DaCapo choir gets it right (May ’08)
05/08/2008 The Record Marcia Adair You can count on two things with the DaCapo Chamber Choir: an expertly controlled English cathedral choir sound and thoughtful programming that embraces abstraction while steering well clear of pretension. Saturday’s concert at St John The Evangelist, Kitchener, was yet another example of how this choir is getting it right. Entitled Reaching Beyond, the program explored the ideas of love and eternity through music that, according to the notes, “frees us from this muddy vesture of decay.” Saxophonist Willem Moolenbeek joined...
Read MoreDaCapo embarks on potent journey (Record review Nov. 17/08)
11/17/2008 The Record Susan Deefholts Attending a DaCapo Chamber Choir concert is like embarking on a potent, conceptual journey, thanks to director Leonard Enns’s careful selection of pieces, the order in which they are performed and the high quality of the performances themselves. photo taken by Ryan Moffat, Riverstone Photography The DaCapo choir’s first in a trilogy of concerts, which took place at St. John the Evangelist Church Saturday night, centred on the imagery of Earth, both as an encompassing, safe place of final rest and as the source of life and...
Read MoreDaCapo caps season with a masterful show of colour and texture (The Record – May 11/09)
05/11/2009 The Record Marcia Adair The DaCapo Chamber Choir gave an outstanding performance Saturday night at St John the Evangelist in Kitchener, an outcome that occurs with such regularity it isn’t really news. For the last concert of their 10th anniversary season, DaCapo finished up their Earth, Water, Fire & Air- themed season with the last two elements. The evening opened with a long note improvisation. Function (mimicking the Introit in Anglo-Catholic liturgy) was more important than substance in this case and the improvisation provided an imaginative way for the audience to...
Read MoreDaCapo opens with brilliant effort
11/15/2009 The Record Marcia Adair Saturday evening was the the DaCapo Chamber Choir’s opening concert and it was, in a word, brilliant. Their concerts are always beautifully sung and thoughtfully programmed, but at Saturday’s concert at St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church in Kitchener, the stars aligned to create something truly special. This is my third season covering DaCapo and in each concert director Leonard Enns has gently and quietly experimented with the traditional piece-applause structure. Themes are usually big ideas (love, fire, the number three), which gives Enns tremendous...
Read MoreDaCapo choir fares well out of its comfort zone
03/02/2010 The Record Marcia Adair One of the most beguiling things about the DaCapo Chamber Choir is that their director, Leonard Enns, assumes audiences handle an intellectually substantial and emotionally difficult program. It is an approach more novel than it might initially seem. Most programmers, labour under the assumption that audiences aren’t interested in anything unpleasant or unfamiliar. If bums in seats metric by which artistic success is measured, then Enns is definitely on to something. The first and last concerts in the 2009/10 series explored the hope/despair dichotomy and...
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