2017-2018 Season
The Calgary Renaissance Singers & Players’ 2018-2019 season – our forty-eigth – has now come to a close.
This season, we were proud to present two featured concerts, as well as participate in a collaborative performance called A Celebration of Jewish Choral Music.
PAST CONCERTS
CRSP Presents • Exultate! Rejoice!
Sunday, December 10th, 2017 @ 7:30 pm
Guest Performers: Katie Partridge, Chellan Hoffman, CRSP Players
Congratulations are in order! This concert was a smashing success with record numbers attending.
In the words of our Director, Jane Perry:
“It was stupendous — it truly was. The biggest audience we’ve had in seven years was on hand to witness a concert of elegance and beauty, with sparkling guest artists and a choir that was absolutely on fire. Congratulations to the entire team of singers, dancers, volunteers, crew, special guests, and our number-one fans for a magnificent evening.”
This concert featured Katie Partridge (a member of Luminous Voices and an early-music specialist here in Calgary). We heard her bring to life the music of Hildegard von Bingen and anonymous colleagues of nearly 1,000 years ago — perfect music for the beautiful sanctuary acoustic of St. Stephen’s Anglican Church. Ms. Partridge also performed Monteverdi’s jubilant Laudate Dominum, accompanied by the brilliant Calgary organist Chellan Hoffman, and Bach’s haunting Quia respexit (Magnificat), and John van Leeuwen performing on Baroque oboe d’amore.
The Players, our core of early-music instrumentalists, were also featured brightly in this concert. St. Stephen’s rung with the sounds of recorders, shawms, harpsichord, bells, drums, and viol, which enticed some Renaissance dancers to kick up their heels for a joyful moment or two. Unique to this concert, and indeed to the Calgary concert scene, was a performance on chalumeau (a grandfather to the modern clarinet) by Adrianna van Leeuwen, who has been studying early music in the Netherlands and returned to Calgary to interpret two movements of a Telemann sonata for chalumeau and continuo.
The choir itself presented music that ran the gamut from mediaeval English Christmas carols such as There is no rose of such virtue to early-Renaissance choral compositions from the Codex Speciálnik (c. 1500). The concert’s finale included the choir, the Players, and soloist Katie Partridge in a series of settings of the text “Omnis mundus jocundetur” — all the world rejoices.
CRSP Presents • A Tale of Two Cities
Sunday, May 6th, 2018 @ 3:00 pm
St. Stephen’s Anglican Church (1121 – 14th Avenue SW, Calgary)
CRSP took our audience on a beautiful tour of Mantua and London with a motley mixture of madrigals and instrumental music celebrating love, leisure, and the lilt of spring! We presented some of the best-known composers who lived in those cities in the decades surrounding the year 1600. Our popular pre-concert talk was presented by choir member Marcia Epstein. Actor Luigi Riscaldino recited the Italian poems (in Italian) which the choral pieces were based on. Choir members Rachel Ewert and Lisa Hurrle performed a scene from Shakespeare’s classic Romeo & Juliet (the story of which did take place in Mantua). On top of all of this, there was also a period dance performance by several choir members. All in all, it was an afternoon full of music and delight!
Mantua: The Italian Renaissance composer Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) penned some of the very first operas, took the art form of the madrigal to new heights, and created stunning sacred music. Our concert featured three of his madrigals, including his setting of Sfogava con le stelle, whose musical language reaches into the realm of opera. We will also perform his masterwork Lauda Jerusalem, Domine for double choir. In his time in Mantua, Monteverdi was employed by the long-reigning Gonzaga family. The Gonzaga court had an excellent orchestra, which Monteverdi conducted. One of the ensemble’s members was the Jewish violinist and composer Salamone Rossi (1570-1630.) Rossi wrote music for viol ensemble for his Christian employer, and also wrote liturgical music for the synagogue in Mantua’s Jewish ghetto. Additionally, he wrote beautiful madrigals; we performed three of these in this 6 concert, including Rossi’s setting of Sfogava con le stelle.
London: Over in London, the writing of madrigals was equally popular, and the composer Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) led the pack with his famous The Silver Swan. Gibbons wrote volumes of music for the virginal, and in this was in the good company of William Byrd (1539/40-1623). Byrd had become infamous for becoming a Catholic in the midst of the Anglican court of Elizabeth I. However, because she loved his music, the Virgin Queen overlooked his religious affiliations and allowed him to pursue his art undisturbed. Our concert included a performance of his incredible settings of the texts Ne irascaris Domine and Civitas sancti tui.
The CRSP Players: The Players are quickly becoming audience favourites. Recorder player John van Leeuwen was joined by violinist Andrea Neumann and cellist Joan Kent in some trios by Rossi and by Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643). Also, Joan Kent led CRSP’s brand-new viol consort, Vox Lyricum, in its very first public performance as a part of this event.
