Alexander Cann will see his fifteenth season main Hamilton’s Bach Elgar Choir as their Inventive Director throughout 2024/25 — the 119th season for the choir itself. They’ll be opening with a presentation of Handel’s Alexander’s Feast, a hardly ever carried out work, on November 23.
It’s in step with Cann’s imaginative method to season programming, which has included Canadian folksongs, music from WWI, and different intriguing themes, together with the choir’s conventional focus.
LvT spoke to Cann about Alexander’s Feast, and main a Hamilton establishment.
Inventive Director Alexander Cann
Alexander Cann started finding out music formally on the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, adopted by an undergraduate diploma from McMaster College (B.A.).
He was nonetheless 19, and in his second yr at McMaster, when his piano taking part in began to draw consideration. Alexander was requested to function musical director for a campus manufacturing of A Little Night time Music by Sondheim, and it labored out so properly, it led to 2 extra reveals whereas he was nonetheless at college. He gained conducting expertise with the McMaster College Choir.
After McMaster, he accomplished an M.Mus. diploma at McGill College, the place he continued to review conducting. After finishing his research in Montreal, he went on to carry positions on the Shaw Pageant, and with Tapestry Opera, amongst others, earlier than touchdown at Bach Elgar.
As we speak, together with main the Bach Elgar Choir, he additionally serves as Director of Music with Melrose United Church in Hamilton.
The Bach Elgar Choir: A Transient Historical past
The ensemble was based underneath the identify The Elgar Choir in 1905 by Bruce Carey, who led the group till 1922. Carey, a baritone and instructor in addition to a conductor, studied in London, Munich and Florence, and have become a choirmaster at a sequence of Hamilton church buildings earlier than founding the choir.
The choir noticed early success, and had a repute for performing excellence. After the Second World Battle, in 1946, the choir merged wth the Bach Choir to develop into the group as it’s identified at the moment.
Together with Bach and Elgar, underneath Cann, the group has included a give attention to the main works of Mozart to its common programming. The venerable group usually groups up with the Hamilton Philharmonic in its live performance displays.
Alexander Cann: The Interview
What’s it like main an establishment that’s anchored the choral neighborhood within the metropolis for therefore lengthy? “I might say, it definitely enters into our self picture, as a result of Hamiltonians remind us about it,” says Cann. The choir is definitely well-known within the metropolis and area. “We’re a live performance choir and we’ve that historical past on the town.”
He mentions the group’s continuity locally, with a tech who’s a grand niece of one of many choir’s unique members, and choir members whose grandparents additionally sang in Bach Elgar.
“It’s acquired a singular through-line presence.”
As he factors out, when it was shaped, it was one among solely two live performance choirs in all the area, the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir having been shaped in 1894.
“Traditionally, it’s fairly in contrast to different choirs on the time,” he says. The choir discovered prepared audiences all through the world and past, and toured frequently in its early many years all through the area, together with the US. “Their first concert events have been within the winter — February solely,” Alexander says, “hoop skirts and all. The photographs are implausible. We care about our historical past and we learn our historical past.”
Often that respect for his or her historical past informs his programming, as in a current live performance the place the choir carried out the primary piece they’d ever sung in public, and an early fee by composer Nathaniel Dett from 1917 that they’ve carried out a number of instances in recent times.
“We’re linked to our historical past.”
Handel: Alexander’s Feast
The November live performance stands out as the first time Alexander’s Feast has been introduced within the space. “I don’t assume it’s ever been introduced round right here,” Cann says.
A musical ode set to a libretto by Newburgh Hamilton, Alexander’s Feast (HWV 75), was written to rejoice Saint Cecilia’s Day (historically November 22). Saint Cecilia was a virgin martyr of the early church, and he or she is the patron saint of music.
Handel composed the work in 1736, and it premiered at London’s Covent Backyard in February of that yr. Alexander’s Feast units a scene between Alexander the Nice and his mistress Thaïs, who’ve a feast within the metropolis of Persepolis, a metropolis he’d captured. Timotheus, a musician, sings and performs the lyre, and evokes numerous feelings in Alexander till they rise to a boiling level, and he resolves to burn town down in revenge for his Greek comrades fallen within the battle.
