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Montero's Latin Concerto

& Shelley conducts Ravel

2024-05-09 20:00 2024-05-09 23:00 60 Canada/Eastern 🎟 NAC: Montero's Latin Concerto

https://nac-cna.ca/en/event/36309

NAC Livestream

The NAC Orchestra is proud to present this concert as part of NACO’s Mentorship Program. This program provides aspiring young orchestral musicians three immersive and inspiring weeks working side by side with NACO musicians in a professional orchestra setting. Feel all the passion and sizzle of Latin America as NAC Orchestra Creative Partner Gabriela Montero performs her Latin Concerto, “a portrait of Latin America in all its splendour.”  Venezuelan...

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Online
Thu, May 9, 2024
Thu, May 9, 2024
NAC Livestream

≈ 120 minutes · With intermission

Last updated: May 14, 2024

Program

JIMMY LÓPEZ BELLIDO Aino* (14 min)

GABRIELA MONTERO Piano Concerto No. 1, “Latin”* (30 min)
I. Mambo
II. Andante moderato
III. Allegro Venezolano

Gabriela Montero, piano

INTERMISSION

MAURICE RAVEL Daphnis et Chloé (50 min)
Tableau I (A meadow at the edge of a sacred wood) –
Tableau II (Pirates’ camp) –
Tableau III (Scene from the first tableau, at the end of the night)

*Canadian premiere

Synopsis for Daphnis et Chloé

The following synopsis is drawn from the scenic directions printed in the score. The music is continuous throughout.

Tableau I

In a meadow at the edge of a sacred wood. In the background, hills. To the right, stands a grotto hewn out of rock, at the entrance of which is an antique sculpture of three Nymphs. Somewhat toward the background, to the left, a large rock vaguely resembles the form of the god Pan. In the background sheep are grazing. It is a bright spring afternoon. When the curtain rises, the stage is empty.

Introduction.

Youths and girls enter, carrying gifts for the Nymphs in baskets. Gradually the stage fills. The group bows before the altar of the Nymphs. The girls drape the pedestals with garlands.

Religious dance.

In the far background, Daphnis is seen following his flock. Chloé joins him. They proceed toward the altar and disappear at a bend. Daphnis and Chloé enter at the foreground and bow before the Nymphs. The dance ceases. Tender emotion on seeing the couple. The girls entice Daphnis and dance around him. Chloé feels the first twinges of jealousy. At that moment she is swept into the dance of the youths. The cowherd Dorcon proves to be especially bold. Daphnis in turn seems upset.

General dance.

At the end of the dance, Dorcon tries to kiss Chloé. She innocently offers her cheek, but with an abrupt motion Daphnis pushes aside the cowherd and approaches Chloé affectionately. The youths intervene. They position themselves in front of Chloé and gently lead Daphnis away. One of them proposes a dance contest between Daphnis and Dorcon. A kiss from Chloé will be the victor’s prize.

Dorcon’s grotesque dance.

The group sarcastically imitates the clumsy movements of the cowherd, who ends his dance in the midst of general laughter.

Daphnis’s light and graceful dance.

Everyone invites Daphnis to accept his reward. Dorcon comes forward as well, but he is chased off by the group, accompanied by loud laughter. The laughter ceases at the sight of the radiant group formed by the embracing Daphnis and Chloé. The group withdraws, taking along Chloé. Daphnis remains, immobile, as if in ecstasy. Then he lies face down in the grass, his face in his hands.

Lyceion enters. She notices the young shepherd, approaches, and raises his head, placing her hands over his eyes. Daphnis thinks this is a game of Chloé’s, but he recognizes Lyceion and tries to pull away. As though inadvertently, she drops one of her veils. Daphnis picks it up and places it back on her shoulders. She resumes her dance, which, at first more languorous, becomes steadily more animated until the end. Another veil slips to the ground and is, again, retrieved by Daphnis. Vexed, she runs off mocking him, leaving the young shepherd very disturbed.

