Top 10 Reasons to attend A Luminous New Year's Eve

What are you doing New Year's Eve? Hopefully it's coming to A Luminous New Year's Eve! Tickets are going quickly -- they're a great gift for the music lover in your family!

- Tickets: http://luminousnye3.bpt.me
- Two-concert subscription: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3118232

We've put together another Top 10 list of reasons for why you should attend! We'll post our list across our social media channels including Facebook, Twitter & Instagram, so connect with one (or all) accounts today! Look out for entries everyday over the next two weeks!

Remember Reason #3 from last year's list? We posted on Twitter & Instagram about a mystery baritone soloist for the jazz standard What Are You Doing New Year's Eve? that turned out to be none other than our founding director Timothy Shantz! We're again including the standard on our program this year but Tim has said he won't sing it... who will it be this year? Stay tuned!

Jean Mouton and his 'Nesciens Mater Virgo virum'

With such a variety of music on our programme for A Luminous New Year's Eve every year, the event is fast becoming a hot ticket in Calgary. Tickets are still available but going fast so reserve yours today - and remember: for the first time, we perform our New Year's Eve concert at the Bella Concert Hall at Mount Royal University!

For a number of our Luminous Voices, one of the biggest thrills in singing with the ensemble is an opportunity to tackle beautiful music from the Renaissance. That tradition continues on New Year's Eve, with Jean Mouton's Nesciens Mater Virgo virum on the programme.

Jean Mouton
(c. 1459-1522)

About Jean Mouton

Jean Mouton was a highly influential French composer and teacher of the Renaissance. A principal composer of the French court, one of his students was Adriaan Willaert, the Flemish composer who contributed greatly to the development of the Italian madrigal, and established Venice as an influential musical centre in the 16th century.

"Mouton was clearly an important figure," says Timothy Shantz, founding director of Luminous Voices. "His music appears in all the standard music history books. His music is known for its refinement and beauty."

Because he was a principal composer for the French court, many of Mouton's works survive. He often composed music for state occasions such as weddings, coronations, papal elections, births, and deaths. His catalogue of work includes:

- 100+ motets, including the Nesciens Mater Virgo virum
- 15 Masses
- Nine settings of the Magnificat
- 20 chansons 

Compositional style

There are two aspects of Mouton's compositional language that perhaps sets himself apart from his contemporaries of the Renaissance.

1. A continuous flow of vocal lines. The 'older style' of Renaissance composition placed music into clearly defined sections. Instead, Mouton emphasized a continuous flow of vocal lines from beginning to end.
2. The use of canon. Mouton was a master of canon. His Nesciens Mater Virgo virum demonstrates his prowess at the art of canon; the work is a quadruple canon at an interval of the fifth, proceeding a space of two measures.

Nesciens Mater Virgo virum

LATIN:

Nesciens Mater Virgo virum,
peperit sine dolore Salvatorem saeculorum,
ipsum Regem angelorum.
Sola Virgo lactabat,
ubere de caelo pleno.

TRANSLATION:

Not knowing a man, the Virgin Mary has brought forth without pain the Saviour of the centuries, Him, the King of the angels.
The only Virgin gave milk, her breasts full by heavenly act.

In the Roman Catholic liturgical year, the season of Christmas begins on Christmas Day and continues to the Feast of the Epiphany. The text of Nesciens Mater Virgo virum is an antiphon for the Nativity.

"I first heard this motet sung by The Tallis Scholars but also heard it recently on CBC Radio on Choral Concert," says Shantz.  "It was perfect timing for adding to this concert. The stunning sound of the eight-part counterpoint is spellbinding."

Come hear Luminous Voices perform this masterwork at the Bella Concert Hall on New Year's Eve! Like our performances of Renaissance masterworks such as Tallis' Spem in alium and Ockaghem's Deo Gratia, this will be a performance you, your family and friends will want to experience in person!

Tickets for A Luminous New Year's Eve: http://luminousnye3.bpt.me

Contact us for a two-concert season subscription, which includes tickets for both A Luminous New Year's Eve AND Leap of Faith!

