Congratulations CCC!

 Photo Credit: Llangollen Website

Hello readers,

I must say a huge amount of congratulations to the choir of my teenage years: The Cantilon Chamber Choir for winning first place in the Youth Choir category at the Llangollen Music Eisteddfod in Wales this year! I saw that they also managed to snag second place for the Female Choirs category as well. Very nicely done.

How far technology has come since the years that I performed in this very same festival. All there was in 2003 was a slowly updated website with photos that linked to an expensive photo purchase site. Not very exciting. I was impressed with the social media presence of the festival. Also, they have all the video media from the festival streaming on their website! It's is great for people like me who can't attend the festival but who want to hear what's going on. It's a bit of deja vu watching their performances since I've sung most of the pieces and have worn that very same uniform on that stage. There was one point when they were singing "Hosanna" in the Senior Children's Choir category and it was like I was on the stage with them. I could breathe the humid air, smell the sweet scent from the fresh flowers that lined the stage, and see the haze of the audience underneath the amphitheater tent stage lights. Although I do not recognize many of the faces there, it's comforting and exciting to see the new generation of the choirs' singers.

It also appears that the "Choir of the World" award goes to the Adventist University of the Philippines. I listened to their Choir of the World competition piece. Typical sacred Latin text set to music. It's very nicely done but I would have loved to have heard something with a bit more musical character. It felt like a safe choice. Listening to choirs at an international festival is the time to get inspired by wonderful choral pieces and have a chance to hear things I haven't heard before. I wasn't particularly moved by their choice in repertoire. Take a listen and tell me what you think.

Also, you can bet that I'm going to be combing through the video archives listening to the other choirs. If I find anything that sparks my attention, I'll be sure to post it here. If you find something that is interesting feel free to post it in the comments below!

If you need a recommendation for what to listen to first, I would suggest the winning Cantilon Chamber Choir Youth Choir Class :)

Until next time, take care readers!

Farewell Festival

Farewell festival

In the formative years of our relationship...

We used to spend so much time preparing for our meetings

Rehearsing our lines

Steaming our uniforms

We were driven to win

We sought your approval and validation

Alas, over the last few years we've been growing farther apart

When did it begin?

I cannot remember exactly

In truth, we cannot remember what we were gaining from our relationship

We stared up at your adjudication vessels from our pews

Subtly checking the clock to see when we could leave

Enduring the awkward silence between songs where comments would be written

We've reached the point where...

 You just question our artistic choices

We are not inspired to be better musicians

We've had some lovely years together

And appreciate your recognition with consecutive national awards

But it's time we go our separate ways

There's another choir out there waiting for you

We wish you all the best

Farewell.

SOSfest

Photo by: Twila B.

Greetings readers,

I've just had myself a music-filled weekend at SOSfest with my friend Nadia and I have to say that my brain is completely saturated with music. You could play me more music but I don't think my neurons are capable of processing it.

SOSfest is a live music festival in the Old Strathcona area and this is the first year that it has been put on. There is an ever-increasing live music scene in the city and it was quite inspiring to hear the talent that is resulting from it. It's like a mini musical movement right here in my city! There's everything from funk, rap, indie-pop, electronica and folk singer/songwriters and many others emerging. Of course, not all of the artists at the festival were from Edmonton, but I do have to say a large majority of them were. However, most of them were Canadian artists and it's just wonderful to see and hear the talent. In the back of my mind, I always knew there was a lot going on but it's another thing to see all the acts play one after the other in a variety of venues in the area. It's also fantastic that the whole Old Strathcona area, which is the hip culture/night-life area in Edmonton, was turned into a hubbub for live music over the weekend. I felt like I was wearing a wristband of power that allowed me unlimited entry into different concerts in a variety of different venues within the span of a few blocks.

Festivals are always exciting and somewhat frustrating entities because there is just so much to see but you can only be in one place at a time. You have to plan strategically what you are going to see and along the way there are always hits and misses. However, there are those moments when you are in exactly the right place at the right time and you know that you were meant to be at that concert. Definitely had that moment this weekend at the Michael Bernard Fitzgerald concert, but you'll hear more about that later. In order to organize this entry I'm just going to chronologically list the 21 acts I was able to hear within the span of a few days and post some thoughts about them. Feel free to check out links to these artists to learn more and hear sound clips.














