Program Notes
Media Room
September 22, 2022
Pilgrim’s Way Program Notes
2022-23 Season
The program notes are written by Rena Roussin, Musicologist-in-Residence. [Content warning: The fourth paragraph of these program notes discusses homophobic violence and death by suicide] Welcome to the Toronto Mendelssohn…
May 12, 2022
Endangered Program Notes
2021-22 Season
The program notes are written by Rena Roussin, musicologist and PhD candidate. Today’s concert, “Endangered,” brings together three works from North American choral repertoire to ask and reflect on some of…
March 25, 2022
Sacred Music for a Sacred Space 2022 Program Notes
2021-22 Season
The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir was joined by the Nathaniel Dett Chorale for this concert on April 15, 2022. The program notes are written by Rena Roussin, musicologist and PhD candidate….
November 19, 2021
Festival of Carols 2021 Program Notes
2021-22 Season
The program notes are written by musicologist and PhD student Rena Roussin. Welcome to the 2021 Festival of Carols! This concert, a time-honoured tradition of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, is…
October 18, 2021
Coming to Carry Me Home Program Notes
2021-22 Season
Program notes written by musicologist and PhD student Rena Roussin. Nathaniel Dett’s The Chariot Jubilee (1919) and Johannes Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem (1868) were written just over fifty years apart…
March 17, 2021
Laurence Lemieux Artist Statement
2020-21 Season
The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir’s next online concert, to stream on Remembrance Day, will reflect on and honour the experience of Indigenous Veterans. The TMC, under conductor Simon Rivard, is joined by composer and guest curator Andrew Balfour, and Elder Dr. Duke Redbird for a program that brings together choral music, poetry and dance. The centre piece of the program is Andrew Balfour’s Notinikew. Movements of the work will be sung by Andrew’s Winnipeg-based Camerata Nova and by the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.
October 7, 2020
Kannamma Program Notes
2020-21 Season
Check out the list of performers and repertoire, plus text and translation, for this online presentation.
May 28, 2020
Program for Great Poets in Music online
2019-20 Season
Great Poets in Music online program presented on May 30, 2020. Stratford actors Tom McCamus and Lucy Peacock join TMC Interim Conductor David Fallis to read poetry and listen to choral settings of some of the works. Here is a full list of the texts read and the music listened to.
October 7, 2019
Program Notes: Singing Through Centuries
2019-20 Season
When Augustus Stephen Vogt founded the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir in 1894, it was perhaps no surprise that the new choral ensemble should be named after one of the most beloved romantic composers at the time, Felix Mendelssohn. His rich repertoire of choral music was sung widely, and was especially favoured in the English-speaking world. And it is perhaps no surprise that we should start this afternoon’s 125th-anniversary concert with two beautiful works by our namesake: they both display his unerring ability to create sweet, lush harmonies for unaccompanied voices.