Chor Leoni brings fiery energy to PopCappella III
The 65-voice men’s choir gives winter a boot with concert of hits by the likes of Adele, Katrina and the Waves, and AC/DC
Chor Leoni. Photo by Phil Jack
Chor Leoni presents PopCappella III at St. Andrew’s-Wesley United on March 3 at 8 pm and March 4 at 5 pm and 8 pm
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN you take songs on an explosive theme by BTS, Taio Cruz, and AC/DC and give them to a sharp composer to arrange into a new piece to be performed by a 65-voice a cappella men’s choir accompanied by a live band in a historic church with state-of-the-art acoustics and rock-concert-style lighting? You get Ken Cormier’s “Dynamite Dynamite TNT”, which will have its world premiere at PopCappella III, Chor Leoni’s kickoff concert to 2023.
“It’s mind-blowing,” Chor Leoni artistic director Erick Lichte says of the new arrangement in a phone interview with Stir. “It’s a virtuosic little feat of 21st-century polyphony.”
The fiery composition is on a program that also includes hits by Adele, Avicii, Kate Bush, Katrina and the Waves, and Seal, among other pop artists. There’s Canadian composer Marie-Claire Saindon’s arrangement of Caribou’s “Sister”, while of the concert’s total of six world-premiere arrangements one of Cormier’s new arrangements is of “Little Bluebird” from local bassist Jodi Proznick’s Juno-nominated album Sun Songs. Proznick will accompany the choir alongside Cormier on piano, multi-percussionist Liam MacDonald, and guitarist Keith Sinclair.
It’s all to uplift audiences as winter wanes through artistry and accessibility. And while the pop genre makes for an approachable entry point to choral sounds, Lichte is quick to point out that the songs’ radio-friendly nature belies the complexity of performing them in new arrangements by an ensemble of Chor Leoni’s magnitude.
Erick Lichte. Photo by Dan Conrad
“These arrangers know what Chor Leoni can do, and they put us through our paces,” Lichte says. “Vocally and rhythmically, it’s about as hard and complicated a musical concert to put together as anything else we do….Pop music requires you to lift the notes off of the page in certain ways. With these songs, when you write them out, some of the more complicated things were never intended for 60 people to sing at exactly the same time with that accuracy.
“People will recognize these songs and yet we have that conviction up there; we’re singing with a sense of ownership,” he adds. “Audiences will hear familiar things in fresh ways. We’re adding more layers and really trying to stretch our artistry.”
A highlight is sure to be Avicii’s “Wake Me Up”, which Swedish composer Henrik Dahlgren re-arranged following Avicii’s death by suicide. The lyrics (sung by Aloe Blacc in the original) include the lines “So wake me up when it's all over/When I'm wiser and I'm older/All this time I was finding myself, and I/Didn't know I was lost”.
“‘Wake Me Up is this romper-stomper song,” Lichte says, “but you take the same melody and the same words done very much in this choral-ballad kind of way, and it makes you listen to those words in totally different ways within the context of the story of the artist who wrote the song.”
Jodi Proznick. Photo by Michele Mateus.
Proznick, meanwhile, says she was delighted to hear Chor Leoni wanted to offer a unique take on “Little Bluebird”, with her 2017 release Sun Songs being a dedication to her mother and young son. The album is a meditation on the question: “How do you continue to thrive when life throws you intense challenges?”
“When my son was young, we would watch the kitchen window for hummingbirds and often imagine what messages they were bringing us,” Proznick tells Stir. “This song is all about that imagining. Ken Cormier’s arrangement is stunning. He is a gem of a musician and we are so lucky to have him as part of our music community.
Proznick (whose Ostsara Project earned a Juno nomination this year) is making a return performance to Chor Leoni’s annual PopCappella series.
“I love the sense of community, the dedication of excellence, and wholehearted performances,” she says.
Proznick’s summation of the show, in fact, carries over to Chor Leoni’s very purpose. “We do these concerts because they engage our community and, in hearing the choir like this, it opens up other doors to choral music,” Lichte says. “That’s what you hope for. Our goal is to sing for our community, and this is another way for us to do that.”
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