Warlike sounds and war cries are heard, coming nearer. In the middle ground, women run across the stage, pursued by pirates. Daphnis thinks of Chloé, perhaps in danger, and runs off to save her. Chloé hastens on in panic, seeking shelter. She throws herself before the altar of the Nymphs, beseeching their protection. A group of brigands burst on stage, capture the girl, and carry her off.

Daphnis enters looking for Chloé. He discovers on the ground a sandal that she lost in the struggle. Mad with despair, he curses the deities who were unable to protect the girl and falls swooning at the entrance of the grotto.

As night falls, an unnatural light suffuses the landscape. A little flame shines suddenly from the head of one of the statues. The Nymph comes to life and descends from her pedestal, followed by the second and then the third Nymph. They consult together and begin a slow and mysterious dance. They notice Daphnis, bend down, and dry his tears. They revive him and lead him toward the large rock, and invoke the god Pan. Gradually the form of the god is outlined. Daphnis prostrates himself in supplication. The stage goes dark.

Tableau II

Introduction.

A trumpet calls and the voices come nearer.

There is a dull glimmer. The setting is the pirate camp on a very rugged seacoast, with the sea as the background. To the right and left is a view of large crags. A trireme is seen near the shore and there are cypresses present. Pirates are seen running to and fro carrying plunder. More and more torches are brought, which illuminate the scene.

Warrior dance.

Bryaxis commands that the captive be brought. Chloé, her hands tied, is led in by two pirates. Bryaxis orders her to dance.

Chloé performs a dance of supplication. She tries to flee, but she is brought back violently. Despairing, she resumes her dance. Again, she tries to escape but is brought back again. She abandons herself to despair, thinking of Daphnis. Bryaxis tries to carry her off. Although she beseeches, the leader carries her off triumphantly.

Suddenly the atmosphere seems charged with strange elements. Various places are lit by invisible hands, and little flames flare up. Fantastic beings crawl or leap here and there, and satyrs appear from every side and surround the brigands. The earth opens and the fearsome shadow of Pan is outlined on the hills in the background, making a threatening gesture. Everyone flees in horror.

Tableau III

Scene from the first tableau, at the end of the night.

There is no sound, but the murmur of rivulets produced by the dew that trickles from the rocks. Daphnis lies, still unconscious, at the entrance of the grotto. Gradually the day breaks. The songs of birds are heard. Far off, a shepherd passes with his flock. Another shepherd crosses in the background.

A group of herdsmen enters looking for Daphnis and Chloé. They discover Daphnis and wake him. Anxiously he looks around for Chloé. She appears at last, surrounded by shepherdesses. They throw themselves into each other’s arms. Daphnis notices Chloé’s wreath. His dream was a prophetic vision. The intervention of Pan is manifest. The old shepherd Lammon explains that, if Pan has saved Chloé, it is in memory of the nymph Syrinx, whom the god once loved.

Daphnis and Chloé mime the tale of Pan and Syrinx. Chloé plays the young nymph wandering in the meadow. Daphnis as Pan appears and declares his love. The nymph rebuffs him. The god becomes more insistent. She disappears into the reeds. In despair, he picks several stalks to form a flute and plays a melancholy air. Chloé reappears and interprets through her dance the accents of his flute.

The dance becomes more and more animated, and in a mad whirling, Chloé falls into Daphnis’s arms. Before the altar of the Nymphs, he pledges his love, offering a sacrifice of two sheep.

A group of girls enters dressed as bacchantes, shaking tambourines. Daphnis and Chloé embrace tenderly. A group of youths rushes on stage.  Joyful commotion.

General dance.

