Featured soloists: Hannah Pagenkopf & Nicholas Allen

Our two soloists for tomorrow (Wednesday) night’s collaborative production of Fauré’s Requiem are soprano Hannah Pagenkopf and baritone Nicholas Allen.

Hannah Pagenkopf, soprano

Praised for the “special, silvery beauty and expressiveness” of her singing (Calgary Herald), soprano Hannah Pagenkopf has been featured extensively as a soloist and performer in Calgary and abroad. She has appeared with several orchestras including the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, Red Deer Symphony Orchestra, and most recently with Alberta’s new Baroque chamber orchestra Rosa Barocca in a period performance of J.S. Bach’s Magnificat.

In addition to her role as soprano section principal of the Calgary Philharmonic Chorus, Hannah appears with a variety of choirs and musical organizations including Luminous Voices, Early Music Voices, Cowtown Opera, Mountain View Festival of Song and Chamber Music, the Calgary Bach Society and the Pro Arts Society, among others.  Other highlights include two solo recitals in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, participating in the Neil Semer Vocal Institute in Germany, and performing Mozart's Exsultate, jubilate with the CPO as a finalist in the RBC Concerto Competition at the University of Calgary, from which she holds a degree in Linguistics.

Nicholas Allen, baritone

Nicholas Allen is a native Calgarian who endeavoured into a life of music at an early age. He has been playing piano as well as singing in choirs for the last 20 years, including 2 years with the prestigious Vienna Boys Choir. He completed a degree in Music Education from UVic, studying voice under Benjamin Butterfield and singing with the UVic Chamber Singers and UVic Vocal Jazz. As a classical soloist he has performed  with VoiceScapes multiple times since to 2009, as well as with the Calgary Bach Society in 2014 and with many orchestras across Vancouver Island. Last year he performed the role of Peter in a reconstruction of Bach’s St. Mark Passion performed by the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. He is currently singing professionally at Knox Presbyterian Church and as principal bass with the Calgary Philharmonic Chorus. He currently works as a Junior High teacher in the Calgary Catholic School District.

Guest Artist: Neil Cockburn

We not only share the stage with the Calgary Philharmonic Chorus on Wednesday, but also with one of the renowned organists in the city: Dr. Neil Cockburn! Neil will join us on Fauré's Requiem, both works by Dove, and the Te Deum in C by Benjamin Britten. And because we are performing in the Jack Singer Concert Hall, Neil will play the magnificent 6,008-pipe Carthy organ built by Casavant Frères.

About Neil Cockburn

Dr. Neil Cockburn
Art of Miro Photography, 2017

Dr. Neil Cockburn is an international prize-winning organist. Celebrate for his diverse repertoire interests and expertise, he performs an all-encompassing spectrum of solo organ recitals on a wide range of instrument types, from all-Bach recitals on historically inspired organs, to symphonic programmes on romantic instruments, and concerts of entirely new works. His most recent solo recording is of the Mass on the Sixth Tone with three Magnificat Suites by the seventeenth-century French composer, André Raison.

Born in Scotland, Neil's musical education was at Oxford University (BA Hons, Music), the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, UK (MusM, Organ Performance, and the Professional Performance Diploma, PPRNCM), the Conservatoire National de Région Rueil-Malmaison, France (Premier prix de perfectionnement), and the University of Calgary (PhD, Musicology). His formative teachers and mentors include David Sanger, Margaret Phillips, and Dame Gillian Weir. He won First Prize at the 1996 Dublin International Organ Competition, and has received numerous other prestigious awards, including the W. T. Best Memorial Organ Scholarship (UK), a scholarship from the Countess of Munster Musical Trust (UK), and the Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund Prize, which was awarded by an international panel of judges.

As a harpsichord and continuo player, Neil performs regularly with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. With theorbists Victor Coelho and David Dolata and the group Il Furioso, he performed harpsichord continuo on two recordings of early seventeenth-century Italian repertoire for the Toccata Classics label: recordings of the music of G.G. Kapsberger and B. Castaldi. From 2000-2015, he was Head of Organ Studies at Mount Royal Conservatory. He is currently Director of Music at the Cathedral Church of the Redeemer (Anglican) in Calgary.

