TOGETHER AGAIN

Welcome back!

The Vancouver Chamber Choir was extremely fortunate to be able to navigate around most of the visible and submerged rocks thrown on our course by the pandemic during our 20/21 season. We managed to keep singing through the year and produced seven video concerts and one music video for our supporters both near and far. Although I am incredibly proud of and happy with our ability to sing masked and distanced, the past year is still best described in terms such as resilience and flexibility. While we had the joy of singing and the physical and emotional experience of performing wonderful choral music, during the past year, we became more and more aware of the thing we were missing: our audience. The buzz before a concert, the real-time reactions to the music, the discussions and smiles after the concert. Music is meant to be shared and experienced together!

Although this pandemic seems to have an endless ability to surprise us with bad news, we trust that this season will see us turning the corner and being able to sing for live audiences. Concert streams or recordings will be part of our offering, especially during the fall season, but the emphasis will hopefully be on experiencing the music together in the same physical space. The sensation of the music being performed here and now cannot be replicated in any other medium. I have grown to see a concert not as an event with an active party (the performers) and a passive audience; I see it rather as a community where the music (not to forget the poetry!) forges the performers’ and the audience members’ lives together for a fleeting moment. We all experience the art in our own ways and the meanings we give it vary greatly, but the very act of experiencing the music is shared. We need each other to give life and art its fullest meaning.

We have missed you – welcome back!

Kari Turunen
Artistic Director