English translation from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphnis_et_Chlo%C3%A9, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0

Repertoire

JIMMY LÓPEZ BELLIDO

Aino (Canadian premiere)

An “undeniably exciting composer” (Opera News), with “a brilliant command of orchestral timbres and textures” (Dallas Morning News) and “a virtuoso mastery of the modern orchestra” (The New Yorker), Jimmy López Bellido (b. 1978) has created works performed by leading orchestras around the world and in prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall, Sydney Opera House, Gewandhaus Leipzig, Kennedy Center, Vienna’s Musikverein, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Konzerthaus Berlin, Nordic Music Days, the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games, the Lima 2019 Pan American Games, and the Aspen, Tanglewood, and Grant Park music festivals. Aurora & Ad Astra, his most recent album featuring Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Leticia Moreno, and the Houston Symphony was released on January 14, 2022 on Pentatone. Aurora was nominated for a 2022 Latin Grammy in the “Best Classical Contemporary Composition” category. López completed his three-year tenure as the Houston Symphony’s Composer-in-Residence in the spring of 2020. A native of Lima, he studied at the city’s National Conservatory of Music prior to graduating from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki with a Master of Music degree. López completed his PhD in Music at the University of California-Berkeley.

López wrote the orchestral tone poem Aino in 2022. Commissioned by the Orchestre de Paris, Concertgebouworkest, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the work receives its Canadian premiere tonight. He describes his piece as follows:

Aino contemplates the sea, exquisitely dressed and inconsolable. It’s been three days since she left home, wandering through the woods. At dawn, her eyes still moist, she sees three beautiful maidens atop a headland, bathing in the waters. Enthralled, Aino sheds her clothes and joins them, but as she reaches the summit, the rock begins to sink, taking her to the bottom of the sea and thus silencing her sorrows.

In pure tone poem tradition, Aino follows the story of the eponymous hapless maiden as told in the fourth poem of the Kalevala (Finland’s national epic), but although Aino is the central character of this poem, she is certainly not the only one. There is Joukahainen, her brother, who promises her hand to Väinämöinen in a desperate bid to save his own life. There’s Väinämöinen, the grand and powerful suitor, whose formidable powers can’t prevent him from ultimately losing Aino. There’s Aino’s mother, whose pain at losing her daughter prompts her to cry rivers of tears, which eventually give birth to waterfalls, mountains, and forests; and there’s the hare, who amongst all animals, is entrusted with the bitter task of relaying the news of Aino’s passing.

I first learned of the Kalevala through [the Finnish composer Jean] Sibelius’s oeuvre, but it was not until I moved to Helsinki that I fully grasped the unique place it holds in Finland’s sense of national identity. It therefore came as no surprise when conductor Klaus Mäkelä brought up the story of Aino as a possible source of inspiration for this commission. This piece is first and foremost a gift to Klaus, to whom I am deeply grateful for taking my music with him wherever he goes, but it is also a homage to the country that welcomed me as a young student, and with which I still have very strong and loving ties.

As soon as I read Aino’s story, I was struck by its rich sound world, which although not obvious at first, becomes clear as the poem progresses. The anguished sobs of Aino; the mesmerizing vision of the three maidens bathing; the rock sinking to the bottom of the sea; the hare running across the forest to relay the news; the mother wailing upon learning of her daughter’s fate, and the waterfalls, golden mountains, and trees that emerge from her endless stream of tears; and finally, the three cuckoos, singing eerily atop three birch trees. All these elements offer a plethora of tantalizing sounds, all of which inspired and guided the way I orchestrated the piece. The cuckoo’s song, due to its universally known musical cadence, makes a prominent appearance at the climax across all instrumental sections, and makes its presence felt all the way up until the end (on glockenspiel). But I also chose to thread the cuckoo’s song into an earlier musical motive: my imagined “song of the three maidens”, uttered as they first entice Aino to join them, and represented in the orchestra by two solo violins and a solo viola playing a haunting, whistle-like melody on high harmonics.

Writing Aino has been a wonderful journey into the world of the Tondichtung or tone poem, and in many ways, it is a departure from other relentless and rhythmically driven works of mine. Here, instead of trying to tell the story by imposing my point of view, I chose to quiet myself and listen to what the story had to tell me. It seemed all but fitting, given that it was in Finland that I learned the art of listening, and that silence can be just as powerful as a thunderous orchestral tutti.