The Carthy Organ

The 6,008-pipe Carthy organ built by Casavant Frères, was purchased with a $750,000 donation from the Carthy Foundation of Calgary, in memory of Margaret Mannix. Designed for both solo recitals and works with full orchestra, it was first heard in concert on 6 May 1987, played by Simon Preston, with the Calgary Philharmonic under Mario Bernardi. This gift inspired the organization of the Calgary International Organ Festival, first held in October 1990.

VIDEO... Watch a feature of Neil Cockburn playing the Carthy Organ at the Jack Singer Hall, provided by the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra.

VIDEO... Learn more about the history of the Carthy Organ with a feature by KSPS Public Television.

Jonathan Dove

In addition to two works by Benjamin Britten, our collaborative concert with the Calgary Philharmonic Chorus will feature two works by British composer Jonathan Dove.

About Jonathan Dove

“Not since Benjamin Britten has a British composer succeeded in writing operas which communicate with such clarity and coherence to their audience as those by Jonathan Dove.”

— The Gramophone

Jonathan Dove’s music has filled opera houses with delighted audiences of all ages on five continents. In addition, his innate understanding of the individual voice is exemplified in his large and varied choral and song output.

Dove’s early musical experience came from playing the piano, organ and viola. Later he studied composition with Robin Holloway at Cambridge and, after graduation, worked as a freelance accompanist, repetiteur, animateur and arranger. His early professional experience gave him a deep understanding of singers and the complex mechanics of the opera house. Opera and the voice have been the central priorities in Dove’s output throughout his subsequent career. He was Artistic Director of the Spitalfields Festival from 2001 to 2006.

Luminous Voices is no stranger to the works of Jonathan Dove. Audiences to our New Year's Eve concerts may remember our performance of The Passing of the Year to ring in 2016. We also programmed Seek Him That Maketh the Seven Stars to ring in 2017, and we are excited to perform it again, this time joined by the Calgary Philharmonic Chorus. We will also sing Bless the Lord, O My Soul with the Chorus. Both works feature organ accompaniment by Neil Cockburn.

Composer notes:
Seek Him That Maketh the Seven Stars

The theme of light, and star-light in particular, is an endless source of inspiration for composers. I came across these words about light and stars while looking for a text to set as an anthem for the Royal Academy of Arts’ annual Service for Artists: I thought these images would have a special meaning for visual artists. The anthem begins with a musical image of the night sky, a repeated organ motif of twinkling stars that sets the choir wondering who made them. The refrain ‘Seek him’ starts in devotional longing but is eventually released into a joyful dance, finally coming to rest in serenity.

Composer notes:
Bless the Lord, O My Soul

Bless the Lord, O My Soul was commissioned by a group of people whose early lives were dedicated to choral singing. I wanted their Millennium Anthem to be a celebration of song, and Psalm 104 provided a wonderful sequence of expansive imagery. The organ part is quite virtuosic, beginning with a flourishing fanfare suggesting a heavenly vision, which provokes the choir into a wordless cry of wonder; in contrast, their first words are hushed, awe-struck. The organ creates a backdrop of twinkling stars for ‘who coverest thyself with light’ and a calm sea for ‘who layest the beams of his chambers in the waters’. The hushed ‘bless the lord’ returns, but now fast and loud, ushering in the most dramatic imagery: the chariot of clouds, the wings of the wind, and finally the depiction of God’s ministers as a ‘flaming fire’.

Benjamin Britten

Two of the works on our collaborative program with the Calgary Philharmonic Chorus were composed by the great British composer Benjamin Britten.

About Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten
(1913-1976)

Benjamin Britten is perhaps one of the best-known British composers of the twentieth century. His early musical life was dominated by the classical masters; his mother's ambition was for him to become the "Fourth B" – after Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London and privately with the composer Frank Bridge.

