The Orpheus fights back with song
Hamilton’s renowned choir had its bank accounts cleaned out
Nothing the Canadian Orpheus Male Choir could’ve told me about their troubles, no argument they might’ve made, would’ve won me over to their cause half so well as the singing.
It’s their why and their wherefore and it’s our great fortune to have it.
I enjoyed the privilege recently of listening as they rehearsed, these fine men, for their Remembrance Day concert in Brantford. And as I listened, it seemed, my respiration went odd.
They were singing these deeply stirring songs of the wars and that might have had something to do with it.
They sang Tanglefoot’s harrowingly beautiful “Vimy” — “Raise your flask, and your rifles high ... In thirty yards our kit and boots were full of mud/But as we made the ridge, Jimmy went down on both knees/And he coughed into his sleeve and there was blood.”
Their several voices — not young but, oh, so robust — occupied the whole space with such command and conviction, such passionate musicality, that there seemed nothing left in the room to breathe, no oxygen or air, save the music itself, this inhalation of pure sung sound, and it felt like rainbows in my lungs.
When they were done — what is the expression? — I needed a moment.
Earlier, I had listened in another key, as their speaking voices laid out in careful exposition the predicament they find themselves in.
The words were hard for them to say. But in early October they discovered to their horror that their bank accounts were empty.
The choir had been done out of $40,000, not by one of their own, of course, but by — and I’ll try to step cautiously here around the legalities — an outside action.
“It feels we’ve been kicked in the teeth,” says Rod Roberts, the choir president.
“We were completely taken aback.”
Now, so you know, the Canadian Orpheus Male Choir, a Hamilton institution begun in 1977 by the late Welsh transplant Lyn Harry, has always been a not-forprofit group. No one deserves this, but they really don’t deserve this.
They’ve raised more than $800,000 for various charitable causes over the years, including The Spectator’s Summer Camp Fund.
“All the money we make,” says Rod, “sits there (in their accounts) for promotion of our concerts, and we have only two paid staff.”
That would be their inimitable music director Richard Cunningham and accompanist Christine Chesebrough.
Not to wade into detail, but the trouble resulted from a breach of trust, forged signatures on cheques and other cooking-thebooks irregularities. It became apparent when paycheques bounced.
The group was blindsided. There’s a police investigation. “The facts are plain,” says Rod, and not being contested.
“We were seen as an easy target,” he adds.
The real proof of COMC’s admirable stock was their first reflex, on being told.
“There was a moment of shock and sadness,” says Rod. “Then one member literally got out a cheque,” made it out for a sum in the thousands.
Another piped up. “He said, ‘I’ll do the same,’” says Rod.
“Then a member said, ‘I’d like to make a motion expressing full confidence in the board.’” That meant a lot, says Rod.
Now there’s a GoFundMe campaign.
Other choral groups and community supporters have been bending over to help.
They’ve long been dubbed The Men Who Love To Sing, and it’s how they’re coping. With song. They’re pressing ahead with their full schedule of concerts.
In rehearsal, they tackled another verse. Richard Cunningham, this fantastic presence at the front, coached them through, illustrating a line in his glorious counter-tenor, his perfect registers.
They tried again, soaringly. And I, once more flushed and “needing a moment,” found myself champing to march into battle at their sides, so shepherding were their voices.
So I confine myself to taking the harmony line that goes: Please support your Canadian Orpheus Male Choir, in whatever way you can. (There’s a concert Nov. 24, Brant Hills Presbyterian in Burlington, 216 Brant St., and check the website, comc.ca, for full schedule and GoFundMe details.)