Biography and program note provided by the composer

GABRIELA MONTERO

Piano Concerto No. 1, “Latin” (Canadian premiere)

I. Mambo
II. Andante moderato
III. Allegro Venezolano

 

“Composing to me, creating, improvising, whatever you call it, is at the core of what matters to me,” Venezuelan-born musician Gabriela Montero (b. 1970) said in an interview for the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. “Being alive equals being creative. Having a message is vital to me.” As she elaborates in the written introduction to her recording of her “Latin” Concerto, released in 2019, she considers her primary role “is to tell stories that reflect the wide gamut of human experience across both time and geography. Every era and continent has its story to tell, however joyful or troubling, from Renaissance Europe to the contemporary Americas, and composers are well positioned not only to tell it, but to provide a unique form of social commentary.”

Montero composed Piano Concerto No. 1, “Latin”, in 2016—her first full-length composition following her formal debut as a composer with the tone poem Ex Patria in 2011. Whereas Ex Patria was “explicitly designed to illustrate and protest Venezuela’s descent into lawlessness, corruption, and violence”, she describes her “Latin” Concerto as “an entirely different beast. It’s complex and challenging, but in a different way. It’s not meant to provoke, but rather to invite you to discover the complexities, dichotomies, and colours of Latin America through the contemporary musical language.” Yet, there’s a dark undercurrent in the work as well. “There is so much potential and beauty in Latin America, but our tragedy is that, at the same time, there are ever-present dark shadows like corruption and violence which threaten that potential. That metaphor is a constant line in my ‘Latin’ Concerto,” she explains. In another interview, she summarizes the piece as a “chiaroscuro reflection on who we are as a continent, dark and light. It has all the rhythms, the charm, and the sensuality that people love about Latin America—but unfortunately, those characteristics keep the world from actually noticing what’s really going on.”

On the musical details, Montero has written,

In a process of musical osmosis—a natural consequence of the globalized, interconnected world in which we now live—my Piano Concerto No.1, the “Latin” Concerto, honours the musical traditions that have shaped me, while inviting the cultural idioms of my native continent to the concert halls of Europe and the wider world. European formalism and the informality of Latin-America’s rich, rhythmical identity merge in a complementary dance of both the joyful and macabre.

Writing my concerto, I set out to describe the complex and often contradictory character of Latin America, from the rhythmically exuberant to the forebodingly demonic. Unlike my previous work for piano and orchestra—the specifically Venezuelan polemic Ex Patria (2011), a musical portrait of a country in collapse—the “Latin” Concerto draws upon the spirit of the broader South American continent. For every suggestion of surface celebration, in the first-movement Mambo, for instance, there are undercurrents of disruption. The third-movement Allegro Venezolano, which cites the well-known Venezuelan tune “Pajarillo”, is interrupted at times by the dark arts of black magic—a symbolic reminder of the malevolent forces that, too often, hold our continent hostage to tyranny in its multiple guises.

Program note compiled and edited by Hannah Chan-Hartley, PhD

Maurice RAVEL

Daphnis et Chloé

Tableau I (A meadow at the edge of a sacred wood) –
Tableau II (Pirates’ camp) –
Tableau III (Scene from the first tableau, at the end of the night)

The “symphonie choréographique” Daphnis et Chloé by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) is considered one of the French composer’s masterpieces. Although it is more frequently performed in the concert hall as excerpts arranged into two orchestral suites, the complete score is well worth experiencing. Even minus the visual tableaus and the dancers, Daphnis et Chloé, which features a large orchestra with an extensive percussion section and a chorus, is an aural feast for the ears—a tour de force of vibrant orchestral colour, sensuous melodies, sumptuous harmonies, and captivating rhythms.

The genesis and original production of Daphnis et Chloé endured many challenges. Commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, it was Ravel’s first major collaborative project. The choreographer Michel Fokine had already adapted the original “romance” by the second-century Greek writer Longus in 1907, then intended for St. Petersburg’s Imperial Marinsky Theatre. When Ravel became involved in the Ballets Russes’ production, he made it known that he contributed considerably to the “retouching” of Fokine’s libretto. The process turned out to be arduous, not least because of a language barrier—“Fokine doesn’t know a word of French, and I only know how to swear in Russian,” the composer recalled. They also had competing visions of what the ballet should look and sound like. Fokine wanted a more literal archaism, with the dancing evoking the carnal physicality of the “ancient dancing depicted in red and black on Attic vases.” Ravel desired instead to create “a vast musical fresco, less concerned with the archaism than with fidelity to the Greece of my dreams, which is close to that imagined by the French artists of the late 18th century.”

