Tag: Vaughan Williams

Review of Great Poets in Music online program
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Review of Great Poets in Music online program

Ken Stephen, Large Stage Live. On Saturday, May 30, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir was scheduled to round out its season with a concert devoted to great poets in music -- a concert which I had fully planned to attend.

With a little bit of luck and a great deal of ingenuity, planning, effort, and coordination, the Choir has managed instead to present an online virtual concert built around the same theme.  It originally aired at the same time that the live concert was scheduled to take place, and is now available online.

To pull this effort together, the Choir has brought together audio recorded performances from five other choirs, tossed in a previous video performance and a new social-distancing recording of their own, and tied the entire evening together with readings of great poetry and theatre by renowned Canadian actors Tom McCamus and Lucy Peacock and commentary by the choir's interim conductor, David Fallis.

TMC presents Great Poets in Music online on May 30th
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TMC presents Great Poets in Music online on May 30th

TMC presents Great Poets in Music online on May 30th
Stratford actors Tom McCamus and Lucy Peacock join TMC Interim Conductor David Fallis for a celebration of great poetry set to music. The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir’s 2019/20 concert-– Great Poets in Music – scheduled for May 30th was cancelled due to Covid-19 but the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir has found a way to create an online program, in the spirit of this planned concert, that brings together the spoken word and the sung word – and can be enjoyed by everyone safely from their homes. 

Sacred Music for a Sacred Space: a special concert for a special day!
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Sacred Music for a Sacred Space: a special concert for a special day!

David Richards, Toronto Concert Reviews. The lights dimmed at St. Paul’s Basilica bringing a hush over the capacity audience and suddenly heavenly a cappella sounds began wafting down from the balcony in the rear of the church. Since 2007, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir has made it a tradition to present a concert of music appropriate for Holy Week in one of the most beautiful churches in Toronto on one of the Christian church’s holiest days, Good Friday. As the choir began to sing, I squelched the temptation to look back; looking upward at the colourful ceiling paintings of the life of Paul was as far as I dared turn my head. I was transfixed in the moment. The words of Behold the Tabernacle of God reinforced the feeling that I was in a ‘sacred’ space.

Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and Huddersfield Choral Society combine to create choral ecstasy!
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Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and Huddersfield Choral Society combine to create choral ecstasy!

Dave Richards, Toronto Concert Reviews. Yesterday’s concert was a momentous celebration of the great music that grew out of the nineteenth century British choral tradition. It included the music of the famed British composers Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Parry, Holst, Stainer, Sullivan and Tavener as well as Canadians Healey Willan and Elizabeth Ekholm, each heavily influenced by the musical traditions of England.

The concert began with organist Michael Bloss performing the long introduction to Handel’s Coronation Anthem Zadok the Priest. The first sound of the two hundred voice combined choir shook me so intensely that the majesty of the music overwhelmed me at a visceral level. It was a sound that produced goosebumps throughout the entirety of my body.