Chor Leoni and Arts Umbrella team up on folk-based Christmas music
Credit to Author: Shawn Conner| Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2019 19:05:49 +0000
Christmas with Chor Leoni: Angels Dance
When: Dec. 21 at 4 and 8 p.m. at the Orpheum Theatre
When: Dec. 22 at 3 p.m. at West Vancouver United Church
Tickets: from $20-45/students $10 at chorleoni.org
For part of its upcoming Christmas shows, Chor Leoni will be accompanied onstage by emerging artists from the Arts Umbrella Dance Company.
It’s not the first time the Vancouver choir has collaborated with dancers. In 2015, Chor Leoni musical director Erick Lichte invited Ballet B.C. to choreograph 20 minutes of music for some of its dancers.
“We were able to do that work on stage at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, with 60 men (in the choir) at the back of the QE stage and the dancers in front,” Lichte said. “That was such fun. When we lost our normal space for Christmas shows, St. Andrews-Wesley Church, and we ended up getting the Orpheum, my thought was, ‘We’ve got this amazing stage. What else can we put on it?’”
This time he approached Artemis Gordon, artistic director of Arts Umbrella’s dance program, about putting some of the academy’s dancers to work. “She jumped at the chance,” Lichte said. “We’ve had so much fun dreaming this up.”
Along with the 60-strong choir, the concerts feature Tina Chang on piano, Vivian Chen on harp, Ed Henderson on guitar, and Katie Rife on percussion. Twelve dancers will perform along to three pieces choreographed by three different choreographers; Livona Ellis, Lesley Telford, and the team of Brandon Lee Alley and Rachael Prince.
The choir will dedicate part of the show to the more traditional works, but with a Leoni twist, that its audience has come to expect. These selections include Hark, the Herald Angels Sing, as well as a doo-wop version of Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel and fresh arrangements of Jingle Bells and Silent Night.
Lichte says that the music he selected for the collaborative portions is folk-based. The selections include Malcolm Dalglish’s Star in the East; Carols and Lullabies: Christmas in the Southwest, a medley of music from Spain and Mexico; and Two Counting Carols, a commissioned piece from Chor Leoni composer-in-residence Zachary Wadsworth.
“These three pieces have their own folk flavour, but the dance is definitely contemporary ballet,” Lichte says. “You may hear Appalachian music, but you’re not necessarily going to see Appalachian dance. And I love how it’s all coming together. The dance adds another language to the pieces, and I’m excited to see how it is going to illuminate and elevate the emotions in ways that are not necessarily a part of those folk traditions.”
Speaking of traditions, does this kind of collaborative effort mark the future of the choir’s Christmas concerts? “I typically don’t look into my crystal ball for those sorts of things until after we’ve done it,” Lichte said with a chuckle. “I always want to see how the audience feels, how we feel about it.”
Asked about Chor Leoni’s audience, Lichte says they come from all over the Lower Mainland, as well as Vancouver Island and even the U.S. The collaboration with Arts Umbrella is an opportunity for both organizations to reach new ears and eyes.
“What I love about this is that our audience is going to experience these extraordinary dancers and incredible choreographers, and maybe they become fans of what Arts Umbrella is doing, and the people who come out for the Arts Umbrella dancers like what we do,” he said. “Vancouver is growing and changing so quickly, I like to as much as I can provide a wide variety of musical offerings and artistic collaborations so that we can always be reaching out and grow our audiences and bring more people into our world.”