After considerable debate, they eventually found a compromise. Ravel began composing the score in 1909 but did not finish it until 1912, as he struggled to revise his original ending (from 1910) to something more satisfactorily exhilarating. The production was also fraught with issues, including limited rehearsal time, but at last on June 8, 1912, the ballet débuted at Paris’s Théatre du Châtelet. With a “dream team” consisting of Ravel, Fokine, Léon Bakst for set design and costumes, conductor Pierre Monteux, and star dancers Vaslav Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina in the titled roles, Daphnis et Chloé could have been the major highlight of the Ballets Russes’ season. However, it was overshadowed by Nijinsky’s shockingly erotic premiere of Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune ten days earlier. Furthermore, the premiere of Daphnis shared the bill with a repeat performance of the Prélude as well as Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Shéhérazade and Carl Maria von Weber’s Le Spectre de la rose, both popular earlier productions by the Ballets Russes.

The plot of Daphnis et Chloé is, in short, about the developing romantic love between a shepherd and shepherdess as they overcome various trials and tribulations within their arcadian community. These include Daphnis enduring initial jealousies, as he competes with the cowherd Dorcon in a dance contest for Chloé’s affections, as well as temptation, with the lustful Lyce[n]ion trying to seduce him while performing a “dance of the veils”. Chloé then gets abducted by pirates, whose malevolent leader Bryaxis forces her to dance for him. When Daphnis realizes what has happened to Chloé, he curses the deities that should have protected her and collapses unconscious in front of a cave. Taking sympathy on Daphnis’s plight, three nymphs come alive to invoke the assistance of the god Pan, who rescues Chloé from her violent captors. At the dawning of a new day, she and Daphnis reunite in a full blossoming of their love. In thanks to Pan, they mime the story of the god’s unrequited love for Syrinx. The community then comes together to celebrate with a wild bacchanalian dance.

Many of the highly erotic and physically violent situations from the original Longus myth are absent in the Fokine-Ravel version, with the composer, despite some protest from Fokine, preferring to take a less literal approach; as musicologist Deborah Mawer has noted, Ravel saw the story as a “pastoral idyll of classical purity and innocence.” Still, the music is highly evocative, and without visuals is perhaps even more powerful in its sensual suggestion, dramatic momentum, and dreamy atmosphere as the rest is left to our imaginations.

Eschewing the traditional ballet structure of distinct “numbers”, the music of Daphnis et Chloé proceeds continuously, even though three “tableaus” are identified to clarify changes in the stage setting. Solo dances alternate seamlessly with extended sections featuring the corps de ballet, which, along with the wordless chorus, function like a Greek chorus, commenting on the action of the main characters.

Throughout the ballet, Ravel uses recurring musical motives to identify characters and situations. He introduces three of the main themes at the beginning of the first tableau: after muted strings and harps layer fifths to build a chord, the horns first intone a rocking figure, which is associated with the god Pan; a flute, Pan’s instrument, then plays a melody, which becomes the theme of the nymphs; solo horn responds with a third melody—the love theme of Daphnis and Chloé. As the ballet progresses, listen out for the return of these motives, often in varied form, depending on the context. For example, the love theme returns as the affections between the title characters deepen; especially striking is, as Mawer has pointed out, the “gradual restoration and intensification of the love theme” in the “lever du jour” that opens the third tableau, with dawn also symbolizing the full awakening of Daphnis and Chloé’s love when they reunite after the latter’s rescue.

