Salt Spring Singers community choir went (almost) all Canadian for its holiday concert this year, compiling an astonishing 95.8 per cent of content from Canadian composers or arrangers.
And as director Deborah Smith explained to the two sold-out audiences at All Saints church on Friday night and Saturday afternoon, even the remaining 4.2 per cent had a Canadian connection in a piece by renowned British choral composer John Rutter, “who says he ‘always feels at home in Canada’ and was patron of the Mendelssohn Youth Choir in Toronto.”
The concert, titled A Canadian Christmas, celebrated shared experiences even further through personal memories of the season told by several choir members.
Some other features were accompanist James Yi suddenly leading an impromptu guitar quartet, trumpet soloist Simon Millerd performing in two songs, and John Metzger playing flute on Joni Mitchell’s River.
But the element that has anyone who attended the show still talking days later is the all-original Salt Spring-centric version of The 12 Days of Christmas. Audience members were delighted with local lyrics everyone could relate to, with actions to match, such as four choir members with antlers prancing back and forth for the line “four deer a’crossing,” or others raising strings of Christmas lights for “seven lit-up farm stands.”
Most ingenious was choir member Ron Dyck holding and changing directions on a SLOW and STOP traffic sign to illustrate “12 months of road work” as the choir either slowed or halted the music in sync.
“The 12 Days of Salt Spring was always on my mind when I designed the program,” said Smith after the concert. “It seemed a natural thing to take the famous song and make it not only Canadian but local. The choir had a blast as we collectively chose each of the things for the days and the matching actions. We are very grateful to Dave Phillips of Dave’s Drilling and Blasting for lending us the stop sign for the ‘12 months of road work’ line. We’ll have to encourage the new director, Adam Dyjach, to make it an annual Salt Spring Singers tradition.”
Smith took on directorship for the fall term only as the choir completed its search for a permanent director to replace Don Conley, who retired this past summer.