LFA Choral Students “Stand Together” for One Final Concert

 The concert featured performances by our Junior Concert Choir, Senior Concert Choir, and award-winning Chamber Choir in their final performances of the season showcasing their repertoire which was presented at festivals and concerts throughout the year.  Joining our LFA Choral music students on stage at the Chan Centre was the “Roots ‘N’ Wings” women’s choir conducted by Dawn Pemberton, a vibrant and talented vocalist, teacher, facilitator, and choir director who was recently called the “New Queen of Canadian Soul”!

The positive effects of choral music education was the focus of the concert and as each singer took the stage, inspiring words from some of the top choral conductors in the field echoed the hall. Joined together in song, over 150 of our choral students sang together hand in hand for the finale of the concert. This concert was one of most inspiring concerts in the history of our choral music program and special congratulations goes to all of our music students for their many successes this year: 

“Choral music is not one of life’s frills. It’s something that goes to the very heart of our humanity, our sense of community, and our souls. You express, when you sing, your soul in song. And when you get together with a group of other singers, it becomes more than the sum of the parts. All of those people are pouring out their hearts and souls in perfect harmony. Which is kind of an emblem for what we need in this world, when so much of the world is at odds with itself…that just to express, in symbolic terms, what it’s like when human beings are in harmony. That’s a lesson for our times and for all time. I profoundly believe that. 

And musical excellence is, of course, at the heart of it. But, even if a choir is not the greatest in the world, the fact that they are meeting together has a social value. It has a communal value. And I always say that a church or a school without a choir is like a body without a soul. We have to have a soul in our lives. And everybody tells me, who has sung in a choir, that they feel better for doing it. That whatever the cares of the day, if they maybe meet after a long day’s school or work, that somehow you leave your troubles at the door. And when you’re sitting there, making music for a couple hours at the end of the day, that’s the only thing that matters at that moment. And you walk away refreshed. You walk away renewed. And that’s a value that goes just beyond the music itself.” -- (John Rutter, renowned English composer and conductor)