Featuring 8 world premieres of choral music from local Edmonton composers, join Pro Coro on a choral journey following a new work from inception to performance. This features several components including behind-the-scenes insights from our composers, individual practise tracks and instructional videos from our singers, and virtual performances featuring Pro Coro quartets. The Canadian Voices-Edmonton edition is available to our choral community at no cost!
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In discussion with community choral leaders during the early stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic, we discovered a need in our choral community for repertoire and support material for online rehearsals. If choirs are practising these days, it may be happening in an online forum - this is a very challenging environment which depends on so many technological, human and musical pieces playing well together.
Our goal was to create an initiative to:
Provide work for local composers and poets impacted by COVID-19 cancelations by commissioning new choral works
Stimulate learning opportunities for community singers in isolated environments to practise and discover alongside Edmonton’s professional choir
Create a collaborative virtual performance environment for community singers to sing with Pro Coro Canada
In the first edition of the project, Canadian Voices-Edmonton, we engaged the help of Edmonton choral leaders who provided anonymous votes nominating Edmonton choral composers for the project. We would like to thank Dr. Joy Berg, Eva Bostrand, Dr. Debra Carins, Dr. Laurier Fagnan, Heather Johnson, Scott Leithead, Dr. Brendan Lord, Russ Mann, Dr. Leonard Ratzlaf, Dr. Ardelle Ries, Dr. Timothy Shantz, and Dr. John Wiebe for their contributions to this community reflection process. In July, through the support of the Edmonton Arts Council, Pro Coro commissioned eight selected composers to write new choral works for four voices:
Canadian Voices - Edmonton Composers
Stuart Beatch
Jane Berry
John Estacio
Allan Gilliland
Laura Hawley
Margaret King
Jennifer MacMillan
Sherryl Sewepagaham
These composers were tasked with writing music which could be readily sung by a single singer in an isolated environment, aided by virtual accompaniment from the other parts, and later combined in a quartet or larger ensemble as group singing becomes possible again. The singers of Pro Coro met in August 2020 for the first time since the cancellation of the 19/20 season to record and film performances of each new work along with individual practise videos for each voice part.
Journey inside the process of composing choral works alongside our Canadian Voices Composers