Choral Glick threw a glitch into Brott’s program plans

So what are the ingredients for a surefire, super fantabulous season opener?

“You have to have one signal work that people will recognize, identify with, and that is a top hit,” said Boris Brott, whose eponymous music festival opens its summer season on Wednesday, June 21, at 7:30 p.m. in St. Thomas the Apostle Church, 715 Centre Rd., Waterdown.

“We like choral music because it involves a group of 100 or so choristers who are local and who help bring their friends and relatives to the concert.

“That’s part of the marketing. So we decided to do a choral work usually at the beginning and at the end (of the festival).

“The Mozart ‘Requiem’ we’ve identified as being the work that we wanted to do. There’s only so many times you can do (Carl Orff ’s) ‘Carmina Burana’ and Beethoven’s ‘Ninth Symphony.’”

Hear, hear, though excerpts from those last two are scheduled for the BMF’s August 17 closing concert in FirstOntario Concert Hall. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Um, a “Requiem” to open the season? Wouldn’t that be a total downer? “There are two ways of looking at a ‘Requiem,’” explained Brott.

“I suppose depending on how religious you are or what your faith base is, but a ‘Requiem,’ though it is about death, it’s also about resurrection. And it’s also about an afterlife. And particularly the Mozart is a spiritual work.

“I don’t look at it as a work that primarily celebrates death in a negative sense. It’s a work that talks about death in a realistic sense, but offers the hope of something beyond ourselves.

“I don’t know if I’m in hot water here from a standpoint of religion, but that’s how I conceive it.”

Soloists in the Mozart are Tessa Laengert, Michèle Bogdanowicz, Ernesto Ramirez and Daniel Lichti.

The concert’s title, “Triumph of the Spirit,” is taken from the late Srul Irving Glick’s 1995 half-hour work for chorus and orchestra.

That piece comes with the composer’s caveat: “This work is difficult with complex rhythms. The harp part is akin to a concerto part. Players should have their parts for as much time as possible.”

“I’m not going to lie. We were (going to perform the Glick),” confessed Brott. “We had some difficulty initially getting this chorus together. We tried various things, various new methods of getting a chorus together, but unfortunately they didn’t work.”

Chill. There is still a BMF Chorus. And for this concert, they’re being prepared by Norman Reintamm. However, it seems that the Glick was too high a hurdle to vault.

So instead, Brott and his 50 National Academy Orchestra apprentices plus a handful of professional mentors will open the concert with Glick’s 1971 “Psalm for Orchestra” written for Brott back when he led the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra. Over the years, Brott has conducted this piece many times in many countries.

“It’s celebratory,” said Brott of Glick’s “Psalm.” “It is at the same time contemplative. It finishes with a great optimistic flourish.”

Glick also sprinkles in a quote from Schubert’s 1824 “Octet,” a piece he loved enormously, according to Brott.

The concert’s first half will end with Mozart’s “Symphony No. 35,” the “Haffner.”

Handling two of its movements will be BMF assistant conductor Roï Azoulay. He’s guest-conducted various orchestras and since 2014 has been the music director and choirmaster at Montreal’s Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, the allmale choir that appeared on Leonard Cohen’s last album, “You Want It Darker.”

Tickets are $32, seniors $29, Brott35 $25, students $15, brottmusic.com.

The BMF continues on Thursday, June 29, at 7:30 p.m. in the Burlington Performing Arts Centre, 440 Locust St., Burlington, with the “Youth Overture” op. 50 from 2016 by Tatarstan-born, Montreal-based Airat Ichmouratov, plus Tchaikovsky’s “Symphony No. 6,” the “Pathétique” and his “Piano Concerto No. 1,” the latter with Ian Parker returning to the 88s.

While Brott has conducted these two Tchaikovsky works numerous times , this will be the first time he’ll be conducting Ichmouratov’s piece which was given a good handful of readings by l’Orchestre de la Francophonie last summer in Quebec.

“I love doing that. For me, learning new repertoire is what it’s all about. I mean, how many times can you do the same thing over and over again?” said Brott.

“He writes in an approachable way,” said Brott of Ichmouratov. “It’s a great opener.”

Tickets for the BPAC concert are $33, seniors $29, Brott35 $25, students $15. Call 905-525-7664.