Photo by: Twila B.


Friday

Daniel Moir: a Edmonton singer and songwriter. Not too many people in the audience but it felt very intimate and I was interested to hear him after an article about him in the Edmonton Journal. He had a very sweet sounding voice which accompanied the gentle sounds of his guitar and I'll be interested to hear what he comes up with in the future. There's still a bit of polishing that needs to happen soundwise and in showmanship but he has the raw goods to do it.
Lorrie Matheson: the concert where I had to whip out my ear plugs (the Arts Barn studio was quite small and the band was playing fully amped). Don't remember too much from this concert other than the lead singers curly hair. They were alright but nothing that gripped me intensely enough to remember.
Foam Lake: an interesting group from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. They used some electronic sound that they merged with the live sound of their band. Listening to clips from their MySpace peaked my interest, but I found that listening to them live didn't really further my interest.
Ann Vriend: a quirky and charming female vocalist. She encouraged audience sing-along participation and enjoyed the use of kazoo solos within her songs. She also looked awesome and had fantastic red shoes and lipstick on. Presentation goes a long way.
Randy Graves: a hard metal band that kind of hurt my ear-plugged ears. I think this was the first act where I was worried for the lead singer and it's almost like I could hear vocal nodules developing. Nobody should be screaming for 1h straight. I had this inexplicable urge to teach him about proper vocal hygiene. It's the speech-path-in-training tendency in me.
Volcanoeless in Canada: a fun group that had this nice dancy vibe to them. Again, a group I listened to beforehand on MySpace but my expectations of them didn't really stack up when I heard them live. I should really stop listening to groups beforehand. But then again, it helped me decide what I wanted to go hear.
Ten Second Epic: unexpectedly enough, the funnest concert of the day! I was somewhat familiar with their hit tunes but I had never seen them live. They've been getting a lot of attention on the Canadian music scene and even abroad with MMVA nominations and their collaboration with JUNO artist: LIGHTS. I have to say that the lead singer spewed out an overwhelming amount of energy with his squinty-eyed intensity while he stared down the audience with a mischievous smile. He also had a Bieber-esqe hair toss. The girls went wild. I also enjoyed the fact that the members of the band don't really look like they belong together. Two of the guitar players looked like they should be playing with an 80s rock metal band with their long stringy hair, the lead singer and drummer look like they're from the current era of teenage rockers, sporting their fitted t-shirts and cut-off shorts, and the other member fell somewhere in between. They were very fun to watch and their energy was infectious. I found myself dancing along even though I didn't know most of their tunes.

Saturday

Bronze Leaf: a mellow concert in the basement of the soon-to-be-closed Megatunes. Bronze Leaf delivered gentle vocals that made me drowsy but not exactly in a bad way. Her grassroots indie-folk vibe was an chill way to start the day.
Erica Vogel: a previous fellow chorister of mine. She studied at the UofA and went to study at the University of Montreal and has just finished the past year at the Manhattan School of Music in NYC. The way she heard about SOSfest was very interesting. I posted a Facebook note alerting my friends to the fact that this festival was on and one of my classical music friends, Leanne, posted a challenge (via Facebook) to the classical musicians in Edmonton to do a concert at SOSfest and bring some diversity to the band-driven festival. Erica stepped up to the challenge and delivered a lovely set of vocal pieces with Latin flavour.
Still Within: a short stop where I checked out this male duo and their guitars but I didn't stay for too long. It was in the Filthy McNasty's bar venue and I wasn't really looking to sit down and order food but it was a nice break for those who wanted to catch music at the festival but needed a food/drink break.
Pre/Post: a neat band that infused pre-programmed synth beats in addition to their live music. Their overall sound needed some polishing, but I still enjoyed watching them. I felt bad that there were only 4 people in the audience, 2 of whom seemed to know the band as well as Nadia and I.
Artisan Loyalists: a hidden gem I discovered at the festival. I wasn't exactly planning on seeing this group but I am glad I did. Ever since my electromusic composition course, I have this new-found respect and interest for electronic music. This group had an interesting tripod set up. They all had their guitars or drums but in front of each of the guitar players was a keyboard or synth board and a laptop. They were able to whip out electronic snip-bits in addition to their live music and I just really felt like they took the time to create music. I also feel that in electronic music I never know where the musical line is supposed to go, since it just all seems to blend together, but I felt like they had movements within their pieces and I was able to hear the music unfold in an organic way. Extremely enjoyable and I definitely will stay updated on what they are up to next.
Concealer: an electronic male/female duo but I felt like the overuse of electronic synth reverb was hurting my eardrums so I peaced out of this set early to go and meet a friend before Darren Frank
Darren Frank: o.k, so I must admit I didn't watch his whole concert, but I was able to hear it from the outside as I chatted with my friend Ross. He sounded quite good from a background music standpoint.