CRSP Presents • A Celebration of Jewish Music
June 19, 2018 @ 7:30 pm
Guest Choirs: Los Angeles Zimriyah Chorale, Spiritus Chamber Choir
St. Stephen’s Anglican Church (1121 – 14 Avenue SW, Calgary)
The Calgary Renaissance Singers & Players are very proud to have hosted this choral collaboration with Los Angeles Zimriyah Chorale and Calgary’s Spiritus Chamber Choir. All three ensembles presented “A Celebration of Jewish Choral Music” in the beautiful 1,500-seat sanctuary of Beth Tzedec Conservative Congregation in Calgary. CRSP thanks the congregation of Beth Tzedec for their generous sponsorship of this exciting cultural event in the life of our city.
This concert featured the Internationally-renowned Los Angeles Zimriyah Chorale which gave its first-ever Canadian performance! LAZC was founded in 1997 as an ensemble whose primary focus is to lift up music on Jewish texts and by Jewish composers, specifically those from southern California. LAZC’s Artistic Director, Dr. Nick Strimple, is a recognized expert on Jewish music related to the Holocaust. He has lectured on the topic at universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, and Yale, as well as at the Oregon Bach Festival. LAZC presented many songs, much of which has never been performed in Canada.
LAZC was joined in this concert by Dr. Timothy Shantz and Spiritus Chamber Choir, who performed Srul Irving Glick’s magnificent “Sing to the Lord a New Song”, accompanied by harp.
And Calgary Renaissance Singers & Players contributed music by the Jewish Italian Renaissance composer Salamone Rossi (1570-1630) and Srul Iving Glick as well.
Beth Tzedec’s Cantor Russell Jayne gave a fantastic solo performance, performing music from the Sephardic cantorial tradition.
The evening came to a magnificent end with all three choirs onstage — one hundred voices singing Louis Lewandowksi’s Hal’luya: Psalm 150 – a powerful and moving end to such a momentous event!
Concert Review
by
Penney Kome
While most Christian congregations have choirs, very few Jewish congregations do. History books say the first official Jewish choirs were founded only about 150 – 200 years ago, although Judaism dates back almost 4000 years. Two centuries on, Jewish choirs are still rare. Still, a few are flourishing.
Take the Los Angeles Zimriyah Chorale (LAZC), which performed in Calgary on June 19th – for the first time ever in Canada. Founded in 1997 and directed from the start by Dr Nick Strimple, the 40-singer chorale celebrates all manner of Jewish music, from the earliest Haleluyas, to sonnets and scripture set to music, to playful theatre songs from George and Ira Gershwin.
Nick Strimple, like earlier composers, composes liturgical-style music with Jewish sentiments and Hebrew Bible lyrics. Most of Zimriyah’s song lyrics focussed on daily blessings such as “Come Eat Your Bread,” or, “Behold how good and how pleasing [it is] when people come together,” the English version of Hine Ma Tov. Soloists (including one Cantor) brought their fine voices and big voices to lead choral responses.
Jewish congregations do sing, said Cantor Russ (Russell Jayne, of Calgary’s Beth Tzedec Conservative Congregation). The Cantor offers every prayer in song, and congregation members are encouraged to harmonize in their responses to the Cantor’s prayers. “We pray in song to perform a mitzah, a blessing” he explained, “by performing a commandment in the most beautiful way possible.”
The music for each service is based on “nusach,” he said. “Musical scales are unique to the specific occasion, weekday, Sabbath, festival or specific holiday.” They are also often minor scales, the sharp and flat notes played on the black piano keys, which tend to sound sad – or wild, as in Klezmer music. That’s where harmony comes in.
Jewish composers build choral pieces the same way that Bach and Beethoven built their music, Cantor Russ said. “They took the traditional melodies and expanded on them, harmonized them.” Sometimes choirs sing in unison, sometimes in three- and four-part harmony, sometimes one voice sings against others.
Zimriyah appeared in Calgary because Calgary Renaissance Singers and Players (CRSP) joined forces with Cantor Russ and the award-winning Spiritus Chamber Choir, directed by Timothy Shantz, to produce a moving, meaningful evening of choral music by Jewish composers, supported by generous congregational donations.
CRSP, the Renaissance Singers, led off the program, resplendent in burgundy and white Renaissance costumes. Since this is their second celebration of Jewish composers in two years, they sang three Hebrew songs from their repertoire including a Renaissance piece by Salamone Rossi and a contemporary piece by Srul Irving Glick, accompanied by Cantor Russ on the final piece.
Spiritus Chamber Choir offered a magnificent four-part piece by Srul Irving Glick, “Sing Unto the Lord a New Song.” They were accompanied by harpist Scott Ross-Molyneaux. Joy illuminated the “Sing Unto the Lord” sections, while I heard a lot of minor key notes in the “Let Our Enemies Be As Chaff” section, making it deliberately jarring and eerie, as befitting dealing with enemies.
Zimriyah’s appearance featured choral works by composers such as Arnold Schoenberg, Samuel Adler, and Max Janowski. Most lyrics drew on prayers or scripture for their inspiration. The choir threw in a humorous George and Ira Gershwin number called The Jolly Tar and The Milkmaid. For the finale, all three choirs – more than 100 singers – gathered onstage to sing a mid-19th century “Halleluyah.”
Penney KomeCanadian writer, award-winning journalist and author,having published six books with well-known publishers as well as
countless columns and feature articles for Canadian periodicals.