Ravel also develops the individual characters through distinctive dances for each: Daphnis’s graceful movements and light-footed leaps are initially evoked by lilting flute phrases alternating with plucked string arpeggios, whereas Dorcon’s clumsiness is humorously conveyed by heavy accents and a comically dissonant tune intoned by three bassoons. Chloé’s waltz-like music is smooth and elegant, while the temptress Lyceion’s “dance of the veils” features “exotic” winding chromatic figurations in the clarinet, her lust further suggested by a distorted variant of the love theme on solo horn. This “earthly” music starkly contrasts that evoking the spiritual world of Pan and the nymphs, which is rich with mysterious sonorities and remarkable orchestral effects.

There are substantial dances for the corps de ballet as well. The first tableau features the members of the arcadian community in a ritualistic “danse religieuse” and a lively “danse générale”. In the second tableau, the plundering pirates perform a savage and vigorous “danse guerrière” (warrior dance), with an extended section featuring an exotic melody first introduced by the piccolo that, as Mawer states, “suggests the promiscuity of the pirates who want to rape Chloé.” In revising the final “danse génerale”, Ravel openly admitted he drew inspiration from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Shéhérazade. To give the effect of a wild bacchanalian celebration, melody dissolves into a vortex of pure rhythmic drive, into which the chorus joins with whoops of joy.

Program note by Hannah Chan-Hartley, PhD

Artists

  • dscf9130-curtis-perry-2-cropped
    Conductor Alexander Shelley
  • Piano Gabriela Montero
  • jimmy-lopez-bellido2-600
    Composer Jimmy López Bellido
  • bio-orchestra
    Featuring NAC Orchestra
  • dscf0403-greggory-clark-1
    Featuring Musicians from the NACO Mentorship Program
  • Choir Calixa-Lavallée Ensemble
  • ewashko-singers
    Choir Ewashko Singers
  • Artistic Director, Ewashko Singers Laurence Ewashko
  • hunt-mccoy-tobi-fred-cattroll-535
    Stage Manager Tobi Hunt McCoy

Credits

NAC Orchestra

First Violins
Yosuke Kawasaki (concertmaster)
Jessica Linnebach (associate concertmaster)
Noémi Racine Gaudreault (assistant concertmaster)
Emily Kruspe
Marjolaine Lambert
Emily Westell
Manuela Milani
Carissa Klopoushak
*Martine Dubé
*Erica Miller
°Kanon Itoh
°Liana Fonseca
°Delia Li
°Justin Azerrad Kendall
°Qiyue He
°Maria Mondiru
°Patrick Paradine

Second Violins
Jeremy Mastrangelo
Leah Roseman
Frédéric Moisan
Edvard Skerjanc
Winston Webber
Mark Friedman
Karoly Sziladi
**Zhengdong Liang
*Heather Schnarr
*Oleg Chelpanov
*Andréa Armijo Fortin
°Hannah Corbett
°Katrina Johnson
°Sonia Hellenbrand
°Emma Reader-Lee
°Ellen Allers
°Siti Sarah Binti Razlin

Violas
Jethro Marks (principal)
David Marks (associate principal)
David Goldblatt (assistant principal)
David Thies-Thompson
Paul Casey
Tovin Allers
*Sonya Probst
°Emily Kistemaker
°Julien Haynes
°Alexander Beggs
°Sofia Morao

Cellos
Rachel Mercer (principal)
Julia MacLaine (assistant principal)
Marc-André Riberdy
Timothy McCoy
Leah Wyber
*Karen Kang
°Justine Lefebvre
°Evelyne Méthot
°Aidan Fleet
°Amos Friesen

Double Basses
Max Cardilli (assistant principal)
Vincent Gendron
**Marjolaine Fournier
*David Fay
*Paul Mach
*Talia Hatcher
°Philippe Chaput
°Gene Waldron III

