I attended DaCapo Chamber Choir’s concert “Sun Light.” It was the last concert of the season, following “Journey Into Night.”<\/p>\n
The concert was held at Sharon Temple in the village of Sharon, Ontario. The wooden building was built in 1832 by a group known as the Children of Peace and is now a national historic site. It’s a lovely building with great acoustics. There was a bit of traffic noise but not as much as the regular venue in downtown Waterloo. The other problem with the venue was that it’s not heated and it would have been a bit more pleasant if it had been a few degrees warmer.<\/p>\n
The music, however, was amazing — while the choir was singing you weren’t worried about the traffic or the cold. If you sometimes think the choir’s music is a bit difficult to fully appreciate upon first hearing, this would have been the concert for you. As Leonard Enns says in the program notes, the concert was “celebrating sunshine, hope, regeneration, and love, though tinged at times with nostalgia and longing.”<\/p>\n
Each piece had glorious harmonies to behold.<\/p>\n
Here’s the program:<\/p>\n
The choir sang “Le pont Mirabeau” by Jeff Enns as an encore. I didn’t realize it until afterwards but all of the composers are Canadian.<\/p>\n
I liked all the pieces, but “Tabula Rasa” and “First Hymn” stood out as favourites. In “Tabula Rasa” there was a soprano part moving faster than the other parts. In “First Hymn” there was a quartet separate from the choir performing a sort of echo.<\/p>\n
The guest artist was Andrew Pickett, a counter-tenor. He has a stunning quality to his voice. He sang by himself and with the choir on several pieces.<\/p>\n
The choir is directed by Leonard Enns.<\/p>\n