Youth choirs in concert cape weekend of musical remembrance at the NAC

Jack Layton believed in the power of young people to change the world.

On the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, his inspiring words were sung by the young people at a wonderful concert at the National Arts Center's Southam Hall.

The free concert took place at the National War Memorial and featured Bundesjugendorchester (Germany's National Youth Orchestra), with members of the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, participants from Ottawa's OrKidstra, and choral ensembles from De La Salle and Canterbury high schools and the University of Ottawa.

NAC music director Alexander Shelley, 39, was the eldest musician on stage, while the youngest were the eight-year-olds of OrKidstra, a program that gives children the opportunity to sing and play music together, no matter what their cultural background.

It was a joy to hear the pure, clear voices of OrKidstra soloist Nura Evans and his young friends convey Layton's vision in To Young Canadians, the piece composed by James Wright, with lyrics based on the letter written by the late NDP leader Layton before he died.

Accompanying them was the German orchestra, whose members range in age from 14-19. Shelley, who conducted the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra for fluent years German, has worked with the country's youth orchestra for several years, too, helping them achieve a level of musicianship that was well beyond their years. Shelley, by the way, Orkidstra singers at the forefront of the stage, as the audience demonstrates their appreciation with an enthusiastic standing ovation.

The piece is one of several highlights of a program that includes the world premiere of a three-part song cycle commissioned by Canadian actor / playwright RH Thomson and The World Remembers, a project to collect the names of the million who died during the Great War.

"We are here to remember with music," said Thomson in his introduction. "Music is the purest of all art forms, the most direct forms of music.

The song cycle with the Abigail Richardson-Schulte composition, Song of the Poets. John McCrae poem, In Flander 's Fields, it was a poignant starting point.

Song of the Mothers, composed by Meiro Stamm with lyrics based on French, German and French mothers, captured a range of emotions, from urgency to frustration to loss and heartache. Song of the Soldiers, by Vancouver's Jeffrey Ryan, with lyrics written by soldiers' letters home, on the theme of 'boys' voices, set against a majestic bottom end and the echo of marching drums.

The program also shed light on the Indigenous wartime perspective with a fearless solo performance by poet-composer-flutist Barbara Croall, and a reading of the hard-hitting poem, I Love This Land, written and performed by Chief R. Stacey Laforme from Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation. It served as a reminder of the treatment of Indigenous veterans after the war. "So you were given land, property, while I waited and waited," Laforme read.

Christine Donkin's Udo, Shalom, a chorus of peace and blessings in the world of peace and tranquility. Hill.

For Shelley, it was the conclusion of a weekend that he described as the most "fulfilling" of his career at the NAC.

"I'm a Brit who has been made to feel at home in Canada and in Germany, and I see the shared values ​​of these countries," he said in an interview backstage. "All three countries feel like home, and to separate them would feel incomplete.

"The 100th anniversary of Armistice Day is not going to come back again in my lifetime. It's a very special moment in history, and I feel very privileged that I'm here with these young people. They represent the values ​​we want to pbad on when we remember: The ideas of openness, tolerance, listening, commitment, caring. I think it's a beautiful thing that they were sitting side by side, the generations and the nations, at this moment in time. "

On Friday, the conductor of the NAC Orchestra, the German youths, several adults and young choirs, and three soloists in NACO's first performance of Benjamin Britten's 1962 masterpiece, War Requiem, a great pacifist statement designed to be performed by nations together.

With close to 300 people on stage, it was a major undertaking that was required a few years ago, and a powerful musical conversation between the soloists, Russian soprano Albina Shagimuratova, Canadian-American tenor Isaiah Bell and Canadian baritone James Westman, on the futility of war.

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