Eric Bunnell's People: Choral Connection revives Mozart’s Requiem for April 3 performance |
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Eric Bunnell's People: Choral Connection revives Mozart’s Requiem for April 3 performance
Members of Choral Connection include semi-professional artists and music teachers
The sound of Mozart’s Requiem will fill Knox Presbyterian Church on April 3, when Choral Connection presents the 1791 masterwork with voices of 40 choristers, soloists and an 18-piece orchestra.
Hugh Van Pelt, the choir’s artistic director and conductor, returns the choir to music it last sang about 10 years ago, selecting the piece because it is a favourite of several members.
Eric Bunnell's People: Choral Connection revives Mozart’s Requiem for April 3 performance Back to video
It’s familiar territory for Hugh as a performer.
“I’ve sung the choral parts maybe 15 times, and solo, probably four,” the tenor says.
Mozart, of course, was a premier composer of operas, and Hugh likes the dramatic elements he also wrote into in the Requiem, which was completed by another composer following Mozart’s death and, today, has been finished in as many as 19 versions. (The choir is singing the earlier, traditional presentation.)
“I think there’s like a certain bareness to it. Especially like, say, even the last chord of the piece. It’s an open fifth. It doesn’t include the third, which usually warms the chord up. It just seems like a stark landscape that arrives at the end.
“Which you could argue doesn’t give a lot of hope, maybe.
“But for me, it’s just the nature of that little moment.”
Members of Choral Connection include semi-professional artists and music teachers, and the four soloists for the Requiem include established singers with national and international careers.
Tickets are available by clicking through choralconnection.ca or by calling 519-633-7228.
Concerts on the calendar
There’s lots coming up in coming weeks on the local concert calendar.
The St. Thomas Music Festival wraps the 2026 competition with its signature showcase, the Keynotes concert of top performers and awards night, at 7 p.m. on March 27 at Central United Church.
“There will be many of the top winners performing, as well as the distribution of many scholarships which are enabled annually due to the many service clubs who donate to this worthwhile cause,” says festival mainstay Frank Exley.
Admission is by donation.
Meanwhile, The Undercovers, a tribute band featuring the music of Lionel Richie, Smokey Robinson and Kenny Rogers, are to headline a benefit concert April 18 at Fellowship Church, 641 Elm St., in support of Indwell’s new Balaclava Crossing conversion of the former Balaclava Street. school to housing.
The concert is presented by four local churches – Fellowship, Destination, The Junction and Aylmer Christian Reformed Church.
“The hope is to raise funds for this latest building project, as well as community awareness about the great work that Indwell is doing in the community to address the reality of homelessness and the need for deeply, affordable housing,” says Annie Oegema, an organizer.
There’s a link to tickets on the website of each church, as well as through a QR code on posters, and by clicking through tickets.ticketwindow.ca for Rogers, Richie & Robinson.
And Richard Frank, the retired music educator who leads the Railway City Wind Ensemble, lays down his baton to take up his saxophone to herald spring in a recital, Harbinger of Spring, at 2:30 p.m. on March 28 in London at First St. Andrews Church, Queens Avenue at Waterloo.
“The concert came about when I played last March in the Jeffrey Concert Series in London,” Richard says. “One of the other musicians on that concert was a cellist named Katerina Juraskova and we shared an interest in a future collaboration.
“When I played my graduate performance recital in March of 1984, I did a Canadian chamber work for soprano sax, flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano entitled the Trillium Suite. It seemed like a good choice for a spring concert. On the program, as well, will be the Concerto for Alto Saxophone by Alexander Glazunov and the Piano Trio No. 4 by Antonin Dvorak.”
Admission is by donation.
Another St. Patrick’s Day has come and gone. And I hope it was a celebratory one for all.
But there’s still plenty of wearing o’ the green to be had in St. Thomas.
The colour is the order of the day for the 13th – lucky 13th! – Shamrock Shuffle coming up March 28 in our town.
The event – a 5 –kilometre run, 5-km walk and 2-km family walk – is the major yearly fundraiser for the INN St. Thomas-Elgin, the community’s supportive emergency shelter.
