Vancouver Cantata Singers bridge generations with Christmas Reprise concerts
Up-and-coming composer Sophia Colpitts contributed to the program—with a little help from her grandpa
Clockwise from top: The Vancouver Cantata Singers at Holy Rosary Cathedral, Sophia Colpitts, and Doug Colpitts.
The Vancouver Cantata Singers present Christmas Reprise XXII at Holy Rosary Cathedral on December 20 at 2 pm and at Sanctuary on 6th in New Westminster on the same date at 7:30 pm
PUT IT DOWN TO genetics, credit the influence of growing up among musicians, or simply call it destiny; whatever the case, Sophia Colpitts was going to end up involved in music one way or another.
“My mom was an elementary-school music teacher and my dad still is, and they both play many instruments, so I grew up doing piano and I eventually started singing in choir when I was 11 years old,” says Colpitts, now in Grade 12. “And then I started writing choral music.”
Choral music certainly seems like the natural choice for the budding composer. One might even say it’s in her blood. Her grandfather, Doug Colpitts, has been a member of the Vancouver Cantata Singers since 1976. Sophia got her own start with the Vancouver Youth Choir, of which she is still a member, and she began composing her own choral works in 2022.
“The first piece I ever wrote was because of the Vancouver Chamber Choir’s Young Composers’ Competition,” she tells Stir in a telephone interview. “I just thought it would be interesting to enter, and so I did. And for that one, I won an honourable mention in the competition.”
Clearly, this is a young woman who takes music very seriously. Most of the time. It bears mentioning, though, that she also plays melodica in a waggish busking combo that includes her brothers, twins Chris (violin) and Alex (cello). Perhaps you have seen or heard the Fiddle Gerbils of Minecraft (yes, really), playing the Super Mario Bros. theme by the banks of False Creek or Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” at your local farmers’ market.
Colpitts makes music simply because she loves it, and that also goes for her more rigorous pursuits, including creating her own original choral works.
“In the past couple of years—like, this year and last year—is when I’ve been doing the most composition,” she says. “Before that, it was just a little bit, when I felt like doing something, but I’ve started doing it more and I’ve discovered that I really enjoy it.”
Arts organizations are noticing. This fall, both the Vancouver Chamber Choir and Elektra selected pieces by Colpitts for inclusion in their reading sessions. And she’ll be closing 2025 on a high note; the Vancouver Cantata Singers commissioned a new work from Colpitts, and they will perform it as part of their annual Christmas Reprise concerts.
For these performances, Colpitts has written a new setting of “I Wash My Face in a Golden Vase”, a relatively obscure traditional folk carol that might be familiar to some through a 1952 recording by the Mariners.
“I had never actually heard the piece before, but my grandpa had actually suggested this one to me to arrange,” Colpitts says. “They gave me some freedom with what I wanted to do—if I wanted to write a carol or arrange an already existing one. So he suggested this one because he was a fan of it, and I liked it. It’s not very well known, but I did listen to many other versions of it so I could get some inspiration.”
Doug Colpitts (who will mark his 50th year with the Cantata Singers when he joins them for a program titled Cantata Gold in February) offered more input along the way.
“I arranged the whole thing and then I sent it to my grandpa,” Sophia reveals. “We talked about some parts and he gave me a couple of suggestions. And then eventually I sent it to Paula [Kremer], who’s the conductor of the Vancouver Cantata Singers. They invited me to come in to do a reading-session workshop when they started rehearsing it. So they would read it in front of me and then we would discuss a couple of issues or things that I wanted to change in the piece. And then, after that, I took it home and worked on it a little bit more for a week and sent it back to them, and now they have a pretty final version that they’re working on.”
Colpitts’s tools when composing are a piano and the music-notation software Sibelius. She says that hearing her work brought fully to glorious life by a choral ensemble makes all the hard work worthwhile.
“When I’m hearing it at home, I have an idea of what it sounds like,” she says. “And also, the software that I use, it will play what the notes are that I’ve input into the computer, but that doesn’t sound very nice—you know, there’s no shaping or phrasing or dynamics, and it’s just notes that are being played. So it’s really special to hear it in real life. It’s great, and when they start adding things like phrasing details and mood changes, that makes it even better.”
Having work performed by one of the city’s—if not the country’s—most highly regarded choral groups would be a significant accomplishment for any composer, let alone one who has yet to graduate from secondary school. Colpitts is at the very beginning of what promises to be a remarkable career.
“I would love to get a music degree,” she says. “I’m focused on UBC, and I’m going to apply for voice and composition. I’m not really sure which one I’ll end up with, because I’m interested in both fields. But that’s the goal.” 
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