Our kind of music is any kind of choral music!  We just love to sing!

The 2009-10 Season has been great so far!  At Christmas we held one concert, and sang at the annual “A Time to Remember” church service.   The concert was held at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church and we had no guests this year.

We opened our concert with Fanfare for Christmas Day, and at times during rehearsal we despaired of ever being able to hit those high notes and sustain them long enough to please our conductor, Andrew, but we did, and the audience loved it!.

Our repertoire during the first half of the programme included Still, Still, Still a traditional Austrian lullaby sung in German and English.  It was fun learning to pronounce the words and also trying to place the right emphasis until we could think of the translated meaning in our heads. Traditional Christmas songs made up the balance of the first half, with the exception of one, Jesus Christ the Apple Tree.  Jesus Christ the Apple Tree is a poem which, it is believed, was written by a New Englander in the 1700s and Elizabeth Poston (1905 - 1987) set the poem into a tender, haunting melody which really depicts the spirit of Christmas.

After the intermission, the meaning of the Dreidel in Festival of Light was explained to us before we sang the song to the audience.  The dreidel (a four-sided spinning top) is associated with Hanukkah.  It has four sides, each engraved with one initial from the Hebrew words:  Nun, Gimel, Hey, and Shin.  These letters are an acronym for "Nes Gadol Haya Sham" meaning "A great miracle happened there" (referring to the miracle of the oil that took place in the Beit Hamikdash).  The carol, of course, is all about the "Miracle of Old" and we enjoyed singing it as much as the audience enjoyed listening.

Il Est Ne le Divin Enfant again tested those of us who only speak English to sing in a different language, although in Canada its hard to think of French as foreign!  Pat-a-Pan is a French Christmas carol but adapted into English.  Our Assistant Conductor, Janet Goos, led us in this cheerful, rhythmic song.  We concluded our concert with Shalom, a traditional Hebrew song of peace.

The Time of Remembrance service took place in December too, and was well attended, our choir sang for those facing the hardship of losing a loved one during 2009.  The choice of In The Garden, Wood River and Let There Be Peace on Earth seemed to express the sentiment of trying to come to terms with loss of a loved one.

In January we joined other Maple Ridge choirs and entertainers to raise funds for the Haitian people to assist them in their on-going recovery from the earthquake.

So far it has been a busy year and we still have our May 16th concert to look forward to!