CFN – The combined voices of Cornwall’s CHORUS NOVUS and York Region’s Cantabile Chorale will present In Flanders Fields, a concert observing Remembrance Day with music and song. Internationally recognized soprano Stefanie True will join the 60-voice choir in a performance of Howard Goodall’s requiem, Eternal Light. The concert will be held at 7:30pm on Saturday, November 10th, Trinity Anglican Church, Cornwall.
Guest soloist Stefanie True, who grew up in St. Andrew’s West, now performs extensively throughout Europe, the Americas and the Far East, appearing in operas, oratorios and solo recitals. Last year, she placed first in the prestigious London (UK) Handel Singing Competition. True, who now lives in the Netherlands, graduated from Cornwall Collegiate and Vocational School in 1999. Local audiences will remember her many performances with the CCVS Vocal Ensemble, Glen Productions, Dream Maker Productions and the Celtic band Haggis.
True is delighted to sing for a hometown audience, for the very first time sharing a stage with her mother, CHORUS NOVUS member Renate True. Guest tenor Kevin Myers, from Montreal, and CHORUS NOVUS’s own Joseph Ianni (baritone) will perform the men’s solos.
The concert program was designed to remember the grief and loss associated with war while at the same time providing solace and hope to the living. Howard Goodall’s Eternal Light Requiem, released on the 90th anniversary of the end of the WWII, will open the concert. In this modern choral work, the traditional Latin requiem text has been stripped down to a handful of resonant phrases. Poetry, both sacred and secular, has been set to music to reflect on requiem concepts such as peace, everlasting light, grief, comfort and faith in an afterlife. Canadian John McCrae’s haunting war poem, In Flanders Fields, provides a centerpiece for the composition.
The concert will close with an encore performance of several movements from Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man – A Mass for Peace. This major work, dedicated to the victims of the Kosovo crisis, was very well received when CHORUS NOVUS first performed it in 2010.
In Flanders Fields is the second concert in a choral exchange with the Cantabile Chorale of York Region, a 40-voice choir that has toured extensively both in Canada and Europe. CHORUS NOVUS will travel to Thornhill for the first performance, on November 3rd. The Cornwall performance will be conducted by Brian Hubelit and accompanied by an orchestral ensemble.
This concert is sponsored by Scotiabank. Tickets, $15 are available from Scotiabank at the Brookdale Centre, Monday to Wednesday between 9:30am and 4:00pm, Thursday and Friday from 9:30am to 7:00pm. They will also be available at the door. The concert is free for those 16 years and under.
CHORUS NOVUS is a Cornwall-based ecumenical choir that performs traditional and modern sacred music, under the direction of Brian Hubelit.
