Chan Shun Concert Hall at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts | Map
Chor Leoni; Erick Lichte, artistic director; La Nef; Sean Dagher, artistic director
Join the musicians and vocal soloists of La Nef and Chor Leoni Men’s Choir as they explore music of the sea with capstand shanties, halyard shanties, laments, forecastle songs, and short haul shanties: hear the rich songs and music that accompany a sailor’s work and play. Inspired by a tradition of English maritime music going back to the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, Seán Dagher, the troupe’s musical director, has created modern arrangements of these songs to display all the warmth and depth they deserve.
“To the seamen of America, Britain, and northern Europe, a Shanty was as much a part of the equipment as a sheath-knife and pannikin… Shanties were always associated with work — and a rigid taboo held against singing them ashore.” – Stan Hugill
To view/download the programme, including texts & translations, click here.
A collaboration with Chor Leoni’s Men’s Choir
This concert is generously supported by Sharon E. Kahn
Programme
Shenandoah
Trad., arr. Marshal Bartholomew
The Press Gang
Trad., arr. S. Dagher
Out On The Ocean (instrumental)
Trad., arr. S. Dagher
Pique La Baleine
Trad., arr. S. Dagher
Stormalong John
Trad., arr. S. Dagher
Jonah’s Song
Peter Schickele
Lowlands Away
Trad., arr. S. Dagher
Haul On The Bowline
Trad., arr. S. Dagher
The Sailor’s Things (instrumental)
Trad., arr. S. Dagher & N. Carter
Encore Un Coup, Laoura
Trad., arr. S. Dagher
General Taylor
Trad., arr. S. Dagher
Leave Her, Johnny
Trad., arr. S. Dagher
INTERVAL
Incantatio Maris Aestuosi
Veljo Tormis, text Tuomo Pekkanen
The Shoals of Herring
Ewen McColl, arr. S.Dagher & Nils Brown
One More Day
Trad., arr. S. Dagher
Rolling Down to Old Maui
Trad., arr. S. Dagher
Shallow Brown
Trad., arr. S. Dagher & Erick Lichte
The Captain’s (Hind) Quarters (instrumental)
D. Gossage & Trad., arr. S. Dagher
Blood Red Roses
Trad., arr. S. Dagher
Go To Sea No More
Trad., arr. S. Dagher & N. Carter
Randy Dandy, O
Trad., arr. S. Dagher
Programme Notes
Sea Songs & Shanties
Sea songs and shanties didn’t start out as music to be heard. They were songs to be sung, songs to help with the work, songs to help pass the time. Their original functions influenced the way they were written, the way they were sung, and the way they were shared. Shanties, for example, are designed as “call-and-response” songs in which a whole crew can learn a new song from one man on first hearing and are sung rhythmically to make the hauling of ropes and such on board easier. Other types of sea songs are sung more freely, to fill the long days and evenings spent together on board. Most of these songs have been spread by the oral tradition, creating many variants of each song, none of which are “wrong”, but none of which are what you might call “authoritative”.
When putting this programme together there was a huge amount of material to choose from and a welcome paucity of scholarship telling us what we could and couldn’t do with the music. In this spirit, La Nef performs these songs in arrangements that transform them from songs designed primarily to be sung, into songs that bear repeated listening. It was no small challenge to drag these pieces, tar-stained and tattered, into the concert hall. We achieved this by letting our musical instincts take us in whatever direction the songs seemed to be pointing. We have harmonized and arranged and re-harmonized and re-arranged all of these songs into the pieces that we ourselves would want to hear.
Our special collaboration with Chor Leoni tonight gives La Nef the opportunity to take the music even farther than we have on our voyage so far. This men’s choir is the perfect instrument to bolster and complement our original crew. We decided to partner with the choir in a number of different ways for tonight’s programme. Firstly, we have added a few nautically themed pieces that Chor Leoni sings alone. Secondly, Chor Leoni are used as reinforcements in existing arrangements. Lastly, some of the pieces have been re-imagined for this new joint ensemble, with new sections and new textures to fully exploit the possibilities offered by the combined ensemble.
