Fresh Ink fetes five years of Vancouver Chamber Choir commissions and premieres, May 9

Program includes an Emily Carr–inspired piece by Tawnie Olson, a composition about a satellite falling out of orbit by Chris Sivak, and more

The Vancouver Chamber Choir presents Fresh Ink at Pacific Spirit United Church on May 9 at 7:30 pm

SINCE KARI TURUNEN joined the Vancouver Chamber Choir as artistic director in 2019, he has been at the helm of several new Canadian commissions and premieres.

A concert called Fresh Ink will remind audiences of all those special moments at Pacific Spirit United Church on May 9. It will also serve as a preview of an upcoming recording project the Vancouver Chamber Choir is working on.

Among the pieces on the program is former composer-in-residence Andrew Balfour’s “Kiyam”. It premiered at UBC’s First Nations Longhouse last June as part of Stories of the Land, an evening of works by Indigenous composers. Another work the choir will perform is Chris Sivak’s “Alouette Meets Her Maker”, in which the singers’ voices imitate the unique sounds of a satellite falling out of orbit and crashing into Earth—think everything from asynchronous spoken text to SOS-signal bleats.

Audiences will also get to hear Canadian composer Tawnie Olson’s “Beloved of the Sky”, a five-movement work inspired by the writings of Emily Carr. It premiered as part of the choir’s November 2023 coproduction Nightingales with musica intima at St. Andrew’s–Wesley United Church. (And in recent news, Philadelphia-based choir the Crossing’s recording of the piece just won a Grammy Award.)

Along with celebrating its past successes, the choir will perform the world premiere of “Your Name Is Water” by current composer-in-residence laura hawley. Audience members will also be the first in Vancouver to hear works by Rebecca Hass, Katharine Petkovski, and Oskar Österling; during a tour to Toronto this past winter, the Vancouver Chamber Choir collaborated with the three composers through Soundstreams’ RBC Bridges Emerging Composers Program.

Turunen will lead a pre-concert chat at 7 pm. The music itself starts at 7:30 pm.

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Emily Lyth

Stir editorial assistant Emily Lyth is a Vancouver-based writer and editor who graduated from Langara College’s Journalism program. Her decade of dance training and passion for all things food-related are the foundation of her love for telling arts, culture, and community stories.

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