Through his association with Frank Bridge, Britten discovered the music of Debussy and Ravel, as well as Schoenberg and Berg. At the same time, Britten developed a lasting hostility towards the English pastoral school represented by Vaughan Williams and Ireland, whose work he compared unfavourably with the "brilliant folk-song arrangements of Percy Grainger" (in an ironic twist, Grainger became the inspiration of many of Britten's later folk arrangements). Besides his growing attachments to the works of 20th century masters, Britten – along with his contemporary Michael Tippett – was devoted to the English music of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, in particular the work of Purcell. Britten was also heavily influenced by Gustav Mahler; Britten would incorporate many of Mahler’s popular tunes in his own compositions.

Britten's compositional output including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. His first opera, Peter Grimes, premiered in 1945 and brought him considerable notoriety; he would write another 14 operas, establishing himself as one of the leading 20th-century composers in the genre. In defining his mission as a composer of opera, Britten wrote: "One of my chief aims is to try to restore to the musical setting of the English Language a brilliance, freedom and vitality that have been curiously rare since the death of Purcell". In addition to Peter Grimes, Britten's operatic output includes well-known titles such as Albert Herring, The Rape of Lucretia, and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

For our collaborative concert with the Calgary Philharmonic Chorus, we will perform Britten's Te Deum in C, and his Hymn to St. Cecilia.

Te Deum in C

The Te Deum in C is a sacred choral composition, a setting of the Te Deum on the English text from the Book of Common Prayer. Britten wrote it in 1934 between 11 July and 17 September, scored for treble solo, four-part choir (SATB) and organ. Hannah Pagenkopf, the soprano section principal for the Calgary Philharmonic Chorus, will be featured in this performance.

Hymn to St. Cecilia

Britten's Hymn to St Cecilia Op. 27 is an unaccompanied (i.e., a cappella) choral piece that sets the poetry of W. H. Auden. It was completed in 1942. For a long time Britten had wanted to compose a piece dedicated to St Cecilia. Firstly, he was born on St Cecilia's day; secondly, St Cecilia is the patron saint of music; and finally, there is a long tradition in England of writing odes and songs to St Cecilia.

The text itself follows in the tradition of odes, including an invocation to the muse: "Blessed Cecilia/Appear in visions to all musicians/Appear and inspire". Britten uses this as a refrain throughout the piece.

Luminous Voices will perform Hymn to St. Cecilia on its own; we will combine forces with the Calgary Philharmonic Chorus and organist Neil Cockburn for the Te Deum in C.

The Calgary Philharmonic Chorus

We are pleased to collaborate for this concert with the Calgary Philharmonic Chorus. The Chorus, led by Chorus Master Timothy Shantz, is a group of over 150 voluntary singers who perform diverse repertoire including oratorio, opera, light classics, contemporary music, and pops. The Chorus is featured in approximately eight concerts with the Orchestra each season.

Established in 1963, the Chorus works with the Orchestra to achieve excellence in the performance of choral music and to promote the enjoyment and development of choral singing in the Calgary community. Chorus members come from all walks of life and include physicians, students, lawyers and stay-at-home parents who dedicate more than 19,000 hours annually to rehearsals and performances. The Chorus is proud to perform for local charities during the Christmas season and often takes part in community education and outreach activities with the Orchestra throughout the year.

The Chorus has participated in choral festivals across Canada, been featured in live recordings, and performed for Queen Elizabeth II in a special presentation conducted by the late Mario Bernardi, CPO Music Director Emeritus.

The Calgary Philharmonic Chorus is an auditioned ensemble that rehearses Wednesday evenings from 7:30-9:45 pm. Auditions take place June 18, 20 & 23, 2018. For information, contact Bernie Constantin, manager of the Calgary Philharmonic Chorus.

DID YOU KNOW... The Calgary Philharmonic Chorus and Luminous Voices have a lot of shared history. In addition to being led by Timothy Shantz, two of this season's section principals of the Calgary Philharmonic Chorus are also founding choristers with Luminous Voices.