With 4,500 singers and hundreds of choirs, it may be a bigger festival than they’re used to, but that won’t stop Powell River Youth Choir from jet-setting to Torino, Italy on July 24 to participate in Europa Cantat, an international festival celebrating choral music.
This is the eighth time conductor Paul Cummings has taken a group to the festival, which happens once every three years. He keeps coming back, he said, because of the great experience. “Performing our music and sharing music with all the other people...it’s just extremely fulfilling,” Cummings explained. “You get to meet people from all over the world.”
Twenty-eight members of the youth choir ranging from ages 14 to 25 will be making the trip this year, one of the biggest groups Cummings has ever travelled with.
Two concert spots have been allotted to the group and the choir has prepared everything from classical music to African songs, complete with clapping and panting. They will also be performing two pieces by Tobin Stokes, the Victoria-based composer who was born and raised in Powell River.
“I think it’s really important for my students and for the audience to have a good variety of music,” Cummings explained. “It keeps them guessing about what’s coming up next, takes them on a bit of an emotional roller coaster.”
Choirs can also sign up for any of the 50 workshops offered by the festival, each led by different conductors from around the world. The youth choir has signed up for workshops on everything from gospel to 1970s pop, but a highlight, said Cummings, will be the four-day class on Italian Romantic music.
“We’ll be doing that workshop in a palace that was built during the Romantic era,” he explained. “So that’s one thing we can check off our tourist list.”
On the way to Torino, the choir will stop over in Paris for a couple of days to have a bit of tourist fun. Though no concerts are planned for their time in the French capital, Cummings said there will definitely be some impromptu performances.
“Some of the cathedrals, for instance, like Notre Dame. I’m sure we’re not allowed to sing there, but we’ll probably sing until they tell us to stop.”
Cummings said the coupling of travel and music is what draws him to the choral festival, and allows him and his choir to immerse themselves in the music and culture of the country. Another great thing, he added, is meeting locals who “can get you off the tourist track.”
This experience and exploration, he continued, gives choir members a sense of confidence.
“I find that, when we get off the plane in Paris for instance, everybody follows me pretty closely. I’ll stop and they’ll bump into me,” he explained. But as the two weeks unfold, he can see the youth grow more assured and knowledgeable. “It sounds like an exaggeration, but I swear, some of the students on these trips, they leave as adolescents and they come back adults.”
The best part of the trip for Cummings is seeing his choir’s reactions to their experiences. “You can just see the growth,” he said, “and afterwards, they’re often bound and determined to carry on with travel and music.”
