NOVA VOCE NEWS
APRIL  2016
Hello to all of our musical friends, supporters, and audience members!

Have you looked out your window today?  Where we are the sun has been out and we can’t see any of that four letter word beginning with “s” that we’ve  had to put up with through the first part of Spring. We hope that wherever you live, the weather is looking brighter, too.   Join us welcoming back the sun, and long may it’s rays shine, uninterrupted, upon us! 

In the same way that bulbs are beginning to show their heads, the guys in the choir are starting to move again, and in this newsletter we’ll let you know about our upcoming performances on the road with a little preview of something special we’re just beginning to plan for this fall.  And, for those of you that weren’t able to make it out to our annual fund raiser in February (there were a lot of competing events that weekend) we’ve prepared a wee look back at that.  So, read on, Voce friends and family, and thanks for being there for us!
CONDUCTORS CORNER

Bryan Crocker,
Artistic Director
One of the nice things about being the artistic director of Nova Voce is the ability to conduct commissioned works from time to time.  This season, Nova Voce has been fortunate to commission and receive four new pieces from Canadian composers/arrangers.
 
After our tour of the US Mid-Atlantic states last summer, we realized that, while we had plenty of established folk songs in our repertoire, we did not have a TTBB (Tenor, Tenor, Baritone, Bass) arrangement of The Nova Scotia Song. To remedy that we commissioned one of Nova Scotia's own most renowned arrangers, Scott MacMillan, and he has delivered a rollicking version featuring two soloists, full choruses and an intense piano accompaniment.  

We also were fortunate to commission Jeff Enns from Emira, Ontario, one of Canada's finest choral composers, to create music for three poems by Henry Aldrich, Ogden Nash, and Sir Charles Roberts.  The resulting pieces A Catch, Morning Prayer, and Ice are diverse, fun and beautifully set for TTBB choir and piano.  This year we have also resurrected Hymn to Freedom by Oscar Peterson (a previous commission by Ryan Billington).  We look forward to presenting all the new pieces throughout our remaining concerts and into the future. 
LOOKING AHEAD - UPCOMING EVENTS


Another concert season has almost finished but the men of Nova Voce are still on the move with places to go and people to meet. We have three concerts left in our season and, following our goal of bringing male chorale singing to communities across the province, two of the three concerts are in new venues for us.  

On Saturday, the 30th of April at 7:30 pm we will be performing at Knox United Church, 567 Sackville Drive in Lower Sackville. Tickets for this concert are available  at    the   door,  through  choir     members,   online through Snapd Halifax, or from Bookmark on Spring Garden Rd.
On Sunday, May 29th at 3:00 pm we celebrate Springtime in Springhill at St Andrews Wesley United Church, 86 Main St., Springhill NS. Tickets for this concert are available at the door, at Guardian Drugs and Springhill Pharmasave, from choir members or by emailing tickets@novavoce.com .  

Regular ticket prices for both concerts are $15. Tickets for Students, Seniors and Veterans are $10.  

On Friday, July 8th, at 8 p.m. as part of  Music at the Three Churches   Nova Voce will be performing at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Mahone Bay.  Tickets may be purchased at the door of the church on the night of the performance or in advance at Kinburn Pharmasave (Mahone Bay), Shop on the Corner (Lunenburg) or Strings and Things (Bridgewater).  

We are excited to experience the new venues and to meet new audiences as well as reacquainting ourselves with old friends.  

The set lists for these performances are not yet finalized, but you can be sure that Bryan and company will have a diverse and entertaining repertoire with perhaps an odd surprise or two thrown in for your listening pleasure.
LOOKING BACK - WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO
FUNDRAISER
February past saw our annual fundraiser take place at Halifax’s ViaRail Station. Our evening was superbly and professionally hosted by Olga Melosevitch.  Working with our choir requires a specific set of skills ranging from public speaking to wrangling the members into position and putting up with the foibles of a slightly inadequate sound system, but she persevered throughout!    It’s a truly wonderful venue with great acoustics for Nova Voce’s music… a little hang time, a little echo, and a nice, full sound.   

The folks that joined us for the evening were entertained by the choir in a couple of sets, treated to finger foods and local wines, and even got to hear a new quartet arrangement by our Director Emeritus, Terry Hurrell, of “Stars” from “Les Mis.” The evening was well, truly and appropriately finished when the audience joined in on Stan Rogers’ “Mary Ellen Carter” and one Nova Scotia’s best known tunes, “We Rise Again,” written by Sydney’s Leon Dubinsky and made famous by the Rankins, Rita MacNeil, and the Men of the Deeps.  

Here is a link to the Snapd Halifax article.

Thanks to all of you who attended – we raised over seven thousand dollars to support the choir!  Next year we’re thinking of changing up our fundraiser a little, so stay tuned as we work out the details later this fall. And….  

MARK YOUR CALENDARS! The men of Nova Voce are adding a new event to next year’s fall performance schedule.  We will be giving folks the opportunity to hear the choir and individuals from the choir perform in a less formal setting – you may hear soloists, duets, trios, quartets; instrumentals and maybe even get the chance to sing along as we host our first ever season opener / kitchen party / fun-raiser at the Mic Mac Aquatic Club on Dartmouth’s Lake Banook,  Friday night, September 30th. Stay tuned to the website and watch our upcoming newsletters for more details, but mark it in your calendars right away.
ANTIGONISH PERFORMING ARTS SERIES
On April 2nd, the choir was privileged to perform in Antigonish’s St. Ninian’s  Cathedral as part of the Antigonish Performing Arts Series.  The cathedral  is known as one of the best acoustical spaces in Canada, and certainly allowed Nova Voce to showcase the wide range of vocal expression Bryan was able to bring forth from the choir.  From the still, small voices of Morton Lauridsen’s Sure On This Shining Night to the choir in full voice (as loudly as beauty permits) of Z. Randall Stroope’s  Dies Irae, the acoustics were unsurpassed.   If you ever get a chance to attend a musical performance of any kind at St. Ninian’s, we encourage you to go.  It goes on our  list as one of Nova Voce’s favorite performance venues.
SINGING WITH OPERA NOVA SCOTIA
Early in April Nova Voce was pleased to be invited to participate in Opera Nova Scotia’s performance of Beethoven’s only opera, “Fidelio”. Beethoven is said not to have enjoyed the challenges posed by writing and producing an opera. In Otto Klemperer’s book “Klemperer on Music: Shavings from a Musician’s Workbench”, he quotes Beethoven, in a letter to Treitschke (one of Fidelio’s librettists)  saying, "I assure you, dear Treitschke, that this opera will win me a martyr's crown. You have by your co-operation saved what is best from the shipwreck. For all this I shall be eternally grateful to you.”  

For most of the men of the choir, performing as part of an opera was a new experience, but with the able coaching of our own bass, Jeff Egger, the German lyrics were soon trippingly falling off our tongues… or at least we were able to get through the  phonics required!  Friday   night’s
rehearsal    found     Dr.  Walter Kemp

putting the “prisoners” through their vocal paces as he worked on tempo and dynamics and the members of the Walter Kemp Singers joined us as we worked through the finale for the first time.   

The performance on Sunday afternoon in the Maritime Music Conservatory’s Lillian Piercey Concert Hall went off without a hitch, and Dr. Kemp surrendered the conductor’s baton to  Bryan Crocker for Nova Voce’s performance of the “Prisoner’s Chorus,” an ode to freedom from political prisoners.  We hope our audience enjoyed the performance as much as we enjoyed performing. 
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