The 2025 Shuffle attracted 158 participants and raised more than $29,000.
“This year, we are aiming for even greater community impact,” says Roshna Robin, INN fund development manager.
New this year, the day starts 8:30 a.m. at Central United Church, original home of Inn out of the Cold, with breakfast sandwiches for all to fuel the fun – and refreshments after.
Trophies for top fundraising team, top fundraising individual, oldest participant, youngest participant, best dressed individual, and best dressed team.
And everyone receives a commemorative medal.
Registration links are online through the Shamrock Shuffle’s Facebook page, and through www.raceroster.com.
They’re having a Wilde time at the Grand Theatre.
A hugely reimagined production of The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde’s “trivial comedy for serious people,” opens next week at the London playhouse.
The cast includes Elgin local Ben Sanders, who returns to the Grand where he is an alumnus of the theatre’s well-regarded High School Project, and who now has built a performance bio almost as long as your arm. Ben plays supporting roles of Rev. Canon Chasuble and Lane, the butler.
Wilde’s comedy of friendships and falsehoods has entertained audiences for more than a century, and the Grand is promising “a big bold idea” to its production, artistic director Rachel Peake says.
Director Alistair Newton has introduced a new character, Lady Stella Clinton – also known as Ernest Boulton, Lady Stella was a 19th-century queer trailblazer who famously fainted when she was found innocent in the trial of the century, after being arrested for wearing women’s clothes – and Gilbert and Sullivan.
He says his update will allow us to polish dusty old ideas about late Victorian society.
“Wilde’s plays have the potential to illuminate the 19th century in ways that challenge many of these preconceptions, full as they are of secret codes, hidden symbols, double entendres, and perhaps above all, delightful paradoxes.”
Toronto-based Ben, whose career has included a multi-year Shaw Festival run, last appeared in the Grand in productions of The Lion in Winter, Dry Streak and A Christmas Carol (2008). His television work has included a recurring role on the Murdoch Mysteries.
The production is on stage through April 12, with a Canada Life Pay-What-You-Can performance at 2 p.m. on March 29.
Click to grandtheatre.com.
Getting back on track
The Easter Bunny is going to have to hitch a ride elsewhere this year, but the Port Stanley Terminal Rail hopes to be back on track with tourist trains by the beginning of May.
With repairs now underway to a vintage bridge over Kettle Creek leaving Port Stanley, the railway says it won’t be offering the annual Easter Bunny rides that usually lead off rail company’s yearly schedule.
The railway halted its trains in mid-December following concerns about the safety of the bridge, where erosion had nibbled away the base of a bridge abutment. That forced the cancellation of Port Stanley Terminal Rail’s annual Santa Claus trains.
Bridge repair is expected to be completed by April 3, depending on weather and water. But company president Dan Vernackt is quoted saying that was too late for Easter trains, which run between Port Stanley and a historic railway stop at Whytes Park north of Port off Fruit Ridge Line, where the Easter Bunny greets children with a wave and candy.
In operation for more than 40 years, the volunteer run railway says it is the longest-running tourist attraction in Elgin and is a major contributor to the local economy.
The railway feared a $500,000 repair bill for the bridge but was able to obtain a quote for $370,000. All the same. It is seeking funding sources to assist with cost.
People culpa. Tom Martin and Jerome Thomas were misidentified in last Friday’s print edition of the Times-Journal after captions under their photographs where inadvertently switched. The two were headlining a charity concert on the weekend in St Thomas.
Spring has (kind of) sprung
Well, it hasn’t come a moment too soon!
Spring, and, hopefully, spring weather, arrives 10:42 EDT on Friday morning.
I’m sure I am not the only person who will be glad to see winter 2025-26 in the rearview mirror.
“We’re all hoping for a nice, warm, sunny Easter,” says Darren Harvey, St. Thomas’s supervisor of roads and traffic.
He says this winter past, with its freeze-thaw cycles, has created more potholes than usual on city streets. And while city crews are out daily filling holes with cold patch, “it’s an unending battle until temperatures warm up.”
And with that thought, here’s best wishes for the coming season.
This corner will return.
ericbunnellspeople@gmail.com
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