Carolling and Concerts

Every December the Rotarians in town sponsor a "soup and buns with carolling" lunch for all downtowners - it's held outside, on the main corner (the Post Office, Canada Trust, License Bureau, A&W on all four corners respectively), and welcomes all comers. This year it was on Friday December 14, and as a member of the choir I received the call for "carollers needed!". So of course I went.

The streetscape is definitely wintery - the right setting for carolling - as the lit sign on the YK Centre Building testifies.

- 24: actually not so bad, although when you stand around in it for an hour or so without quite the right boots you do get cold. To help the carollers stay warm a heater was set up:

The heater works on propane, as you can see from the tank, and had issues staying lit - at one point it was carried INside the Canada Post building for maintenance (NO, I was protesting silently - no propane INdoors! but it all worked out, obviously Yellowknifers know their way around propane tanks).

The soup, made and donated by the ever-generous Chef Pierre, steamed its aroma into the air and attracted lots of customers:

And of course we valiant choristers filled the air with our carols - great fun. That's my sister Trudy third from left - she's wearing one of the traditional northern parkas, as is Mari on the far left.

In addition, my choir - Aurora Chorealis - put on two performances of its annual Christmas concert, at St. Patrick's Catholic Church. A beautiful program around the theme "Magnificat" - the magnum mysterium that is at the heart of the Christian Christmas story. The poster:



We did credit to some challenging music: among the pieces were Christine Donkin's "music of the spheres" Magnificat, Lauridsen's O Magnun Mysterium, Don MacDonald's beautiful Tabula Rasa. We ended with a rousing rendition of Rachmaninov's Bogoroditse Devo, in which the basses outdid themselves in an excellent approximation of the rich male Russian voice (there are renditions by others of all of these on YouTube, if you're interested).

Unfortunately, I can't show any pictures of the choir itself - copyright issues or privacy issues or something of that nature, but I will put in a picture of me with my music folder. Credit for the sparkly top goes to my sister, from whom I borrowed it! Looking at my fellow singers during that performance, I was astonished at how fond I have grown of so many of them in the short three months I've been a choir member. Yellowknife is a magical place in that regard, at least for me.