Blog: News and Views

PROMYS Makes the Vancouver Sun

Young 'lions' add their voices to choir's tribute

Founder's mentoring program gives teens a chance to expand horizons
David Gordon Duke, Special to The Sun - Posted thanks to the kind permission of David Duke.
Published: Thursday, November 08, 2007

For the average young man, choral singing doesn't even make it onto the coolness scale. Problem is, there are lots of guys out there who like to sing.

Chor Leoni, Vancouver's award-winning all-male choir, is well aware of this fact -- and decided to do something about it. Chor Leoni founder Diane Loomer came up with Promys (PROgram for Mentoring Young Singers). She asked a number of colleagues teaching high school if there were any budding tenors, baritones and basses who would like a chance to rehearse and sing with "the lions."

 

Members of Chor Leoni's PROgram for Mentoring Young Singers flank choir founder Diane Loomer, including Buddy Bailey (from left), Jason Costa, Edmund Natividad, Sky Kao, Keith Sinclair, Rober Mackin-Lang and Harry Ahn, who will join the Remembrance Day weekend performances.

For this third year of the program, seven singers from the Lower Mainland, all between the ages of 15 and 19, have attended rehearsals and will take part in Chor Leoni's extremely popular Remembrance Day shows.

Buddy Bailey is a typical participant. A Grade 12 student at Windermere secondary in Vancouver's east side, he sings with no less than four groups. But working with "the lions" is something extra special -- being able to let loose with sound has been particularly liberating. Then there are the high quality rehearsals, plus the unusual repertoire.

Loomer described the program as a pragmatic, grassroots project. It may recruit new singers for her choir; it may not. Several past Promys grads have become members of Chor Leoni; some sing with other groups.

Some have gone on to advanced musical training; for others, singing remains a hobby.

It's all good, a way to enrich the community by helping young singers at a particularly vulnerable moment in their development. There is no charge to join; the organization underwrites the music and concert-related transportation costs and meals. And the results have been splendid.

Hope, Chor Leoni's 15th annual Remembrance Day concert, runs Saturday and Sunday. As is customary, there's an eclectic mix of repertoire. Loomer is particularly enthusiastic about a new work from Bob Chilcott, a co-commission with a Swedish men's choir. Loomer specifically wanted a piece to showcase the sound and the sensibility of men's choirs; Chilcott's setting of poet Edwin Brock's Five Ways to Kill a Man is a work with a decided social consciousness -- just the sort of piece that's become traditional for a Chor Leoni Remembrance Day program.

There will also be classic repertoire by Beethoven and Bruckner, and, as a particularly appropriate finale, When the Day is Over by Canadian poet and composer Susan Crowe.

Recognizing that demand for tickets always outstrips the available seats, the choir will make 150 chancel seats behind the choir available at Christ Church on a rush ticket basis.

- - -

AT A GLANCE
Hope
Saturday, 7:30 p.m., Christ Church Cathedral (Burrard and Georgia) Vancouver
Sunday, 3 p.m., West Vancouver United Church (2062 Esquimalt Street) West Vancouver

Posted by bruce on November 8, 2007 at 5:05 PM
Filed in: Performances; PROMYS | Permanent Link