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Passion and Peace: Q and A with Susan Mahoney

Pax Christi Chorale is putting the finishing touches on our Spring concert “Passion and Peace” coming up on April 26 in Kitchener and April 27 in Toronto. We’re performing Jean Langlais’ Missa Salve Regina, Faure’s Messe Basse and Randall Thompson’s Peaceable KIngdom. Here’s a short interview with Susan Mahoney about the repertoire.   Q – All of the music in this concert was composed in the 20th century. Why did you want to move away from the Bach-Mozart-Handel canon? There’s room on the dance floor for everyone. Not every choir will take musical chances like Pax Christi does. That’s why… Read More »Passion and Peace: Q and A with Susan Mahoney

An Easter present for your choir

In case you have not visited the compositions page of this site recently, please do. You may know already that now and then I post a PDF of a composition (usually for choir) and if you click on it you can download it. My most recent “free gift” is an Easter anthem for SATB choir, organ and brass quintet with obligato timpani. The text is a hymn for Easter day, written originally in Greek by John of Damascus sometime in the eighth century, and translated by a Victorian clergyman John Mason Neale, whose portrait I include at the top of… Read More »An Easter present for your choir

Springtime’s weird sisters

Nights grow shorter. Birds return. The long, mourning Winter softens into tender Spring. Earth sweeps through her epic costume changes, and the actors come and go from the stage of our little life. Nature, in her gaudy battle garb, conspires with dreadful Disease and fickle Fate to grasp home her own before timid Time can parry. The scene is ruined. The gig is up. We watchers mourn for lost Love, lost Hope, lost Life. We mourn for the Act that could have been. Gentle reader, the play is true and hard. You too must take a role; you must lose… Read More »Springtime’s weird sisters

Two Chairs

I have two chairs at my table. One chair was purchased at Home Depot two years ago and required some assembly. The other I bought back in 1982 in a country store. Striking out on my own and requiring some furniture for my student apartment, I went shopping for furniture with my Mom. We stopped in at a miscellany store in the lovely little village of Millbank, Ontario. We loved this village because there were cool shops, a bridge, a twist in the road, and also, incredibly, the hovering spirit of the Millbank Muse who could tell the future, as… Read More »Two Chairs

Support the Arts: Invest in the city

There is a matrix of small arts groups that keeps our city vivid and warm despite the cold winter. Not all of us have huge audiences, but our specific activities spin into a great wheel of culture that reveals meaning in this confusing maze of urban life. This month, my big oratorio choir Pax Christi Chorale has been granted support from artsVest. ArtsVest will match any business sponsorships we receive before March 3rd, 2014. That’s only two weeks away, so we are quite enthusiastically looking for a business that loves choral music and might help us on our way. With… Read More »Support the Arts: Invest in the city

500,000 hits

When your blog ticker says you’ve reached 500,000 hits, is it appropriate to open a bottle of bubbly? Pax Christi Chorale and Laura Adlers set me up on my blog back in September 2010 when I left the choir for a Sabbatical break. Back then I wrote “I blog, therefore I am.” The blog really was a lifeline whilst travelling alone in Europe; a place to sort out my own experiences and record events and impressions of things I saw and people I met. It was a great comfort in my dark time of grief and provided a venue for… Read More »500,000 hits

In memoriam Pete Seeger

I’m beat up today that Pete Seeger has died. And people ask, “you were a Pete Seeger fan?” The thing is, with Pete you were not a “fan.” You did not sit idly by and merely listen and pledge fan-ship to a performer. You did not “like” him on FaceBook. You didn’t even buy the records. You didn’t have to because your parents already had them on the shelf. There wasn’t kid’s music and parent’s music, there was just music. No, you were not a fan. You were a collaborator. You were part of the band. You sang along with… Read More »In memoriam Pete Seeger

The Beggar’s Opera at York University

About two years ago Gwen Dobie, Catherine Robbin and I had lunch on a patio under a tree, sipping white wine and evaluating our production of Dido and Aeneas at York University. We were exhausted but happy after our initial collaboration, and keen to sink our teeth into something even bigger. That’s when the idea was hatched to produce The Beggar’s Opera at York. We open next week after a year of planning, designing and rehearsing. The production is high energy, imaginative, and a little off the wall. Gwen presents the opera as a “play within a play” set in a… Read More »The Beggar’s Opera at York University

Candlemas

Music for Candlemas: free score for you

You’ll know it as “Groundhog Day.” It’s a turning point in the year surrounded with Northern mythology, like the Celtic folk tale of the Blue Hag, or the more down-to-earth Canadian legend of the rodent who sees his shadow and returns to his lair for 40 days. The Church of St. Mary Magdalene celebrates Mary presenting her baby to Simeon in the temple. The service involves a beautiful procession with candles and lovely music like the Nunc Dimittis. It’s sort of the last remnant of the Christmas season, and you have to eat all your left over plum pudding by… Read More »Music for Candlemas: free score for you

blessing the door 2013

Adieu 2013

2013 was a step up from annus horribilis 2012. My annual New Year’s Eve party usually involves Haggis and pagan rituals: a dark stranger, coins, whisky and coal. This year Fr Tay Moss blessed my house with the works, holy water and all. During the infamous Toronto ice storm I lost power for two days. Thank goodness for Bruce Hill’s stubbornness! He insisted on installing a gas stove when we moved here in 1998, not for heating mind you, but for efficient cooking. Boiling up cinnamon spiced water filled the house with Christmas fragrance throughout the dark and chilly episode,… Read More »Adieu 2013