The choir is golden
The men who helped the Cantata Singers find their voice
A look at the four directors who have led the Cantata Singers during their first 50 years,
In 1964, Lester Pearson was the prime minister of Canada. The country was deeply engaged in a debate over a new flag. The Beatles were at the top of the pop charts and the Rolling Stones had just released their first full-length album. Sidney Poitier won the best actor Oscar for his role in Lilies of the Field.
And in sleepy Ottawa a new choir performed its first public concert.
Today, that choir, the Cantata Singers, is about to celebrate its golden 50th anniversary season.
Cantata has had four directors over its half century. Their names have become part of the tradition of good singing in this community. But really it begins with:
GERALD WHEELER (1964-5)
At 84, he still plays the organ every Sunday he can in a church in Blue Hill, Maine ( just south of Bar Harbor) where he is the music director. And he hires out as a continuo player of local renown. The musical fire still burns brightly in this soft-spoken man who on a chance came to Canada in 1956 to be the organist and choir director for St. Matthew’s Anglican Church.
After a few years, Wheeler got the urge for a choir of his own making. He had come from the British choral tradition, and just before coming to Canada was the assistant sub-organist at one of the most famous cathedrals in the world — St. Paul’s in London.
“I wanted to create a choir of calibre,” he said in a recent interview. “Hand-picked people who could read well, (that) was the No. 1 qualification, and had a feel for contemporary music. We rehearsed every week. I had a great knowledge of choir repertoire in my mind, which was not practical to do with the people in my church choir.”
By 1964, Cantata was ready for its first public performance, but Wheeler soon left for a dream job in Montreal.
“I loved Ottawa. Sometimes I wonder if I left too early. But I had been there 9 1/2 years, and I thought, ‘it’s time to move on’. And the job came up in Montreal and I had always wanted to be a cathedral organist, and there it was.”
Wheeler believes Cantata’s survival is due to “a combination of things. The standards rose tremendously when the National Arts Centre started. And there were good choirs and good people around who had started a choral tradition in Ottawa. And it (the choir) went from strength to strength.
“You have to want to do it. There is no money in it.”
And the torch was passed to one of the most important figures in Ottawa’s modern musical history.
BRIAN LAW (1965-88)
Law also came out of the British tradition. Today he teaches music and leads choirs in New Zealand, but he remembers his days at Cantata fondly.
In an email to the Citizen, he recalled an important event in the choir’s history:
“‘They are a professional choir!’ These words from a palpably relieved Mario Bernardi after his first rehearsal with The Cantata Singers for the NAC’s presentation of Dido and Aeneas in 1970. These five words will stay in my memory — they were the words that were to define Cantata Singers for the next two decades.
“It was the orchestra’s second season, and the first time a choir had been required. I had persuaded (the orchestra’s artistic director) that the Cantata Singers were up to the challenge. Maestro Bernardi was not convinced and hassled me constantly — ‘Can they sing in tune? Make enough sound? Sing with an orchestra? Follow a beat?’ He was never convinced, not until that first rehearsal. From then on ... we became the unofficial Choir in Residence.”
Law inherited a choir of 16 voices (today there are about 40). That number doubled to meet the demands of the NACO role and that meant new repertoire, adding works by Bach and Handel and 19th- and 20th-century pieces.
“This marked a defining development in the choir,” Law wrote. “Looking back from a great distance (in time and place!) I marvel how many singers stayed in the choir for so many years — decades in a number of cases. I recall myself as being a rather impatient, badtempered taskmaster, caring about the music but lacking the accepted teaching skills to get the best out of the singers. (It is only in the last few years, as I have had to deal with 21st-century choirboys, that I have had to learn what words like ‘positive re-enforcement’ and ‘constructive criticism’ mean.
“Looking back, I reckon I must have been a real bastard in most rehearsals. The choir members must either have felt a sense of great camaraderie and personal artistic satisfaction or else they were imbued with deep masochistic tendencies.”
For two decades, Law built upon the tradition begun by Wheeler, and when the torch was passed it went to a young man who had been, at one time, a youthful bass in Cantata.
LAURENCE EWASHKO (1988-2005)
He has five choirs on the go today, including the Opera Lyra Chorus and the Laurence Ewashko Singers. And he teaches at the University of Ottawa. But Ewashko remembers his return to lead Cantata.
“After my work in Vienna with the Vienna Choir Boys it was a great opportunity for me to come home
‘I grew up in choirs and that was one of the reasons I do what I do. I love singing and the vibration around you is so intense. There are other things you experience as a conductor.’ MICHAEL ZAUGG Cantata Singers conductor
and work with the finest choir at that time in the city.”
When he joined the choir as a young singer, “I felt really honoured to be in that group. And to work with Brian Law. So when I got in, I was really excited to be able to sing with the basses and progress.”
He had a reminder of that feeling one Christmas season.
“We were doing a Messiah with (conductor) Trevor Pinnock. There was a flu going around. And I lost one bass and then another, and I said, ‘I’m going to have to get in there and take over because nobody knows the part to do the rehearsals.’ I got in there and I sang with the choir and the orchestra. I hadn’t done that for 10 years or so, and I really realized what kind of thrill it is to be able to stand up there with that kind of energy, with that kind of orchestra and that kind of direction. It’s a huge high. Higher than any kind of drug I can imagine.
“Being in a choir makes people listen and listen to each other and for each other. I would love to see a Parliamentarian choir so that they would actually be able to work together.”
That project may have to wait. As for Cantata, Ewashko says: “They’ve built such a community. That’s what choirs are. They’ve built a family of their own.”
MICHAEL ZAUGG (2005-2014)
His tenure began almost as soon as he stepped off the plane from his native Switzerland. He had done his homework before applying for the job and he knew what he was coming into.
“Cantata Singers is not a choir where they come for the biscuits (after church). They come to make quality music and to make a variety of music and a lot of music. So we don’t just rehearse one piece for the entire year, but we do three of our own concerts, three with the NAC and maybe run out here and there. There is a high turnover in learning new stuff. That’s a challenge, but people welcome that. And for a conductor this is what we build upon.
“The choir members who have been in the group for longer than I have been the conductor bring a certain knowledge. This is how we do things. And the young singers in the choir recognize that they are part of history.
“I grew up in choirs and that was one of the reasons I do what I do. I love singing and the vibration around you is so intense. ... there are other things you experience as a conductor. Sometimes I say to the choir, ‘you are so lucky to sing this.’ ”
This season will be Zaugg’s last as he is leaving to lead Edmonton’s Pro Coro chorus, which is a professional outfit.
He will bring his new troupe to Ottawa next spring for a final concert.
“It’s kind of passing the torch,” he said. “I started in Canada with the Cantata Singers and I move on to a professional choir. That concert, I’m sure it will be an emotional moment.”
And the musical torch lit so many years ago will be passed along.