Borderlands covers musical gamut
November 27, 2003
Sirens meet Sing!: Project Sing!, a 22-voice female choir, rehearses for Borderlands, a concert they'll sing at the Wolf Performance Hall tomorrow with the award-winning Canadian folk group the Sirens. -- (London Free Press/Sue Reeve)
Out in the borderlands, things are always edgy. The musical reflection of that edginess, blended with an underlying optimism, shapes Borderlands tomorrow night at the Wolf Performance Hall.
Fusing folk and choral traditions, Borderlands brings together Project Sing!, a 22-voice female choral ensemble guided by award-winning conductor Jennifer Moir, and Sirens, an award-winning London vocal trio. The show is billed as a fusion of music, voice, dance and other multi-disciplinary elements.
It all happens somewhere near the borders of choral, theatrical and music theatre productions, Moir says.
"I’ll be conducting on the stage and then I’m singing with Sirens and playing a djembe (an African drum)," Moir smiles at the way the evening is pulling its participants in new directions. Her singers are being asked to emphasize a theatrical individuality not often demanded in regular choral work. Sirens have composed a song cycle to complement material Project Sing! has developed in recent years, a new assignment for this year’s London Music Awards folk honourees. Sirens’ contribution reflects the "earth and sky and all things that therein lie" concept of the program.
Tomorrow’s performance premieres the Snow Angel song cycle, a major work by Sarah Quartel, a young London composer and UWO Don Wright faculty of music student. Quartel is majoring in composition at Western. She is also one of Moir’s voice students there. Project Sing! had commissioned earlier Snow Angel works from Quartel. This time, a narrative by Victoria, B.C., writer Lisa Helps is being blended with Quartel’s extended composition.
The Snow Angel song cycle takes place in an urban/graffiti setting and is about the relationship between angels and people. The Sirens song cycle is the relationship between humans and nature and the seasons that represent various stages in life: birth, teen, middle and old age in a sitting-on-the-dock in a Northern Ontario setting.
"Hopefully, we’re making accessible (to a new audience) an art form that, to some, seems elitist," Moir says.
An accomplished soprano, Moir grew up in London and graduated from Lucas secondary school. She is a Western music grad. As a member of the Don Wright faculty, she conducts les Choristes and maintains a voice studio. She initiated The World Awaits, an earlier work with Project Sing!, in 2000.
Sirens and Moir believe Borderlands will have an extended existence through a future tour.