The world-renowned Tallis Scholars perform 'Nesciens mater virgo virum' by Jean Nesciens at the Auditorium di Santo Stefano al Ponte, Firenze (2014).

Warming up the New Year with Bob Chilcott

We're only a few weeks away from A Luminous New Year's Eve! Tickets are going quickly, so reserve them now!

Our program will have two works composed by Bob Chilcott. The British composer has a large catalogue of works, especially of choral repertoire. Born in 1955, Chilcott sang in the famous Choir of King's College, Cambridge, as well as the King's Singers, a popular ensemble with whom he sang from 1985 to 1997.

Bob Chilcott (BBC Music Magazine)

Chilcott started composing more prolifically in 1997. Today, he is regarded as "one of the finest choral composers at work in Britain today" (Gramophone Magazine) and "a contemporary hero of British Choral Music" (The Observer). His works continue to be widely programmed by choirs of all ages around the world.

"I write music I think people will be able to sing and that they might enjoy," Chilcott said in an interview in 2015. "I’ve gained a lot of practical experience of what people are able to do and how to transport that feeling into writing something that will motivate them to sing. It’s important to be very encouraging to others and really enable people to do things."

We asked a few of our Luminous Voices about what makes Chilcott's music so popular to program.

“I write music I think people will be able to sing and that they might enjoy. I’ve gained a lot of practical experience of what people are able to do and how to transport that feeling into writing something that will motivate them to sing. It’s important to be very encouraging to others and really enable people to do things.”

— Bob Chilcott (2015, BBC Music Magazine)

"Chilcott's compositions are tuneful, imaginative, accessible and effective," says Paul Grindlay, Artistic Director of the Calgary Boys' Choir and a bass-baritone with Luminous Voices. "There is usually enough spirituality or pathos in his music to make it thoughtful, but enough humour to keep it light and playful, so it appeals to many. You often find yourself wanting to snap your fingers in a lot his music!"

"Chilcott’s music is just *fun* to conduct," says Fabiana Katz, a Vancouver-based conductor and mezzo-soprano who will sing in her first production with Luminous Voices at A Luminous New Year's Eve. "It is rhythmic, and full of variety. He gives the conductor a lot of opportunity for calling out interpretive expression and articulation in the music, which is fun and engaging for the conductor, the singers and the audience!"

For Timothy Shantz, founding artistic director of Luminous Voices, Bob Chilcott is a "singer's composer".

"Chilcott knows how to write for singers and it feels natural to sing his melodic lines," says Shantz. "I think of Chilcott as almost like a natural heir to John Rutter, because of his tuneful and approachable style."

Luminous Voices audiences may remember the song Sun, Moon, Sea and Stars from our Love's Joy Awakened concert in June 2017. We loved it so much that we're bringing it back for New Year's Eve! Listen to that June 2017 performance, which features baritone Jordan Van Biert and soprano Benila Ninan

Available now: Two-concert Season Subscriptions!

Still basking in the memory of the glorious sounds of Pärt's Berliner Messe, the concert that kicked off our fifth-anniversary season? (Be sure to read the review by the Calgary Herald!)

Eager for more of our singing? Or perhaps introduce friends and family to our concerts?

Get a two-concert season subscription! They make great gifts! A two-concert season subscription gets you tickets to:

1. A Luminous New Year's Eve, which has become a wonderful Calgary tradition, complete with chocolates and sparkling wine!
2. Leap of Faith, at which we will premiere another Canadian choral work, composed by Halifax-based composer Peter-Anthony Togni for choir and two flutes.

Hope to see you at our next concerts!

A few of Tim's favourite things

“This concert could be titled “Some of my favourite choral music”.”

— Tim Shantz

When you're as experienced a musician as Timothy Shantz, there's a lot of music you can put into a concert. So why did he choose these four pieces specifically -- works by Johannes Brahms, Frank Martin, Arvo Pärt and Tarik O'Regan -- to open Luminous Voices' fifth-anniversary season?

Tickets -- http://berlinermesse.bpt.me
Season subscriptions -- http://luminousvoices1718.bpt.me