In a media release, the Juno-nominated Chor Leoni has announced a 2023-2024 season featuring seven concert programs highlighting the sound of the 70-voice choir, two free programs for youth, and their annual choral festival.
In entertaining and stirring ways, this season hopes to give voice to the fullness of the human experience. – Erick Lichte
Chor Leoni has announced it will also provide access to its season online, with information and the opportunity to RSVP to receive the viewing link available one month before the streaming date.
“We’re thrilled to share a season filled with treasured favourites, exciting collaborations, and brand new landmark choral works,” says artistic director Erick Lichte. “As a singing community, Chor Leoni strives to express the inexpressible. We sing to connect to one another and to connect to our deepest selves. In entertaining and stirring ways, this season hopes to give voice to the fullness of the human experience.”
Highlights of the choir’s 32nd season include a collaboration with Montreal’s ensemble La Nef, led by Seán Dagher, for The Return Voyage, a concert of shanties and songs of the sea. The Leonids, Chor Leoni’s professional choral ensemble, will return to Vancouver at Harmonia and The Big Roar.
The season also features new choral pieces with nine world premieres, including multi-movement works from Melissa Dunphy, three-time Grammy nominee Kile Smith, and Canada’s own Don Macdonald, who will be completing his final season as the choir’s composer-in-residence. The new works, commissioned by and for Chor Leoni, “explore our human legacy, past and future, in the ground and through the air.”
“These concerts come straight from the hearts of the creators and performers, so it is fitting that all of this year’s concerts take place in the heart of Vancouver, in our iconic home of Saint Andrew’s-Wesley United,” says Lichte. “Our hope is to bring beauty, joy, laughter, thoughtfulness and peace to the heart of our extraordinary city. Chor Leoni is staunchly from and for its community and we hope this season can create a deeper and fuller connection in it.”
Ticket packs for Chor Leoni’s 2023-2024 season are now on sale, with single tickets going on sale September 28. Visit chorleoni.org for more information.