That Choir
Choir really was my gateway drug into the theatre. When I was seven years old I joined the Sacred Heart School Choir led by Diane Ashworth and I fell in love with choral singing. I remained in the choir there until I graduated. As an adult, though, it is rare that I get the opportunity to see a choral show, so when I heard that Toronto’s That Choir conducted by Newfoundlander Craig Pike was doing an East Coast tour with a stop in Halifax I jumped at the chance to go.
That Choir was founded by Pike in 2008, and it brought together sixteen professional singers who are “passionate about artistic excellence, meaningful storytelling, and connecting with audiences through the human voice.” The performance that I saw in Halifax at St. Andrew’s United Church was all a cappella, which is such an incredibly impressive and immersive experience because you really can hear the crispness and specificity of the harmonies. I found that I was struck by how the pieces oscillated from more disparate staccato notes overlapping, like what we might associate with “Carol of the Bells,” and then ones where the harmonies were dense layers, like a lasagne wall of sound, and the absence of accompaniment really accentuates both to gorgeous effect. They also make the whole thing look effortless when, obviously, this takes an incredible amount of skill, and a meticulously tuned ear to find your notes and stay not just on pitch, but in such specific sync with the others singing the same part as you. I was also so impressed with the perpetually precise endings of notes.
I wasn’t sure what type of music to expect at the show- would it be more traditional choral music or more contemporary, and we were treated to a lot of pieces that I was hearing for the first time, from composers like Eric Whitacre, that I was unfamiliar with. Whitacre is a contemporary composer, he was born in 1970, but his piece “Sleep” doesn’t sound like it is from any one particular decade- it has a real timelessness to it.
Craig Pike introduces each number, sometimes by reading the lyrics, which may be difficult to decipher from the piece alone, but he also highlights themes from the lyrics that are pertinent to the way the music is working. He also encouraged the large audience to meet others that they were sitting beside, and created a real communal feeling in the room. At first I thought “Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Jake Runestad must be taken from the poem by Maya Angelou, but its source material is actually even older- “Sympathy”(1899) by Paul Laurence Dunbar who Angelou took that line from for her own work. The piece by Runestad has a lot of allusions in it to birds- it begins more eerie and mournful, and then accelerates evoking the panicked movements of a caged bird- and then adding a trilling from the sopranos.
Pike invited us to think about the grief of a parent losing their child, as Mary witnessed her son die on the cross, to inform the way we heard “Ave Verum Corpus.” Sometimes with religious pieces especially I can become complacent about what the lyrics mean and focus just on the music, but it can give you a heightened experience to root the story more in the human experience beyond the biblical.
The performance featured a number of soloists, all of whom did a beautiful job. In some cases the soloists sang the melody lines of more well known songs such as “Carrickfergus” arranged by Joshua Pacey, Jann Arden’s “Good Mother,” arranged by Blake Morgan, and “Danny Boy,” also arranged by Joshua Pacey. All three of these are gorgeous arrangements, but I especially liked the way “Good Mother” both retained all that makes it such an iconic and beloved Canadian song, but slowed down to really milk all the harmonies for all they are worth. We sang arrangements of Jimmy Rankin’s “Fare Thee Well Love” and Leon Dubinsky’s “Rise Again” in choir, and there is something about hearing Canadian music as part of the choral tradition, alongside classical or religious music that cements it as being part of an international canon of excellence.
That Choir played to a packed house on an absolutely sweltering evening at St. Andrew’s United Church, a gorgeous space but it doesn’t have air conditioning, and the music largely transported me out of the heat. I was riveted, and felt in communion with the others experiencing the performance with me in a way that I don’t usually experience at the theatre. It made me want to seek out choral performances more often. If you have the opportunity to see That Choir in your area I would definitely grab it.
For more information about That Choir and to keep up to date with their future performances please visit this website.
