Two Foothills choral groups are wrapping up the season with some upbeat tunes sure to get toes tapping.
The Foothills Philharmonic Jazz Chorus performs its final concert of the season, Spring Swing, May 6 at 7 p.m. in the Okotoks Alliance Church, followed by the Foothills Philharmonic Chorus with its concert Unnatural Twins at 7:30 p.m. May 12 in the High River Christian Reformed Church and May 13 in the Okotoks United Church.
The 16-member jazz chorus will perform a variety of popular classic jazz tunes from Irving Berlin to Frank Sinatra as a large group, in small groups and some solos, accompanied by the piano, drums and bass.
“It’s a very upbeat concert with a lot of happy music,” said Shawn Lindenbach, director of the jazz chorus. “We are singing Blue Skies, Fly Me to the Moon, Cheek to Cheek and a lot of Duke Ellington pieces who’s an influential figure in jazz music.”
Members of the jazz chorus range in age from 17 to middle age and will perform their second concert ever this weekend, said Lindenbach.
“They are doing well and are very well received,” he said. “There’s a variety of levels from beginner to fairly advanced. There’s a wide range of vocal ability in the group so the stronger members will help lead the weaker members to the correct styles. They’re doing a fantastic job with that.”
The Foothills Philharmonic Chorus is the longest running choral group of the Foothills philharmonic groups with members from Okotoks, High River, Turner Valley, Black Diamond, Calgary and the surrounding areas.
Unnatural Twins marks the end of its third season.
“The crowd is growing every season,” said conductor Tim Korthuis. “Every concert is getting larger and larger and now we’re performing in High River.”
Korthuis said the chorus has something unique to offer its listeners this time around. The approximately 80 vocalists will sing interpretations of songs from two different composers to exhibit the contrast between them.
“In a conversation with one of our board members he mentioned someone was doing an entire concert of different arrangements of one text,” he said. “I thought let’s bring in all these different choral texts and do the same things in pairs.”
The concert will start off with three movements from Shubert’s famous Mass in G Major - well known in the classical world, he said.
“We will do the same movement of the mass written recently by English composer Jonathan Dove, very 21st century with super cool sounding tone clusters,” he said. “It’s the same text from the same thing interpreted and conveyed in completely different ways.”
Korthuis said it’s common for classical choral text to be arranged in different ways, all the way from the renaissance to recent compositions.
One piece the chorus will sing is The Lord’s Prayer.
“(Composer John Farmer) wrote a lot of beautiful English chorals 100 years ago,” he said. “We will take that same text and sing a piece that’s written in Swahili.”
In addition to a preconcert talk at 7 p.m., Korthuis said there will be discussions with the audience throughout the show about the different songs they’re singing and some history behind them.
The Calgary Korean Canadian Choir will join the chorus to sing a range of Korean art songs, said Korthuis.
Tickets to see the Foothills Philharmonic Jazz Chorus’s Spring Swing cost $15 for adults and $10 for seniors.
Tickets to see the Foothills Philharmonic Chorus perform Unnatural Twins cost $20 for adults and $15 for seniors.
Students ages 12 and under are free.
Tickets are available at Sobeys, foothillsphilharmonic.com or by emailing [email protected]
