Caravan

Our pieces on the upcoming Caravan concert are so diverse, it is truly as though the listener were coming on a journey with us. And who better to travel with than a bevy of loud, passionate and fun women? Not only are we journeyers, we are singers of songs and tellers of tales!

Even our medieval pieces are diverse – you might think all songs from the middle ages sound like Gregorian chant but we show how some songs are light and lilting and some rich and resonant.

They even cover all aspects of life and death as in Media Vita in Morte Sumus which means “in life there is death” – we recently sang this in rehearsal after hearing someone had lost their infant in birth. We didn’t even know the person but we have never sang that song so tenderly as we did that day and it infused it with new meaning for all of us.

Sometimes composers who know us write us the most esoteric things knowing we can handle it – case in point being Victoria composer Nicholas Fairbank who gave us Aurora, a musical interpretation of the Northern lights.

This piece doesn’t even have lyrics but is comprised totally of “aahs” and “ehs” and eerie chords which perfectly captures the ephemeral nature of the aurora borealis.  Our composer-in-residence, Georgina Craig similarly has boldly taken us where few composers dare to tread – she has written an entire suite of songs for us using overtoning (an ancient technique that enables a singer to produce two or more notes with their voice at the same time), and surround sound with melodic fragments which wrap the audience in a cosmic blanket for the duration of the piece.

We’ve also scoured the globe for the most dynamic pieces we could find, which includes the Basque Uraren Besotik.  This is the first time the choir has sung in Basque!  This song is a voyage in itself, moving from ethereal, to driving and electrifying, to sweetly sonorous and back again.

We must also mention our other Canadian content which includes Watane, a lullaby based in the Eastern woodlands, Reel a Bouche, a bouncy celtic scat, and Here on these Branches, a swirling melodic telling of an enchanted transformation.

Come experience this journey with us on our Caravan!