Most kids are likely to say that choir is more fun than spending a half-hour in a studio with a piano teacher. Putting your child in a choir instead of instrumental lessons is cheaper, too.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
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- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
Also, the quality of the music education provided by a choir can be very high — especially in Toronto and environs.
On Saturday evening, the Bach Children’s Chorus shows off exactly what I mean, in the company of the grown-up Amadeus Choir. Their Yorkminster Park Baptist Church concert, titled Voices of Earth, is not just a season-ending showcase, but a meeting of some of Toronto’s finest choral talents.
Bach Children’s Chorus artistic director Linda Beaupré and longtime concert partner Lydia Adams, artistic director of the Amadeus Choir, are showing off great Toronto voices in a programme that extends to the compositions themselves:
The title piece is by longtime Toronto Children’s Chorus accompanist Ruth Watson Henderson — written in 1991 for the Bach Children’s Chorus and Amadeus Choir. Henderson will be present as an accompanist for this concert, too, along with organist-pianist Shawn Grenke.
Also part of the concert is Prayer for Peace by Eleanor Daley, who has been the music director at Fair Lawn United Church since 1982. That piece was originally commissioned by a song festival in Norway. She also contributes Salutation of the Dawn, a gorgeous a cappella setting for adult and children’s voices of an ancient Sanskrit prayer.
Beaupré says the piece was commissioned by the Amadeus Choir in honour of the 95th birthday of late Toronto visual artist Doris McCarthy (she died, aged 100, in 2010).
These and the other pieces on the programme are celebrations of our world, of community and cooperation — in other words, the life of a choir writ large.
I caught up with Beaupré yesterday for an end-of-season chat. Although she is beginning to cut back on her everyday choral commitments, the much-admired children’s choir conductor and educator remains intensely committed to the art of teaching children to sing.
Beaupré, Jean Ashworth Bartle and southwestern Ontario choral veteran Eileen Baldwin pooled their knowledge several years ago in a series of workbooks called A Young Singer’s Journey, which offer detailed exercises in ear training and the art of singing.
The materials, which include instructional help for choir leaders and teachers, are subtitled “An Integrated Approach to Musical Literacy,” and amount to the latest and greatest in mixing business with pleasure.
The process starts by not mincing words. Beaupré provides the nearly 200 children in the Bach Children’s Chorus with a set of rules and expectations that they have to live by. And they are encouraged to move up the graduated ensembles by meeting certain standards.
It may sound a bit strict and old-school, but it gets results. And Beaupré insists that it’s fun.
“The whole organization is dedicated to fine music experiences,” she says. She admits that asking for strict commitments of time and practice might appear difficult in an age where children have a multitude of after-school options, not to mention homework. “But parents are really looking for quality experiences outside school.”
Children can start with the Bach Children’s Chorus at age 6, and many stay with the group for 10 years. “Once they’re in it, the children are exhilarated by singing in a good choir. They respond to it,” Beaupré explains.
The children encourage each other to become better.
The proof can be seen and heard in the proliferation of very fine youth choirs in the Greater Toronto Area, including the Canadian Children’s Opera Company and Young Voices Toronto (formerly the High Park Choirs). These kids sing and perform with enthusiasm, getting the basics of a fine music education as a by-product, not as the main thrust of their weekly practices.
It comes down to seizing the day in creative ways — much like the Salutation of the Dawn (this is a different translation than Daley’s):
Listen to the exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day! For it is Life, The very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the Varieties And Realities of your Existence;
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And Tomorrow is only a Vision;
But Today well lived
Makes every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn.
“I went through the text with the kids,” Beaupré says. “I told them it means make every day count.”
That pretty much sums up what everyone involved in tomorrow’s concert is all about. (Check out the details here.)
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The Young Voices of Toronto give a concert on Sunday, June 2 at All Saints, Kingsway. You can find the details here.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