Flutes
Joanna G’froerer (principal)
Stephanie Morin
°Aram Mun
°Catherine Chabot

Oboes
Charles Hamann (principal)
Anna Petersen
°Luca Ortolani
°Emily Brownlee

English Horn
Anna Petersen

Clarinets
Kimball Sykes (principal)
Sean Rice
°Andrew Neagoe
°Tyler Song

Bassoons
Darren Hicks (principal)
Vincent Parizeau
°Eric Li
°Maxwell Ostic 

Horns
*Louis-Philippe Marsolais (guest principal)
Julie Fauteux (associate principal)
Lawrence Vine
Lauren Anker
Louis-Pierre Bergeron
°Ho Hin Kwong
°Laurianne Paradis
°Rachel Cote
°August Haller

Trumpets
Karen Donnelly (principal)
Steven van Gulik
°Bethany Vaughan
°Jacob Merrill

Trombones
*Steve Dyer (guest principal)
Colin Traquair
°Felix Regalado
°Yori Lang

Bass Trombones
Zachary Bond
°Malena Lorenson

Tubas
Chris Lee (principal)
°Brandon Figueroa

Timpani
*Charles Lampert (guest principal)

Percussion
Jonathan Wade
*Robert Slapcoff
*Bryn Lutek
*Tim Francom
*Louis Pino
*Andrew Harris
°Leigh Wilson

Harps
*Angela Schwarzkopf (guest principal)
°Honoka Shoji

Piano
*Frederic Lacroix

Principal Librarian
Nancy Elbeck

Assistant Librarian
Corey Rempel
°Naomi Gem Batiancila

Personnel Manager
Meiko Lydall
°Natalina Scarsellone

Orchestra Personnel Coordinator
Laurie Shannon

*Additional musicians
**On leave
°Participants of the NAC Orchestra Mentorship Program

Choir (Calixa-Lavallée Ensemble & Ewashko Singers)

Soprano
Emma Beehler
Maureen Brannan
Rosemary Cairns-Way
Charlotte Corwin+
Julie Ekker+
Annika Fabbi
Carol Fahie*
Sarah Halmarson+
Sharon Keenan-Hayes
Allison Kennedy
Talia Kennedy
Vanousheh Mashayekh
Ilene McKenna
Christine Muggeridge
Doretha Murphy
Elhaam Namet-Allah
Neha Natarajan
Amy Parsons
Kathleen Radke+
Brittany Rae+
Kristin Ranshaw
Lauren Reisig
Tracy Sanmiya
Clara-Maria Thaut
Bronwyn Thies-Thompson+
Hiroko Yokota-Adachi*

Alto
Barb Ackison
Wanda Allard
Shelley Artuso
Alexandra Asher+ 
Corrine Carbino
Miriam Carpenter
Gabrielle Cloutier+ 
Katie Cruickshank
Isabella Cuminato+
Genevieve Dunn 
Kati Eichelberger*
Claire Hoar-Stephens
Rachel Hotte
Vickie Iles
Ruth-Anne Johnston
Sarah Kooy
Brianna Lawrie
Kristen de Marchi+
Rachel Ostic*
Chantal Phan
Susanna Pollock*
Isabelle Ricard+ 
Caitlin Strong*
Leah Weitzner+ 
Diana Zahab*
Mary Zborowski

Tenor
Jean-Sébastien Allaire+ 
Johnathan Bentley
Elizabeth Burbidge
Bernard Cayouette+ 
Caleb Fagen
Jim Howse
Andrew Jahn
Justin Jalea+
Aldéo Jean+ 
David Lafranchise
Chris Libuit
Bryan Parker
Alexis Poirier
David Ransom*
Sebastian Rodriguez Mayen
Andrew Rivers*
Robert Ryan
Paul Sales*
John Wiens+
Patricia Yates+

Bass
Kurt Ala-Kantti*
Wallace Beaton
Pierre-Étienne Bergeron+ 
Norman Brown
Terry Brynaert
Alasdair Campbell+ 
Alexandre Charest
Geoffrey Colman*
Dorian De Luca+
Alain Duguay+
Nikhil Gopal
William Kraushaar+
Phillip MacAdam*
Ronan Pouliquen
Normand Richard+
Mathieu Roy*
Stephen Slessor
Victor Toma

* Guest chorister
+ Guest chorister & off-stage choir