If we were having tea or coffee right now…

 

If we were having a cup of tea or coffee right now… just like we do on Fridays at Gracious Goods Cafe, I would be telling you, but wait, I got this all wrong, at this time of day, or night for that matter, it would be a glass of red wine, but lets pretend.

If we were having a cup of tea or coffee right now… I would be telling you all about last night’s concert. As most of you know, I have long enjoyed choral singing and I sing with Harmonia as well as Edmonton Metro Chorus. We performed twelve songs, either arranged or composed by Trent Worthington, whose music is quite clever, as well as often amazingly humourous, which is the case of the Three Cowboy Songs from the beginning of our program. My personal favorites were the three Canadian folk songs: Un canadien errant, Huron Carol and the Log Driver’s Waltz. Un canadien errant is a song that always has an emotional impact and at times move people to tears. It tells the story of a Canadian exiled from his homeland, who roams, weeping, through foreign lands. Although a folkloric song, it might be at the same time quite relevant when we think of today’s Syrian refugees in search of a new home. To hear the song, just go to a previous post entitled Come Sing a Song with Me. What made this song even more special this time is that it had a totally new sound when accompanied by a throat singing duo of two Inuit women, Jenna Broomfield and Malaya Bishop, known as the Sila Singers. Later, when I have access to our recording of the evening, I will attempt to re-post that song. If I had access to the said recording I would also share Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah as arranged by Trent but that too will have to wait.

If we were having a cup of tea or coffee right now… I would have to admit that I have been blabbering long enough without passing our talking stick around. Perhaps, I shall give you a break and allow you to listen to members of the University of North Texas College of Music performing Trent Worthington’s Three Cowboy Songs.

 

If we were having a cup of tea or coffee right now… I would mentioned that we also did two of the Beatles’ songs, Michelle and Drive My Car, both penned by Lennon and McCartney. The Beatles might not be everyone’s cup of tea (pun intended) but, they have long been popular with members of the Edmonton Metro Chorus. A couple of years ago we had a cabaret concert entirely devoted to the Beatles, and beyond the formal programming, we had small groups and individuals performing their own Beatles favorites. The audience was invited to sing along for a number of pieces and did so with joyful enthusiasm. Did you know that in Canada we knew about the Beatles more than a year before they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, in 1964, which created a scandal in America, perhaps equal to the reaction to Elvis Presley’s gyration on the same show a decade earlier. From February 1963 to the end of 1964, more than a million copies of the Beatles’ records were produced by RCA Victor in Smith Falls, Ontario. Wow! what can’t we learn over a cup of tea or coffee.