Michael Bernard Fitzgerald: By far my favorite show of the festival! I had feeling I would really like his musical style since he came highly recommended from my friend, Julia, who saw him at the Starlite Room a few months back. I was excited to hear him for myself. His whole look had an artsy appeal about it with a fitted red t-shirt, rolled-up black skinny pants and barefeet in his preppy sneakers. It also made me smile to see a daisy was attached to his guitar. I think it's his life goal to bring happiness to other peoples lives.

Before his set began, he confessed it was a little awkward to just start, since we were watching him tune, so he alerted the audience that he was going to walk through the crowd, out the back, through 2 green doors, pace up and down a bit backstage, and then come on stage again. Maybe this isn't funny at all when you read about it now but his comedic delivery of it just endeared him to the audience. It also helps that whenever he slips a smile during his songs it kind of stuns you for a second since it's just beaming warmth. He also has hilarious between song banter and made fun of the people leaving his set early confessing that he realized that they probably had to go see a podiatrist halfway across town to fix their foot arch and there was no other time that they would be seen other than at 10:45 pm. Serves them for leaving his concert early! I also enjoyed his quirky on-the-spot twisting as he played his pieces. His music has a flair of happy quirkiness with neat lyrics, cute keyboard chords, and clipped vocal attack. However, he was using an electric guitar for most of the concert and he confessed that he enjoyed how "bad-ass" he sounded. Overall, he had a very unique presentation style-both musically and visually.

I think the highlight of the concert was when he began playing "Brand New Space" and two girls jumped up in the audience and started dancing, and then two more girls, and then suddenly there was a huge hoard of girls at the front dancing in front of him as he played! Eventually he beckoned them to come on stage and dance behind him and he told the rest of the audience to stand up and dance along. At this point, I didn't hold back any longer, I jumped up, grabbed Ross' hand, and we both ran towards the stage! We all danced in a massive on-stage group while somebody filmed (I have a feeling this might be on Youtube) and he even altered the lyrics of his piece to have a hint of Baby by Justin Bieber as we danced. Fun times! When else can you have a spontaneous dance party behind an awesome artist on stage? I left the concert on a dance high and completely satisfied with the musical offerings.

The Paronomasiac: an electronic dance DJ we caught the end part of at the Pawn Shop. We wanted to catch 2 other bands at the Billiards Club. Wheat Pool (and Edmonton alternative-country-rock band) and Wool on Wolves (an Edmonton folk-rock band) but there was a long line to get in so we went to the Pawn Shop venue instead.
Brett Miles and Magilla Funk Conduit: a fun band with funk tunes. Maybe not my exactly my personal music tastes but it was still fun to listen to them jam.
Cadence Weapon: He is the newest Poet Laureate of the City of Edmonton and he just so happens to be a rapper. I've never seen him in action but my interest was peaked ever since I heard his name announced. The Poet Laureate, historically, "served as the official chronicler of state events and occasions and in ancient times, the Laureate was the central means for recording and communicating history." I think the City of Edmonton is daring to choose a rapper to be the poet but I also think that it is an inspiring choice since it acknowledges the fact that poetry can come in many forms but it's about the message and not the vessel it comes in. It was amazing to hear the words roll of his tongue and all I could hear was a blurred speech output. My stamina was definitely waning at this point in the evening since it was just after 1am when he came on stage, so I caught a few of his pieces, and then had to peace out to get some rest.

