Blog: News and Views
Flashback to Tuesday Aug 14
The Lions have been flitting from place to place the last few days, from Québec City to Ottawa to Stratford. I haven't been able to just sit and finish this entry until now. - but cast your mind back to Tuesday, August 14....
I decided that a morning without rehearsals or concerts, following a long afternoon and evening of free time, really highlights the individual lions' personalities. From broad sightseeing, to relentless shopping, to significant repayments on sleep debts - everyone seemed to use the time differently. I do know that multiple people awoke before 8 am, and multiple people awoke later than 2 pm!
About ten of us met the bus at 10:30 am to tour the Basilica de Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, which first opened in 1876 but was rebuilt in art deco style after the original building was destroyed in a 1922 fire. Racks of crutches and similar devices bolster the basilica's claims of being able to heal the faithful. Unfortunately, after the pleasant tour, an accident on the highway caused the return trip to last two hours.
We rehearsed in our venue for that evening, the Cathédrale Anglicane de la Sainte-Trinité, from 3:30 to 5:30 pm. A couple dozen people stopped by to sit and listen for various amounts of time (and we weren't shy about inviting them to bring their friends back later that evening!). The cathedral is in the "old city" part of Québec, conveniently about a ten minute walk from the hotel. Most of the singers weren't yet dressed for the concert (today's attire: black button-down shirts and slacks), but we had an hour and a half to find dinner and change and return to the venue.
By the start of the admission-by-donation concert at 7:30, the cathedral was basically full! (The very sides and the balcony weren't, but the sound quality would have been poor on the sides due to low ceiling, and we started the concert singing the first three songs from the balcony, so all the good seats were full.) We performed the following pieces:
- O Canada
- Ave, Maris Stella
- Immortal Bach (we got an extremely appreciative response, for the second concert in a row)
- Cantique de Jean Racine
- Psaume 121 (after another big wave of applause, Diane asked how many in the audience were choral singers - quite a few - so they know difficult material when they hear it!)
- Spaseniye sodelal
- Loch Lomond
- Incantatio maris aestuosi
- Jing-ga-lye-ya ("I'll meet them at the end", Diane predicted mischievously)
- The Mary Ellen Carter
- Early Mornin' Rain
- The Black Fly Song
- The Field Behind the Plow
- Sarah (with Jonathan addressing a cute 4-year-old to introduce the song ... we later found out she likes to sing opera in the bath!)
- Trinque l'amourette (thank you, gentlemen, for embracing the new and improved lightning-speed tempo)
- Make and Break Harbour
- Fogarty's Cove
- Rise Again
- first encore: Amazin' Grace (Ken and Steve were really jazzin' it up!)
- second encore: La Cucaracha
The concert lasted an hour and forty-five minutes in total! While our first concert was targeted towards avant-garde music, and the finale in Stratford will be all Canadiana, this evening's music line-up was typical of the tour's concerts - a juxtaposition of many Chor Leoni styles.
Often we split up into lots of small groups for the night-life-seeking portion of our tour days; but that night, about half the choir went together to the nearby St. Patrick's Pub, leaving about 1 am. And as the night ended with synchronized cartwheeling down rue St. Jean, so do we end this entry ... bonne nuit!
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Comments:
One really great comment I heard from an audience member that night was: "You have magic in your choir!" The lady who said that so simply and beautifully made the whole tour for me. Thank you!
Posted by: Russell | August 20, 2007 I 10:24 PM