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A Roaring Great Tour!

Founded by Diane Loomer in 1992, Vancouver’s “Chor Leoni” (Choir of Lions) has become an internationally respected men’s choir. It was therefore a tremendous privilege to be welcomed into the pride for their recent trip to the Czech Republic. You may know that I recently founded a men’s choir in Calgary called “SuperSonic.” As such, this tour was a golden opportunity for me to get first hand experience of how an established, successful men’s choir operates.

Chor Leoni spent the first week of the tour participating in the Second Annual International Festival of Men’s and Boys’ Choirs in Hradec Kralove (the original festival took place in 2004). Hradec Kralove is a lovely town in Bohemia, about 90 minutes east of Prague. The historic town centre has two excellent performance venues in St. Mary’s Church and Holy Spirit Cathedral, plus the local symphonic hall nearby on the banks of the River Elbe (which they call the Labe). Like the first festival, this one was hosted and organized by “Boni Pueri” (the Czech national Boys Choir, co-directed by Pavel Horak and Jakub Martinec) and the Amabile Men’s and Boys’ Choirs of London Ontario (directed by Carol Beynon and Ken Fleet). These organizations delivered a high-calibre, non-competitive festival experience with such guest conductors as Robert Sund (Orphei Drängar), James Litton (American Boychoir), Jaroslav Krcek (Musica Bohemica), Diane Loomer and Pavel Horak. Participating choirs came from Canada, USA, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Estonia, plus guest ensemble, “Amarcord,” from Leipzig, Germany. The festival culminated in a grand finale performance in Prague’s famed Dvorak Hall, which was recorded for international broadcast and a live webcast.

The festival provided opportunities for Chor Leoni to showcase its own talents, add maturity to the massed ensemble sound, mentor the younger men and encourage the trebles. Excusing ourselves from the festival on July 1st, Chor Leoni brought class and occasion to Canada Day celebrations at the Canadian Embassy in Prague, where we sang Diane’s male choir arrangements of the Canadian and Czech national anthems (the latter drawing high praise from nationals who were moved by this effective new version of their beloved anthem).

After the festival, Chor Leoni went on to give highly successful concerts in Cesky Krumlov (a UNESCO world heritage cite) and Teplice, plus unscheduled “guerilla performances” at the Frauenkirche and Kreuzkirche in Dresden. We also visited Karlovy Vary (formerly Carlsbad), a hilltop castle in Kuneticka Hora and the bizarre ossuary in Sedlec – a church that was “decorated” during the 18th Century with the bones of 40,000 people exhumed from the too-small graveyard.

This was Chor Leoni’s first international tour. It went very smoothly, was an enjoyable, unifying experience and they were very well received abroad. There is sincerity and joy in Chor Leoni’s performances, so it is not suprising that this choir has a real gift for connecting emotionally with audiences. We took in lots of historic sights, not to mention lots of meat, cheese, dumplings, pastries and many a draught of that glorious, golden Czech elixir known as Pivo (the Czech Republic is proud to be the nation with the highest-per-capita-consumption of beer in the world)… good times!

I found Chor Leoni to be a warm, welcoming community, strongly unified in the pride of their musical identity. The singers range in age from university students to retired gents, but they are all exemplary team players and they love working with Diane. So much of the choir’s success can be attributed to Diane’s charismatic leadership and her passion for this ensemble. She has written many fine arrangements for the choir and commissioned numerous others from such talents as Larry Nickel, Ron Smail, Jonathan Quick, Miles Ramsay, Stephen Smith and Bruce Sled. Her expectations are high, and the guys willingly put in the work required to make the grade. Other successful parts of the model are a well-organized manager in David Carpenter and a zealous public relations representative in Bruce Hoffman (who is a founding member and a very fine tenor). Bruce and David have helped to put this choir on the map through excellent branding, marketing materials, a great website (chorleoni.org) and well-nurtured relationships with its supporters (we signed stacks of postcards to patrons back home while on this tour). Many other members give freely of their time and talents in the form of technical skills, music arranging, choreographic direction, costuming etc. The choir offers free voice lessons to its members with a staff voice instructor and provides excellent study materials in the form of translations, pronunciation guides and recordings. And Chor Leoni allows its members to continue their work with other SATB choirs by scheduling most of their performances outside the usual peak periods – e.g. their annual Remembrance Day concert and Summer Solstice shows with “Bard on the Beach.” They have good community outreach in a mentoring program called “PROMYS,” that gives high school singers the opportunity to sing with this world-class male ensemble. Diane has also founded a seniors’ choir, called “EnChor” which will allow the older lions to keep singing with Diane for many years to come. As for Diane, she will be stepping down from her co-direction of Elektra Women’s Choir at the end of the 2008-2009 season (which will thereafter be directed solely by Morna Edmundson), but she shows absolutely no sign of slowing down in her work with Chor Leoni.

Posted by Paul Grindley on July 30, 2008 at 8:12 AM
Filed in: Tour Diaries | Permanent Link