Sunday

The Whitsundays: a very interesting alternative-indie band from Edmonton. They had some nice trios of voice choruses in their songs and just something appealing about their sound overall. They also used theremin's which scored them points for my geeky electromusic side. I'll be interested to see what they're up to in the future.
YOAV: a very unique one-man-band. He utilized pedals to establish a percussive bassline and achieved a very rich overlay of sound consisting of percussion and instrumental effects in his song by just using his guitar. It was just neat to watch him at perform since it just requires to much coordination to make music like he does.
Shout Out Out Out Out An excellent end to the festival! This Edmonton band used their electro dance beats and sound filters to get the whole street hopping in a massive dance party. I've never seen that many people dancing on the streets of Whyte Ave! I hope it won't be the last time!

Overall, I dub the SOSfest a huge success given it is it's first year and I heard it mentioned that they only started planning for it about 4 months beforehand. To coordinate a huge number of venues, numerous artists, sound technicians, volunteers, and the shutdown of a main street within Edmonton is no small feat. I was able to hear a ton of local music, which I would have never been able to experience altogether in one weekend, and I have the festival organizers to thank for that. I hope this is just the first SOSfest of many more to come!

What a fantastic weekend! It makes me miss my choir less!














Photo by: Twila B.

The St. Albert Sauna

Hello!

Last night Belle Canto sang in the St. Albert Rotary Festival or the St. Albert Sauna as we affectionately deemed it. There was a steamy hot heat that permeated the church where we sang. It always amazes me how long I find these festival classes even after years of competing in them. It is always nice to have the opportunity to perform for some new ears but my patience is wearing thin to have an adjudicator jot down notes in between each song while we stand up on the stage and have nothing to do. In that sense, I really enjoyed the Cork Music Festival since you have a set time frame and you just sang each piece one after the other so you can just stay in the performance zone without having to wait.

We ended up entering in a bunch of classes some with the full choir and some with a smaller ensemble. Many of our songs were quite new and our main frightening moment occurred during Montaverdi's "Surgens Jesu." Early music can be so challenging within a choir since it is so dependent on the fact that we all are keeping the same internal pulse and it really is up to the individual parts to move the line. Each section needs to have an unspoken consensus of where they want their individual line to go. It requires such a great amount of mental effort since you have to continuously feel the movement of the line and provide proper stress while knowing when to retract to let another section express its musical thoughts. It requires such finely tuned sensitivity and we were definitely lacking that respect. There was a tentative fear heard throughout the whole piece and there was so much tension I couldn't even take a full breath. A moment of doubt regarding the pulse caused the soprano section to miss an entry and we ended up singing the end of the piece without them. I remember thinking "maybe I should just jump up onto their line so they know where they should be" but I figured sight reading and coming in on a high F probably wasn't the best thing in case I butchered it. My lack of confidence is also due to the fact that we've just started learning the piece and it has yet to settle into our voices and be comfortable for us to perform. I am still dependent on my music to decipher my own line let alone start singing another part. I'm sure once Belle Canto is in Italy, singing inside beautiful domed cathedrals, this current fear will past.

Our other songs seemed to go smoothly enough. Our "Log Drivers Waltz" was cheeky and light due to Shannon's solo, our madrigal "Aye Me, Alas, Hey Ho" was surprisingly solid for a piece that was new for us as well and I was happy to realize that I had it memorized since I didn't need my music much throughout the performance. I love it when I'm unconsciously memorizing a piece! It really take the cognitive load off! Our French Canadian folksong, "V'la L'Bon Vent," was one of our most solid performances of that piece yet and we got some good tips from the French Canadian adjudicator, Dr. Andrée Dagenais, to ensure that we didn't nasalize the consonant but to nasalize the open vowel. For example, in the word "vent," we needed to remain on the open /e/ vowel and add nasalization rather than holding to the /n/ to provide that nasalization for us. A small detail, but as Dr. Andrée Dagenais said herself, it is all about the details when we are preparing for an international competition.

