The First 50 Years, by J. Evan Kreider, appeared in the 50th Anniversary Gala Concert program, April 25, 2008.

     By the late 1950s, our city could boast not only of the Vancouver Bach Choir, but also its many active church choirs of properly robed singers and its smaller community amateur choirs.  But to a few observers, there was hopefully room for yet another choral ensemble, a somewhat smaller one that might be able to work with CBC.  Hugh McLean (Choirmaster and Organist at Ryerson United Church) teamed up with like-minded friends to see whether they could form a new small choir for performing works being overlooked by the city’s other ensembles.  Thinking outside the box, these daring visionaries decided to perform Bach’s Mass in b minor (Friday, February 6, 1959, Christ Church Cathedral).  Lacking backers, rehearsal space, library, administrative structure and even singers, they placed an ad inviting people to audition for the proposed “Vancouver Philharmonic Choir”.  Hugh quickly realized that the choir’s proposed name was sending the wrong message to singers who might otherwise be interested, so when he recalled hearing of a choir in New York City called “Cantata Singers”, he adapted that name for his new group in Vancouver.  

     Chester Nobbs, our choir’s first business manager/administrator, is coming from North Dorset, England for this evening’s festivities.  He confesses that the last time he sang Bach’s Mass in b minor was under Hugh MacLean in that 1959 concert.  Chester still remembers the excitement of obtaining the choir’s first grant, $1,500 from The Thea and Leon Koerner Foundation in October 1959 “to cover a bond of $1,000 required by the Musician’s Union for the orchestra . . . for Bach’s Magnificat and Britten’s St. Nicholas”, “fees of $75 payable to the City of Vancouver for the use of the new Queen Elizabeth Theatre and $125 for general publicity for the entire season’s concerts.”  (How times have changed.)

     Hugh’s programming over the ensuing years was energetic, not shying away from challenging works in various European traditions.  When interviewed by The Province (March 25, 1983, B7), Hugh told Ray Chatelin, “In that first year we sang at a few churches and did some concerts at Lord Byng High School.  We did whatever program we wanted.  We did a contemporary program at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre [1960] that people stayed away from in droves.  But we did it because it was what we wanted to do.”  This philosophy was to persist for years to come.  Those early years were truly exciting, and, as would remain true for the next five decades, they were also utterly exhausting.

     One singer recalls that John Wiebe, our second conductor (1966-73), was brought on board by Hugh to prepare VCS for a performance of Bach’s St. John Passion, providing an opportunity for choir and possible-new-conductor to work together.  John was a public school teacher in Burnaby, had received his music training in Detmold, Germany and was already known to Vancouverites through his Motet Singers, drawn from the city’s musical German-speaking community.  During his initial years with us, VCS was essentially an amalgamation of singers from VCS and the Motet Singers.  The “Vancouver Cantata Society Membership List” of 1969 lists 20 sopranos, 19 altos, 12 tenors and 7 basses.  Forty years later, VCS alumni still remember John fondly, recalling that he was always looking for new choral music (Schütz, Kodaly, Byrd, Dunstable).  One alumna lovingly described John as a “big but gentle lad” who was always pushing the choir—in his gentle way—to sing more challenging repertoire.  Alumni recall John conducting Bach’s Christmas Oratorio (with John Vickers as soloist) and performing Mozart’s Coronation Mass from the back balcony at St. James Anglican Church, much as Mozart would have done.  

     During the late 1960s and early 1970s, some of our city’s music reviewers began encouraging VCS to think beyond being a type of church choir and becoming more of a semi-professional choir.  At about the same time, UBC appointed James Fankhauser to teach voice and choral conducting.  Having been a Fulbright Scholar at Oxford and the Assistant Director of the Aspen Choral Institute, Jim was soon invited to become our choir’s third conductor, a responsibility he shouldered for the next twenty-six seasons (1973/74-1999/2000).  Under his guidance, VCS soon became a more strictly auditioned ensemble—to the delight of some and the dismay of others.  VCS consciously expanded its repertoire, actively recruited young music graduates, and soon became known for singing rapid Baroque runs with grace and clarity.  In 1981, the choir’s excellence was rewarded with the winning of the coveted Rose Bowl in the Let the Peoples Sing international competition.  One of the choir’s highlights toward the end of Jim’s tenure was the concert tour in Germany which presented music by Bach and his sons (and the obligatory Negro spirituals) in churches in which the various Bachs had worked as choirmasters.  The TV documentary Children of Bach recorded this tour and is still aired annually on The Knowledge Network.  Other highlights included the Venetian Vespers CD which was nominated for a Juno award, and the Rigatti: a 1640 Mass CD, which received the West Coast Music Award for the best classical album in 1999.

     Eric Hannan (teaches voice and conducts at Douglas College) has served as our Musical Director since 2002.  Eric sang and studied choral conducting under Fankhauser at UBC before continuing graduate studies in conducting at Michigan and Illinois.  His training in modern composition has encouraged him to teach VCS how to approach and execute truly contemporary choral idioms, and his ongoing interest in music from the Baroque and Romantic eras challenges the choir to continue developing its traditional strengths in those superb repertoires.

     In addition to working under these four conductors, VCS has also been enriched over the years by singing one or more concerts (or even seasons) under such conductors as Peter Butterfield (Musical Director for the 2001-02 season), Wayne Riddell, Andrew Parrott, Charles Elliott Gardiner, Helmut Rilling, Tony Funk, Steve Morgan, Bernard Labadie, and Jean-Marie Zeitouni.  VCS has also enjoyed joining forces with singers in other choirs.  Later this year we look forward to collaborating with Il grupo de canto coral from Argentina at the Chan Centre for Brahms' Requiem as part of Festival Vancouver, and the Vancouver Chamber Choir has invited VCS to join them at the Orpheum this December for a performance of Handel's Messiah.

     When VCS celebrated its first quarter century (March 26, 1983), organist and founder Hugh McLean returned to Vancouver to accompany our singers in Ralph Vaughan-Williams Reconciliation; John Wiebe led the choir, alumni and the organ in performing selections from Handel’s Messiah; and James Fankhauser conducted the balance of the concert of English sacred music at Ryerson United Church.  This evening, twenty-five years later, we sadly note that John Wiebe has now passed away and Hugh McLean sends us his regrets (he will be in the UK).  Miraculously, James Fankhauser has somehow been persuaded to emerge briefly from his idyllic cocoon of retirement in the mountains near Kamloops in order to conduct several of the works he so enjoyed during his years with the Cantata Singers.  We are particularly pleased that he has selected Certon’s La, la, la because this was one of the first songs sung by Chrysalis, a chamber choir Jim founded; the two choirs presented their first joint concert in 1981.  When Jim realized that conducting two off-campus choirs (plus choir at UBC) was simply too much, Cort Hultberg agreed to take over duties on Chrysalis.  He adroitly revamped the group and renamed it Phoenix—another of our city’s splendid prize-winning choirs (now conducted by VCS alumna, Ramona Leungen, whose music VCS enjoys singing).

     Jim’s final dramatic ‘cut-off’ as VCS conductor took place on the Chan Centre’s stage, March 26th, 2000, at the last chord of Bach’s majestic “Dona nobis pacem” which concludes his Mass in b minor, the same Mass with which Hugh McLean launched VCS on its odyssey during the 1958-59 season (repeating it in 1963), and the Mass conducted by James Fankhauser in 1977, 1980, 1993, and 2000.  Our celebratory Gala Concert therefore appropriately closes with yet another performance of this final excerpt from our ‘theme song’ by Bach.