Arise, Arise!

The season opens with Arise, Arise! on November 12. A performance at All Saints’ Cathedral with organist Jeremy Spurgeon the program explores themes of longing and fulfilment, reflecting on universal human experiences as expressed in the choral tradition across history and place.

Encompassing joy and sorrow, reflection, awe, and wonder; Arise, Arise! is a celebration of Canadian music and of the choral canon, presenting music by a wide array of new and Canadian composers including Andrew Balfour, Stuart Beatch, Eleanor Daley, Jeff Enns, Hussein Janmohamed, Carmine Lappano, Stephanie Martin, and Trent Worthington alongside newer works by Esenvalds, Whitacre, and Runestad and beloved classics by Bach, Mendelssohn, and Brahms.

In a program of joyful and introspective works, Arise, Arise! invites the audience to consider our impermanence in the face of death and loss. Starting from the direction of “here, inside” in Omaa Binding by Andrew Balfour, we are led through these works to consider the ephemeral nature of the good things in life.

And yet, in music from Bach to Beatch we are invited to respond not with despair but with gratitude and joyful appreciation. In Eleanor Daley’s In Remembrance we are instructed “Do not stand at my grave and weep,” as the program presents luminous and joyful responses reminding us that while all things come to an end, love and music live on in our hearts, never to die.