I attended DaCapo Chamber Choir’s final concert of their season, “Celebrating Home.” The choir is directed by Leonard Enns, and Catherine Robertson was guest pianist.<\/p>\n
The choir sang seven pieces, six unaccompanied and one with piano. There were also two piano solos. I was familiar with three of the seven choral pieces.<\/p>\n
DaCapo sings mainly music written in the past 100 years. This music can sometimes be challenging — in other words, it can take a bit of getting used to (which is why the fact that I was familiar with three of the pieces is significant). Within one piece there might be sections you find beautiful and other sections you find strange.<\/p>\n
The choir had a wonderful blend, both within parts and between them. They sounded great in both quiet sections and loud sections.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0liked the harmonies in\u00a0“This Day” by Leonard Enns — the song was inspired by sunrises and it did feel like a sunrise.<\/p>\n
“Due North” by Stephen Chatman paints a picture with music more literally than “This Day.” It ranges from loud (“Mountains”) to wordy (“Trees”) to fun (“Woodpecker”)\u00a0to peaceful (“Varied Thrushes”) to silly (“Mosquitoes”). “Trees” reminds me a bit of Radio Free Vestibule’s “Bulbous Bouffant” where they play around with words.<\/p>\n
Most of the time in these pieces the choir is singing in four-part harmony, possibly in eight parts in some cases.\u00a0In “Nocture” by Leonard Enns a fascinating effect is created by having each singer on a different note for a time.<\/p>\n
If you’re feeling pessimistic a piece of music such as “There will be rest” by Frank Ticheli\u00a0will remind you that there is beauty in the world.<\/p>\n
I used to sing in DaCapo. Whether I’m singing in the concert or listening to it, it always goes by quickly.<\/p>\n
A concert tip: try to avoid sitting under a balcony. To be more specific, if you have a choice between sitting in the centre under the balcony at the back and sitting on the side at the front — choose the side (even if you can’t see everything because there’s a post). I moved up for the second half of the concert and I then felt surrounded by the music — whereas in the first half it was a bit more distant.<\/p>\n
If you’re anywhere in the neighbourhood of Kitchener, Ontario and you would like to hear some interesting music by an amazing choir — check out DaCapo tomorrow or\u00a0next season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I attended DaCapo Chamber Choir’s final concert of their season, “Celebrating Home.” The choir is directed by Leonard Enns, and Catherine Robertson was guest pianist. The choir sang seven pieces, six unaccompanied and one with piano. There were also two piano solos. I was familiar with three of the seven choral pieces. DaCapo sings mainly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[91,13,5],"class_list":["post-653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews-of-music","tag-classical","tag-music","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3997,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653\/revisions\/3997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}