Let us not be the reason… A Concert for Peace marks one-year anniversary of war in Ukraine, February 24
Little Chamber Music features 42-piece string orchestra, conducted by Leslie Dala, playing works by Rita Ueda, Robyn Jacob, Jordan Nobles, and Arvo Pärt
Photo by Ahmed Zalabany
Little Chamber Music presents let us not be the reason... A Concert for Peace at Canadian Memorial Church and Centre for Peace (15th Avenue and Burrard) on February 24 at 7:30 pm. Free admission, with donations collected to support artists in Ukraine
A 42-PIECE STRING ORCHESTRA marks the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with a program of music for peace on February 24.
Let us not be the reason... A Concert for Peace features works specially commissioned for Little Chamber Music’s August 2020 concert marking the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima—an event that ended up having to be filmed due to the COVID pandemic.
Now comes the chance to see the haunting new music live, conducted by Leslie Dala, in an entirely new context of war in Ukraine and rumblings of Russian nuclear threats, all in the reflective atmosphere of the Canadian Memorial Church and Centre for Peace.
The program centres around Arvo Pärt’s luminous 1977 piece Cantus in Memoriam of Benjamin Britten, a prayer for peace that draws on the tintinnabuli style and early chant music.
The concert gets its name from Vancouver composer Rita Ueda’s let us not be the reason someone out there is praying for peace, one of the commissions by Little Chamber.
It shares the program with a work by Only a Visitor’s Robyn Jacob, A World in Each, as well as local, lauded composer Jordan Nobles’s haunting Black Rain.
For a sense of the mesmerizing power of this music, check out the original virtual concert footage of Nobles's dark and deeply reflective Black Rain, shot by acclaimed filmmaker John Bolton, of Opus 59 Films, below. Filmed at the Polygon Gallery, the 2020 program, with the same music, was called Human Shadow Etched in Stone.
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