It’s a tradition for Concordia School of Music’s Sacred Music Festival to invite a renowned composer to conduct the concert.
Tomorrow afternoon at the Winspear Centre, the school embraces renowned Canadian composer Eleanor Daley. She is widely acknowledged for the exquisite award-winning Rose Trilogy and Requiem.
“To invite the composer is a way to get to know the person creating the music and bringing his/her music to life now. It’s a way to bring a special gift to Edmonton that is not normally here,” says Concordia conductor Joy Berg.
In addition to being a prolific choral composer, Daley is a devoted church musician, a clinician and a freelance accompanist. Contemporaries have noted her scores are a refined and sensitive interweaving of text and music.
Concordia’s choral ensembles – the Concert Choir, the Community Chorus, and Bella Voce Women’s Choir as well as the guest choir Edmonton Young Voices, will create a 200-person wall of sound.
St. Albert’s own Caroline McKendrick will be one of the singing ambassadors.
The choirs will sing a full program of Daley’s original compositions. Several highlights include Prayer for Peace, using all the choirs with the children’s choir interwoven into the larger choirs.
The 28-piece Concert Choir sings My Master From a Garden in four-part a cappella work while Bella Voce’s 20 women’s voices perform Rise Up My Love, using a text borrowed from Song of Solomon.
“It’s very graceful and very beautiful for the women’s choir,” Berg comments.
One of the more lush numbers is the Community Chorus and Concert Choir joint vocal power of 110 voices singing Psalm 100.
“It’s an a cappella antiphonal response back and forth.”
The concert is held on Sunday, Oct. 27 at 3 p.m. Tickets are $17 to $20 with applicable service charges. Call 780-428-1414 or online at www.winspearcentre.com.
