Hayden and Mozart and requires a powerful choir of 75 singers.”

Portions of this program will also be performed in Saskatoon at the Podium Conference for the Association of Canadian Choral Communities on Friday, May 21.

“This is a wonderful opportunity to see two great Alberta choirs perform together and to hear some of the best choral music of the last 100 years.”

For more information visit www.dacamera.ab.ca