Overall, the performance definitely had its shaky moments but nothing that I am going to lose sleep over. We have another chance to perform at the Edmonton Kiwanis Festival this upcoming week so hopefully we can work through some more bugs at rehearsal on Monday. If you are in Edmonton and would like to see Belle Canto perform, we will be singing on Friday, April 23 at McDougall United Church probably starting around 7:30pm. The nice thing about festivals is that they're free :)

Hope to see some of you there!

Also, here's a video of the McDades singing V'la L'Bon Vent with Pro Coro. It's not the same arrangement but it has the right French-Canadian folk song feel.

It's Like Driving a Mercedes

I don't know what it was about tonight's festival performance.....but I was tired! It may be due in part to the fact that I am in the middle of writing finals but usually adrenaline gets me buzzed enough to pull off a performance. Didn't seem like that was the case tonight with Belle Canto.

The Rotary Music festival was held at the North Pointe Community Church out in the middle of nowhere. Somewhere in an area between St. Albert and Edmonton. It's a massive church filled with preschool rooms, leather couches, classrooms, gift shop, administration office, a huge gymnasium, a commercial kitchen and there's even a coffee shop near the entrance to the worship sanctuary. Very modern indeed...

Anyway, the sanctuary space, where the festival singing took place, was one of the most difficult acoustics I have ever sung in. I still think the worse one was the lecture theatre I sang in with Belle Canto at the University of Victoria. That room was truly disgusting. One of those steep amphitheater style lecture theaters with the fold-out desk chairs. If any of you UofA students remember lecture room P126 before Physics and V-wing was destroyed...imagine singing in that room. Yeah, gross, I know. There was no feedback and everything was exposed and dry. I tried to sing better to make up for it but it didn't seem like there was much of a difference. It just felt like we were all randomly singing and we all happened to be standing next to each other. There was no cohesive choir sound. At least not from where I was standing. It is unfair to critique our performance as a whole since I know that what I heard tonight is not what Belle Canto sounds like.

One of the most painful sets was one with the Ensemble Class. This was a smaller group with about half the singers of Belle Canto and I was picked to be 1 out of 2 second sopranos. It was o.k. for the first set but there was one song in the second set, If Ye Love Me by Eleanor Daley, that seemed to kill me slowly. I kept on taking huge gaping breaths with my fellow mezzo (the whole song is full of sustained phrases) and there was just no support or beneficial singing relationship between us. It was not her fault but I blame it on the acoustics and the fact that there was only 2 of us. A breath in a bad spot cannot be disguised with 2 people and we didn't really make a breathing plan of action before we went in. Also, we both wanted to take a breath and brace ourselves before a solo entry and what happened was that there was no second soprano note at the chord we were supposed to hold. Oops!

At this point we had already sung about 8 songs and hadn't had the opportunity to sit so we were all uber tired. I also forgot that during festivals the adjudicator, George Evelyn, wanted to say something or work with us. This takes even more time! After every 2 or 3 songs he would come up and drill a few lines with us. Since there wasn't too much to perfect other than demanding more dynamic variation and suggesting that we should sing in straight tone to correct vibrato problems (which Heather promptly shut down) he was just mentioning nitpicky things that wouldn't radically change our performance. I kind of wished I could just sing and leave...like a concert! I sound like choral diva! I know a music festival is not designed this way but I've just been doing this for so long that I kind of don't really feel the desire to hear what they have to say. Of course, there are some illuminating points which you can take away but, overall, I know what I'm supposed to be doing or how a piece should sound...it's all about the execution. I also trust Heather's opinion and rehearsing with her is like having an prestigious adjudicator every week.

One thing the adjudicator mentioned that I found funny was when he compared Belle Canto to a Mercedes Benz. Not everybody gets to drive one but it's extremely luxurious when you get the chance. It's smooth, responds quickly to your commands and is a sleek performance machine. If I had to think of a Belle Canto analogy that men could identity with...a Mercedes Benz is a pretty good one.

Until next time, take care everybody!