Though we hope to give you something new to listen to in these pieces, we also hope to have retained what is essential to their character. At the very least, we can say that we will put our backs into performing them. We will have been successful if you find yourself humming these tunes in the coming days, or if you find yourself wishing there were a gang of sailors around somewhere to sing them with.
Seán Dagher
Musical Director, La Nef
Male choirs are no strangers to music of the sea. Adding to the shanties so lovingly selected and arranged by La Nef, Chor Leoni wished to bring to this concert some its own favourite music inspired by the sea…
Marshall Bartholomew’s arrangement of Shenandoah is a study in simplicity and longing for home while utilizing the full range and palette of the male choir. Jonah’s Song, by P.D.Q. Bach’s “real-life” counterpart, Peter Schickele, sets a hymn text written by Herman Melville in his 1851 novel Moby-Dick. In the novel, before Ishmael and Queequeg head off to Nantucket for their adventures on the Pequod, they attend a service where this hymn, adapted by Melville from Psalm 18, is sung. Schickele’s setting of this hymn recalls sacred harp singing with its open octaves and fifths, and its highly ornamented choral vocal lines and steady, driving rhythm.
Incantatio Maris Aestuosi (Incantation for a Stormy Sea) by the great Estonian composer Veljo Tormis, is a tour-de-force work for male choir. Its text comes from the Kalevala, the Finnish National Epic, and has been translated into Latin. The story picks up as the men take to their boats. Not long into the journey a storm begins to overtake their craft, and just as all seems lost, a brave sailor climbs upon the prow of the ship to cast a spell that calms the waves and stills the storm. Tormis creates a choral tone poem with cellular melodies reminiscent of ancient Estonian runic song. These melodic lines embody the waves of the sea, the howling wind and the charm which ultimately saves the sailors. Tormis wrote this work in memory of the lives lost on the MS Estonia, a ferry which went down in the Baltic Sea in 1994, claiming the lives of 852 passengers. Incantatio embodies the ancient spirit and story from the Kalevala and is a poignant elegy to one of the worst sea disasters in modern history.
Chor Leoni is thrilled to share this stage with La Nef and wish to thank EMV for allowing us to stow away on this voyage.
Erick Lichte
Artistic Director, Chor Leoni
Chor Leoni
With stylistic grace and an adventurous spirit, Vancouver’s Singing Lions have enriched and transformed people’s lives through singing for almost 30 years. The choir is fortunate and privileged to sing on the unceded traditional territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.
Chor Leoni has been honoured with many awards at the national and international levels including five 1st place awards in the CBC National Radio Competition for Amateur Choirs. In 2020 the ensemble received a JUNO nomination for their album When There Is Peace: An Armistice Oratorio by Zachary Wadsworth, and in 2019 received the Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence from the professional choral organization, Chorus America. The award recognizes artistic excellence, contribution to the choral art form, and organizational stability over a long period of time and may only be once in an ensemble’s lifetime.
In 2018 the ensemble performed at the Singapore International Choral Festival and the Bali International Choral Festival, singing in the opening and Grand Prix concerts for both. Between the two festivals, Chor Leoni won five gold medals, two Choir Championships, and a special jury’s prize for outstanding choreography.
Chor Leoni’s 2016 recording Wandering Heart was a featured CD for Minnesota Public Radio and WFMT Chicago, and received a perfect five-star rating from the UK’s prestigious Choir and Organ magazine and was a featured CD for Minnesota Public Radio and WFMT Chicago. The choir’s 2018 Christmas recording Star of Wonder was also a featured CD on Minnesota Public Radio.
Chor Leoni prides itself on its musical ambassadorship for Vancouver and Canada and has performed at major festivals and concert venues across Canada and the United States. The choir has also shared its music in Singapore, Indonesia, Italy, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany, and the Czech Republic.
