Join Datsuzoku and choirs from Cawthra Park SS, North Toronto CI, Etobicoke School of the Arts, and O’Neill CVI in the culminating concert of Young Choral Artists Festival. Conducted by Karen Burke and Mishaal Surti, this group of young passionate singers will give a rousing performance celebrating the power of collective music making and new friendships.
Concreamus premieres Francesca Hauser’s newly commissioned work Parturition alongside Ted Hearne’s searing oratorio Sound from the Bench. Together, these ambitious works explore the politics of body, voice, and liberation, confront systems of control, and demand of us the courage it takes to reimagine and redefine these systems.
Hero’s Journey is a choral concert that tells a timeless story. Trials, transformation, and triumph are explored through song. Datsuzoku presents a program of choral works that follow the path from struggle to renewal, singing music of great intensity, vulnerability, and hope. This performance celebrates resilience and imagination, offering a moving tribute to the power of music to guide us through challenges toward answers and growth.
Considering Matthew Shepard is a genre-defying oratorio by composer Craig Hella Johnson. The work offers a deeply human perspective on the tragedy of Matthew Shepard’s murder. It explores many different emotions, including shock, sorrow, rage, tenderness, and ultimately, hope. Through a wide range of musical styles and texts, including poetry, journalistic accounts, sacred writings, and reflections from Shepard’s parents, the work asks listeners to consider not only what was lost, but what kind of world we are responsible for building in its wake.
The concert will be presented by Modern Sound Collective’s youth and young adult choirs, Datsuzoku and Concreamus, a combined choir of over 100 voices. They will be joined by a professional instrumental ensemble consisting of guitar, percussion, piano, clarinet, and strings, and professional vocal soloists.
