Cosmopolitan Music Society plays Remembrance Day favourite – Lest We Forget

With Remembrance Day around the corner, it’s important to remember we are all beneficiaries of those who made the ultimate sacrifice. And the Cosmopolitan Music Society invites us to actively remember our veteran ancestors and salute military personnel still on active duty.

Now celebrating its long-standing partnership with the Royal Canadian Legion, the Cosmopolitan Music Society is planning to fill the Winspear Centre this coming Sunday with its 27th edition of Lest We Forget: A Musical Tribute.

This emotionally stirring evening is filled with everything from ceremonial military marches and popular wartime music to an emotionally charged PowerPoint video presentation of soldiers’ photographs that doesn’t leave a dry eye in the house.

“On a purely musical level, the repertoire is evocative of the period and really difficult to play. There’s a real intensity and beauty to the music, and we are challenging ourselves to perform a show worthy of our veterans. This year it features people in different ways and honours veterans in different ways,” said Cosmopolitan music director Taina Lorenz.

In addition to Lorenz, Jamie Burns, Rita Burns, St. Albert’s Allen Jacobson and special guest Captain Christopher Embree from the Royal Canadian Artillery Band will conduct the CMS bands and chorus.

This year’s focus is the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Somme, a brutal battle in the First World War where soldiers endured 141 days of hell. Nearly one million men were wounded or killed.

Canada sent 800 soldiers from a Newfoundland regiment. Only 68 returned.

“It was utterly devastating.”

The contribution of Newfoundlanders, who played a key role, is honoured with Canadian composer Howard Cable’s The Banks of Newfoundland.

Another tribute piece is David Maslanka’s Give Us This Day, a piece that “highlights the struggles of daily life and how you have to fight for what you believe in.”

Another special showcase is Holst’s Dirge for Two Veterans set to Walt Whitman’s verse, a poem about a father and son killed in battle.

“It’s about a funeral procession and it’s very sober. It brings out the excitement and fanfare of going to war and that the stark reality may not be the same.”

Lorenz also borrows Oscar Peterson’s Hymn to Freedom, a blues tinged composition written in 1962 that was embraced as a civil rights anthem.

“It’s upbeat. It’s inspiring and it’s full of hope.”

As a jazz band conductor, Jacobson will break through the solemnity of war conducting a few light swing pieces that were recreational favourites among soldiers and their loved ones.

The two-hour concert also incorporates military ceremonial marches, a Parade of Colours and the poignant Last Post, played by trumpeter Wayne Prokopiw.

“In this tribute to the military, we are allowing ourselves to enjoy a personal relationship with history and the people who served in it. We want to take that foreword and hopefully make a better place.”