Sing thanks to those who’ve come before to teach us harmony. A world of peace where differences can shape our unity. True friendship grows a Circle strong, for generations yet to come!
“Iesous ahatonnia,” Music arranged by Sarah Quartel, words by Andrée Levesque Sioui.
“It can sound beautiful but if audiences don’t feel something, then I haven’t done my job,” says Dr. Rachel Rensink-Hoff, professor of choral music at Brock University and director of Avanti Singers. “If they don’t feel something, then who cares?”
And what does she want them to feel? “Empathy.”
“I really spend a lot of time trying to create an experience for people,” says Rensink-Hoff. “I want them to have the experience of being immersed in sound, and it’s in such a beautiful acoustic that they can’t stop thinking about it and feeling it.” Thanks to a $2,500 Mini Grant from the Niagara Community Foundation, Avanti audiences have recently experienced more of what Canadian, female, Indigenous and BIPOC composers have to say.
The grant allowed the choir to expand its music library with a greater diversity of pieces: new music from living composers.
“I want the audience to feel empathy, I want them to question,” Rensink-Hoff said. “It sets you on a path of questioning and thinking ‘that was interesting.’ And if it provokes thought (about the artist or the idea or the music) that’s part of my quest.”
Buying or renting an individual copy of the sheet music for each of the 45 voices in a choir and performing dozens of pieces over the course of a choral season adds up to thousands of dollars a year. That’s why the grant was so important, allowing the choir to diversify its library and its audiences.
Mini Grant AVANTI SINGERS Music as a path to curiosity and empathy The traditional choral canon features works published in previous centuries by mostly white, male composers. For classically trained musicians and traditional audiences “the composers you hear again and again, what’s in your sensibility and what comes to mind, is still, predominantly, white composers,” Rensink-Hoff said.
The NCF grant allowed the choir to purchase several new pieces to add to its library, including “Mother Earth,” by Canadian composer Sherryl Sewepegaham, “The Lost Birds: An Extinction Elegy” by Christopher Tin (both performed at the First Ontario PAC’s Art in Action: Climate Festival) and “Iesous ahatonnia,” a new arrangement of the Huron Carol by Canadian composer Sarah Quartel, with a new text by Wendat poet Andrée Levesque Sioui.
The tune of the traditional Huron Carol is beautiful and beloved but the lyrics are problematic. The new text “which acknowledges the harm that has been done,” was powerful and dramatic. The impact on the audience and the singers was the same, which was Rensink- Hoff’s goal. They were moved by the music and they were prompted to think.