UBC Choirs were joined by the Vancouver Brass Orchestra last Sunday at the Chan Centre to ring in the holiday season with a colourful selection of choral and brass works.
The UBC University Singers and the UBC Choral Union opened the show alongside the Vancouver Brass Orchestra with a dazzling and booming performance of Isaac Watt’s “Joy to the World,” filling the auditorium with angelic sound.
The first third of the program, composed of performances from the University Singers, was led by Dr. Graeme Langager, UBC’s director of choral activities.
Under Langager, the University Singers delivered a journey through the story of Christmas beginning with “O Magnum Mysterium,” a chant that triumphs the majestic miracle of the holiday. The piece grew like a peaceful exhale and subsided into a pianissimo hum, voices echoing throughout the space mesmerizingly.
A leap forward in history led the ensemble to Cortland Hultberg’s arrangement of Robert Wells’ and Mel Tormé’s “The Christmas Song.” With every piece, the audience seemed to grow into the kind of quiet that hushes a winter’s night muffled by snowfall.
Under the hand of Dr. Robert Taylor, director of UBC Bands, the Vancouver Brass Orchestra opened their section of the show with Andrew Poirier’s arrangement of “Ave Maria,” a feat that provided a new interpretation of the traditionally choral piece.
Then the program took an avant-garde turn with William Berry’s Nutcracker Suite Dreams. The composition is based on Tchaikovsky’s famous winter ballet, but toys with jazzy textures, as if the work assimilated into the warm living room of a Bourbon Street apartment from the composer’s Saint Petersburg desk.
Take “Tea for Tuba,” for example, where the main theme, traditionally played by the dainty flute and piccolo, were substituted by a thundering tuba, or “Dance of the Brass Pipes” where the trombones used their slides to their full potential.
“When you feel like you want to get into a conga line, you’ll know we’re done,” joked Taylor. The final movement “Mocha,” presented a Latin American twist; logically so because Tchaikovsky originally coined that movement “Chocolate” (Spanish Dance). Musicians paired the liberal use of trumpet mutes with lip trills and vivacious percussion.
The show closed with UBC assistant professor Dr. Hyejung Jun leading both choirs and the orchestra in Gloria, which, as Jun phrased it, is “joyful, festive and glorious…”— “a gift to you,” the audience.
This choral work, with text taken from the Latin Mass, is one of John Rutter's most well-known works and is composed of three movements. The piece performs on the same structure of a symphonic work — a lively andante, followed by an allegro and returning to an energetic ending.
Jun led the union with mighty articulation, so overcome by the music that her baton snapped in half with just bars left in the chaos of the final movement.
The concert was exceptional and multi-faceted, an exhaustive demonstration of the versatility and vitality of some of UBC’s finest musicians.
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