Latest News
Garth Edwards is chair of Chor Leoni’s men’s choir.
Photo courtesy Chor Leoni
Songs of remembrance and hope
Published 4:05 PST, Thu November 9, 2017
Last Updated: 2:12 PDT, Wed May 12, 2021
What do you do when your undergrad degree is
music and your graduate degree is law?
Practise law and sing in the Lower Mainland’s
highly acclaimed Chor Leoni Men’s Choir. That’s just what Westwind resident
Garth Edwards has done for the past 25 years.
As a founding member of Chor Leoni, Edwards
remembers their first concert on Remembrance Day.
He says their founder, Diane Loomer, was very
careful to look for a concert date that would not compete with other existing
choirs’ performances.
“That’s why we started out with a Remembrance
Day concert which we do to this day,” Edwards says.
“I look at this event as a real chance for
thinking, more as a public service. For many of our audience, this is their
Remembrance Day and how they mark it,” says Chor Leoni artistic director Erick
Lichte.
Chor Leoni offers two concerts on Saturday, Nov. 11, a 1:30 p.m. performance at West Vancouver United Church and an evening
performance at 8 p.m. in St. Andrew’s-Wesley United Church on the corner of
Nelson Street and Burrard in Vancouver.
“It’s a tricky business programming for a
Remembrance Day concert. You have to deal with war and have to find works and
readings that all come together. It’s tricky to honour these men and woman
while not glorifying war,” says Lichte.
And why has a busy lawyer spent a quarter
century singing in a men’s choir so demanding of talent and time?
“It’s almost my spiritual input. At some
point, you really do get transcendent moments when everything clicks, when it
is totally uplifting and spiritual in nature,” Edwards says.
Lichte says of the Nov. 11 Chor Leoni
concert, “It can be an uplifting and empowering event to be part of. It can be
a tear-jerker in places, but we leave our audience in a place that it uplifting
and is hopeful. The hope for this is that, someday, this concert will be
obsolete.”
Both Lichte and Edwards cite the power of
music when describing the First World War Christmas Day truce in the bloody
fields of Flanders, where from trenches either side of no-man’s land, the
strains of Christmas carols blended together. The night’s peace resulted in a
Christmas Day soccer game and a truce that lasted until almost New Year’s Day
and it all started with song.
“You would hear at length about music and
peace, how it transforms men and women.
If you know people and sing together, it’s
hard to make war, isn’t it?” Edwards
“What we try to do is offer a space for
reflection and remembrance of our soldiers in a way that also hopes for the
promise of peace,” says Lichte.
For more information, visit chorleoni.org
2 Hours of free financial consulting
Jai Xin Planning Ltd.
C$120.00 C$0.00
Use any of our home staging service and get a second month rental for free!
MiiX Interiors
C$500.00 C$0.00
Get 10% off any order
Phantom Screens Lower Mainland
C$200.00 C$180.00
