Seventeen Voyces’s superb 2018-19 subscription series begins with horror and ends with horror – or more accurately, comedy-horror. Building on music director Kevin Reeves’s remarkable ability to match stunning music with silent film, the season opens with the truly haunting Nosferatu (1922) directed by German expressionist director F.W. Murnau.
Nosferatu is the first great vampire film and an artistic masterpiece. Choral music will include Nänie by Johannes Brahms and works by more contemporary composers, such as Henryk Gorecki, Francis Poulenc and John Taverner. Ottawa composer Andrew Ager is also composing a new piece for the film. It will be screened at St Matthew’s Anglican Church in the Glebe on Oct. 26 and Oct. 27, a fitting Hallowe’en outing for the brave.
The season will conclude with Nosferatu — a comic chamber opera, composed by Reeves. The behind-the-scene accounting of the filming of Nosferatu considers the question: “Was Count Orlok played by an actor or a real vampire?” Many people at the time believed the latter. Starring Joel Allison (baritone), Jean-Philippe Lazure (tenor) and Janelle Lapalme (soprano), this world premiere will be performed at Glebe St. James Church on May 31 and June 1.
In contrast, the choir’s Christmas concert, “I Sing of a Maiden” features carols reflecting on Mary and the Virgin birth. Including harp and organ, the concert will be held at St. Matthew’s on Dec. 8 (7:30pm) and the intimate Ashbury College Chapel on Dec. 9 (4pm).
And in March, Seventeen Voyces will perform in Pigments of the Imagination, which includes musical commissions by Andrew Ager and Mark Duggan. Based on canvasses by Tom Thomson, Marc Chagall, William Blake and Gustave Moreau, guest artists include Yolanda Bruno (violin), Carmen Bruno (cello) and Zak Pulak (percussion). The concert will be held on March 22 at Southminster Church in Old Ottawa South.