Kyiv Choir to Perform in 11 Canadian Cities

The Kyiv Chamber Choir, under conductor, Mykola Hobdych, will return to Canada to perform 12 concerts in 11 cities this fall.

As part of this tour, the Choir will present what the choir is touting as the first-ever concert presentation of antiphonal Ukrainian choral music in North America. The antiphonal segment will be part of the concert program during the choir’s appearance at the George Weston Recital Hall in the Toronto Centre for the Arts on November 3.

In this segment, the Kyiv Chamber Choir will be joined by three distinguished Canadian choirs and their conductors: the Elmer Iseler Singers, a mixed choir, under the baton of Lydia Adams; the Vesnivka Choir, the Ukrainian women’s choir, under Kvitka Kondracki; and the Victoria Scholars Men’s Choral Ensemble, under Jerzy Cichocki.

Maestro Hobdych will conduct all four choirs in this unique presentation in which parts will be sung solo by each choir and other parts will be sung together, combining up to 90 voices.

The choirs will be positioned at the four sides of the concert hall. The result will be a stereo-surround sound effect, but generated by human voices rather than electronically.

Antiphonal singing, where one group of singers makes a statement and another group answers, is commonly heard in Ukrainian Orthodox and Ukrainian Catholic Church liturgies, but is rarely performed in concerts.

The antiphonal repertoire of the Toronto concert has been drawn from the hidden treasures of 1,000 years of Ukrainian music, written by outstanding composers as Leontovych, Bortniansky, Vedel, Dyletsky, Berezovsky and Verbytsky.

The second half of the concert will feature the Kyiv Chamber Choir singing traditional folk tunes arranged by contemporary Ukrainian composers.  The versatile choir members will also play folk instruments, such as flutes and drums.

The Kyiv Chamber Choir and their guest choirs are honoured that Ukrainian Credit Union has agreed to sponsor this special concert on November 3.

Another concert, featuring solely the Kyiv Chamber Choir will be presented in Toronto on November 12 at the Timothy Eaton Memorial Church. Other presentations of this solo concert program will take place in Kitchener (October 29), London (October 30), Montreal (November 1), Ottawa (November 2), Vancouver ( November 5), Calgary (November 7), Edmonton (November 8), Saskatoon (November 9), Regina (November 10) and Winnipeg (November 11).

The concerts are being presented by Platinum Concerts International, whose goals include presenting the hidden treasures of Ukrainian music to North American arts and music audiences.

The national sponsor of the 2006 Kyiv Chamber Choir Canadian concert tour is Acuity Funds Limited.

Concert information is available at www.platinumconcerts.com