Choir performing dealer’s choice concert
Music is a great journey, and the Bel Canto Choirs of Prince George are making it extra intrepid. Anyone can join them Saturday night for a Choose Your Own Adventure Concert and see where these local singers take them.
Some choir concerts have travel themes or move through time with the event’s program, but choirmaster Melanie Taylor changed direction completely. There’s just no telling what moods and atmospheres are coming our way, because the members of these singing groups are taking turns navigating through the night.
“We had the idea last term to let the choristers pick their songs to make the experience feel a little more democratic and a little less dictatorial,” said Taylor. “At our Christmas party all the choristers wrote down a song that they wanted to sing and put it in a hat. We drew a certain number of the pieces out of the hat and that is our program. Liz (Morris, codirector) and I really didn’t buffer the selections at all so it is a little whacky, but fun. We have everything from Pink Floyd to Lloyd Webber, Queen to songs from Disney’s Moana.”
There are three choirs in the Bel Canto family. The children’s choir is for those aged 6-12, the youth choir is for those aged 13-25, and the Northern Voices group is for adults.
The usual accompanists on piano are Maureen Nielsen and Peter Stevenson.
They’ve never played songs like this before – at least, not at a Bel Canto show.
“I was quite surprised that all the choristers were excited about all the repertoire,” said Taylor.
“Even if they didn’t know the piece, they were excited for their friends if it was their piece that was selected. We even had choristers using strategy to make sure their piece was selected. One of the youth choir members solicited some of her friends to put her chosen piece on their ballots.”
Picking a song is easy, but choirs can’t simply take requests.
One singer at a piano can perhaps crank out a spontaneous favourite, but when every voice has to deliver the tune in unison, that takes preparation and it takes sheet music.
These random selections weren’t stacked up on the shelves of local music stores. Taylor had to go hunting.
“The hardest piece to find was Comfortably Numb,” she said.
“I had to order that piece online from an arranger in France. His website was completely in French but I managed to remember enough of my high school French to place the order. We had to do a bit of arranging and transposing as well, but in the end the extra work was totally worth it.”
Comfortably Numb is a singer’s song, a sweeping vocal javelin thrown by Pink Floyd. But it’s not a part of the common choir repertoire. Taylor is looking forward to bowling over the choral singing cliches and having some fun. It allows her to be a fan as well as a maestro.
“Comfortably Numb is something I never expected to conduct in my career but it is one of the most fun and beautiful pieces on the program. The harmonies are great,” she said.
And that’s just one of the adventures the singers have chosen. Follow along on Saturday at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church starting at 7 p.m. (doors at 6:30 p.m.)
Tickets are $15 or $10 for those 12 and younger.