The piece was so profitable that it inspired Handel to make the change from Italian operas to English choral works — a choice that will cement his place in Western music historical past.
As the primary such work of Handel’s, nonetheless, it’s usually ignored by presenters and programmers in favour of the oratorios and different later works he would develop into well-known for.
“The factor about Alexander’s Feast is that it’s proper in that first […] sequence of works — St. Matthew’s Ardour by Bach 1727, Handel’s in 1736,” Cann factors out. “It’s type of the primary actually grand scale orchestral works.”
Alexander’s Feast is the outlier as a secular work, one which was meant as a live performance piece. “There wasn’t something earlier than that that might actually be known as a live performance piece for orchestra and choir,” he feedback.
The unique story of Alexander’s feast incorporates a political subplot about problems with its time, some 4 many years earlier than Handel set music to it. “There may be implicit in Alexander’s Feast a political subplot,” Cann notes. “Handel takes the story and eliminates the political overtones. The political insinuations are to a sure extent washed away.”
Handel’s work turned extra related to a renewed sense of British nationalism. It was additionally, regardless of the notion of Saint Cecilia, a public and secular celebration. “It’s the start of secular arts.”
As we speak’s viewers members can admire a chunk with a wide range of temper that vary type like to rage to pity.
The Bach Elgar Choir 2024/25 Season
The remainder of their season contains Handel’s Messiah in December with conductor James S. Kahane and the Hamilton Philharmonic.
“It’s fascinating doing the Messiah after Alexander’s Feast,” Cann notes. “You see the place stuff is coming from,” he notes. The composer’s improvement in the way in which he makes use of the voices of the choir, and different parts, distinction from the sooner to the later work.
Their first live performance of 2025 is titled The Trial of Gilbert & Sullivan, together with a staged model of the long-lasting duo’s comedian masterpiece, Trial By Jury, on its one hundred and fiftieth anniversary. It builds on a Gilbert & Sullivan present the choir carried out again in 2018. “It was such nice enjoyable, I believed, we are able to take this to the following step.”
It’s additionally preferrred repertoire for a non-professional choir, which can have issue attaining the composer’s intentions relating to difficult opera choruses. “They wrote it for bel canto singers,” he factors out. Operetta gives a mixture of extra and fewer difficult components.
Martin and Brahms, over two nights, closes the season on Could 31 and June 1, that includes Frank Martin’s a cappella Mass for Double Choir, and Brahms’ Ziegeunerlieder.
“Frank Martin’s piece is tough and difficult,” he says. “The choristers must know their onions. It requires a assured musical refrain. I programmed it as a result of I believed the choir was prepared.”
The piece is a continuation of French works the choir has been constructing into its repertoire over the previous few years. It’s an initiative that was first sparked by the burning of the cathedral of Notre Dame in 2019, however has taken on a lifetime of its personal. “It connects over the seasons.”
He factors out that the HPO’s new conductor, James S. Kahane, can be French by beginning, and has an curiosity in French repertoire. Engaged on items in a multi-year mode helps develop the choir’s abilities and familiarity with particular person types. “I like to do this,” he says.
Alexander’s Feast: Live performance Particulars
The Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra will accompany the Bach Elgar Choir.
“They’re crackerjack,” Cann says. “It’s one other stage of professionalism.”
Soloists embrace Bethany Hörst (soprano), Owen McCausland (tenor), and Chris Palmer (baritone).
He notes that soprano Bethany Hörst is on the school on the College of Western Ontario. “She’s grown right into a assured artist,” he says. He additionally factors out that tenor Owen McCauslin is in demand everywhere in the world.
“It’s fairly cool working with artists of that calibre.”
Baritone Chris Palmer can be a jazz guitarist, and an alumnus of Bach Elgar. “He has develop into a really glorious classical baritone,” Alexander says.
“I’m actually pleased with that forged.”
- Discover extra particulars and tickets for the efficiency, and take a look at the remainder of the 2024/25 season, [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is a Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. She is an skilled freelance author, blogger and writing teacher.
