Chamber music comes to the West End
Credit to Author: Aleesha Harris| Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2020 19:04:25 +0000
Within Vancouver’s diverse classical scene, chamber music maintains a vigorous presence. Friends of Chamber Music and the Vancouver Recital Society regularly bring in top ensembles for local dates; and there are many independent grassroots programs.
Some, like Vetta Chamber Music, started out in a particular area or venue while others, like West Coast Chamber Music — whose latest series starts Sunday at the Unitarian Church of Vancouver — offer events at specific times of the year.
And every season brings new possibilities. A new endeavour started up this fall, a West End-based series called Beethoven and Beyond — four chamber concerts celebrating Beethoven Year given at St. Paul’s Anglican Church.
Built in 1905, St. Paul’s is one of Vancouver’s heritage spaces. The attractive Victorian building features frequently in locally-shot movies and television series as a stereotypical village church on the British model, and the administration sees itself as very connected to the West End community.
Spearheading the Beethoven and Beyond initiative is James Roberts, a Vancouver native with long family ties to St. Paul’s. Work took him to Montreal, where he served as Director of Distribution and Market Development for the National Film Board, and then in 2015 he “retired” back home and began to seriously reconnect with music making.
“I attended the Anglican cathedral in Montreal, sang in the choir, and got involved in the music committee under the late Patrick Webb,” Roberts explains.
A series of fortuitous connections ensued. Roberts’s instrument is the French horn; he had some lessons with noted local horn player Steve Denroche, then decided to finish off an applied music degree at Vancouver Community College. Roberts’s husband began his own engagement with St. Paul’s as an associate priest.
French horn player James Roberts is spearheading Beethoven and Beyond — four chamber concerts celebrating Beethoven Year — at St. Paul’s Anglican Church. Photo: Adriane Lake.
Given Robert’s music connections — and a degree requirement for a major music project — he, Denroche, and the latter’s violinist wife Nancy DiNovo came up with a scheme.
“Steve and Nancy had been looking for a venue for a modest chamber music series. St. Paul’s is a smallish church, so there are certain financial risks, thus a series of only four concerts. Nancy came up with the idea of Beethoven as the keystone of every concert.”
Roberts is well aware of St. Paul’s long musical tradition. It is home to what is reputed to be the first Casavant Frères organ installed west of the Rockies, and various community music groups use the space for regular performances. But was a chamber series of its own perhaps just a tad ambitious?
Were it a separate municipality, the West End/Yaletown area would be right in the middle of the hundred most populated centres in Canada and all those potential listeners are within walking distance of St. Paul’s. Roberts did the math, discovered that the West End’s demographic is younger than many realize as almost half of residents are between the ages of 29 and 40.
“Only about 15 per cent of the West End population is retired, and the average income is lower than in many other neighbourhoods,” Roberts points out. “So we decided on admission by donation.”
Roberts convinced his church council that the scheme was viable as professional musicians would receive professional fees for their work, with an expectation that the series would at least break even. Happily, the first concert last fall did significantly better than that and the Sunday matinee concerts are attracting solid support.
Two concerts remain for this spring, a March 8 program will be anchored by a Beethoven string quartet, and the grand finale concert on May 24 is all Beethoven, with sonatas for horn and for violin, plus another quartet.
Next season will have a different theme, but the intrinsic structure will remain.
“The Beethoven focus will give way to more varied concerts, possibly including some early music. I do want to bring back organ recitals, and mount a student concert of some kind.”