Chor Leoni champions new music and has commissioned hundreds of pieces for male choir, ranging from pop and folksong arrangements to modern works. In 2021 the choir appointed Don Macdonald as its Composer-in-Residence for a three-year term. The ensemble has commissioned works by notable composers such as Melissa Dunphy, Shruthi Rajasekar, Jocelyn Morlock, Ēriks Ešenvalds, Bob Chilcott, Imant Raminsh, R. Murray Schafer, Stephen Chatman, Malcolm Forsyth, Bruce Sled, Steven Smith, and Zachary Wadsworth, among others.
Erick Lichte, artistic director
Erick Lichte has been hailed by Washington Post for the “audacity” of his programming and noted by the Chicago Tribune for the “meticulous preparation” of his choirs. The New York Times recently called his direction and composing “thrilling” and said of his work that the “sensation is tremendous and the musical chill effect engulfing.”
As a founding member, singer and Artistic Director of the male vocal ensemble Cantus, Lichte created and sustained one of only two full-time vocal ensembles in the United States. From 2000-2009, Lichte’s programming and artistic direction were heard in over 60 concerts a year and he has collaborated with artists such as Bobby McFerrin, the Boston Pops, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Doc Severinsen, and Minnesota Orchestra.
In January 2013, he began his tenure as Artistic Director of Vancouver, Canada’s Chor Leoni Men’s Choir. Since that time, he has grown the choir into one of the most active and popular amateur choirs in North America, performing over 35 concerts a year to over 15,000 patrons. His first recording with Chor Leoni, Wandering Heart, received a perfect five-star review from the UK’s prestigious Choir and Organ Magazine, and Oregon Arts Watch has declared that, under his leadership, Chor Leoni is now “one of the best male choirs on the continent.” In the summer of 2018, he led Chor Leoni to multiple awards and Grand Prix appearances at both the Singapore and Bali International Choral Competitions. In 2020, his world premiere recording of the When There Is Peace: an Armistice Oratorio was nominated for a JUNO Award.
His work with Cantus and Chor Leoni garnered him both the 2009 and 2019 Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence, the highest honour from the professional choral organization Chorus America. He is only the second conductor to have ever won this award with two ensembles.
La Nef
La Nef is a company dedicated to the creation and production of early and contemporary music. It hires musicians and artists in all disciplines according to the needs of its productions. La Nef produces concerts and recitals of early and traditional music that are based on historical and literary themes. In 2001, La Nef broadened its field of action by launching a sector dedicated to contemporary music; a sector, that is, dedicated to the creation, research, and development of new forms. The company alternates projects that are essentially musical with theatrical projects that involve multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, multimedia, and operatic elements.
The concern for historical and theatrical context has been present since the company began. As well as producing musical-theatrical shows, it has also accepted the mandate of making music accessible to young people. To this end, the company’s Jeunesse (Youth) sector also offers concert-workshops in schools and community centers, and produces musical-theatrical shows. La Nef’s approach aims at creating worlds of sounds that are often based on little known or original music and that integrate historical and theatrical elements. This distinctive approach sets La Nef apart in the musical and cultural milieu, and allows it to offer original and accessible experiences to its public.
Sean Dagher, artistic director
Seán Dagher is an active performer, arranger, and composer of music from various folk and classical music traditions: Celtic, Baroque, Medieval, Arabic, French-Canadian, and Maritime. He is artistic director of Skye Consort and its principal arranger. Seán often provides arrangements for other ensembles and artists, including La Mandragore, Pierre Lapointe, Shannon Mercer, I Furiosi, Les Voix Baroques, and Les Voix Humaines. His music has been performed across Canada and the United States. Seán has worked with the Festival du Monde Arabe creating shows of Middle Eastern and North African music. He has arranged and composed music for audio books, with story-teller and musician Suzanne De Serres and for American author Sandra Gulland. Seán has been a composer and sound designer for theatre productions. He has been nominated for numerous Adisq awards and participated in the Adisqwinning CD, La Traverse Miraculeuse with La Nef and Les Charbonniers de l'enfer. Despite all that Seán can most frequently be found singing and playing in Irish pubs.
