Salt Spring Singers members have sung a raft of songs in the community choir’s 50-plus years of entertaining island audiences.
So when the choir’s new director, Adam Dyjach, took up his position in January, he thought he would ask current members what some of their favourites had been in past years and craft a concert program from that list.
“I got an overwhelming response from them, which I thought was a really good sign,” he said.
It gave him an idea of what kind of music his new group likes to sing and created the basis for this weekend’s Sounds of Salt Spring Singers concerts at All Saints church on Saturday, May 2 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, May 3 at 2:30 p.m.
Audiences will hear John Rutter’s For the Beauty of the Earth, Dirait-on by Morten Lauridsen, John Lennon’s All You Need is Love and Cole Porter’s Just One of Those Things, among others. A brand new song composed by choir alto Bronwen Duncan called Late Day Sun will make its debut.
Doing a retrospective program is also “kind of a nod to the choir’s former members and directors and the things that they’ve done over the years,” Dyjach said.
While it’s difficult to choose just one from the program as his own favourite, Dyjach said it would probably be The Ground by Ola Gjeilo.
“Anything composed by him is stunning, in my opinion, but one of the reasons why it’s my favourite is that the melody from this piece comes from another one of his larger works called the Sunrise Mass, and I had the pleasure of singing that work with the Newcombe Singers last term in Victoria. It’s just a really, really beautiful piece.”
Dyjach has done a lot of singing over the years, beginning with church choirs as a youngster. He has a Masters of Music in Vocal Performance from the University of Victoria where he studied with Benjamin Butterfield and has performed as a tenor soloist and choir member with various ensembles on Vancouver Island and the mainland, as well as Salt Spring’s own Bach on the Rock.
He directs music at Fairfield United Church, leads the Westwind Singers ensemble and teaches music from his own studio and through the Canadian College of the Performing Arts. He is president of the Victoria chapter for the National Association of Teachers of Singing.
After past Singers director Don Conley announced his retirement in effect at the end of the 2024/25 season, one of the choir’s board members asked Dyjach if he had ever considered directing. He said he was definitely interested in challenging himself and expanding his musical skills. Knowing the Singers director position was coming available, Dyjach added conducting lessons to his voice sessions with Edette Gagné and also took a conducting fellowship through the Newcombe Singers with its director Kathryn Whitney.
Dyjach is loving his new gig so far.
“To be up there directing and having 40 people looking to you and following you, it’s a pretty incredible thing,” he said. “And I think we have a lot of fun in our rehearsals. We definitely get some work done too, but we do have a lot of fun. I think that’s important.”
Two other bonuses are that he gets to commute to practices each Tuesday with his good friend and accompanist James Yi and to spend more time with other friends he has made on Salt Spring Island over the years, like Anke Smeele, who billeted Dyjach several years ago when he had his first guest soloist position with Bach on the Rock under former director Michael Jarvis.
Tickets for the Saturday-Sunday concerts are available in advance through ArtSpring or at the door.