This ongoing series of webinars features diverse and authoritative presenters who will inspire our choral community to better understand, honour, and respect the voices and cultures they choose to interpret.
In the context of all that is happening in our world, cultural diversity is of utmost importance for our choral community. The Black Lives Matter movement and Indigenous efforts to reclaim traditions, and heal from the legacy of colonialism and residential schools require of our predominantly white choral world to learn and inform our performance practices with compassion, respect and integrity. Our purpose in offering this series of webinars is to create a safe environment where we can challenge ourselves to envision a more diverse, inclusive, just, and equitable choral community: a community where all voices can flourish and all cultures will be honoured, celebrated and respected. These workshops will be of interest to choral singers, Artistic Directors, conductors, composers, arrangers, music educators, church choirs, and boards of directors.
Proudly presented by the BC Choral Federation.
PAST SESSIONS
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6 (VIDEO NOW AVAILABLE)
Instruments of Change: Building Respectful, Inclusive and Mindful Choral Communities
with Ryan Cho and Dawn Pemberton
Missed Session 1? Click here to register for 30-day video access.
Single Session Registration $20 ($15 for BCCF members)
Ryan and Dawn will share ways to create culturally inclusive choral communities. Participants will learn how cultural appropriation, tokenism, and colonization impact our musical choices, and what we can do to navigate and address them. They will explore how we can create culturally inclusive choral communities through action and awareness. They will encourage us to appreciate the history and future of the medium of choral music and identify ways we can re-imagine and transform it. They will share tools to empower choral directors, singers and organizations to seek justice and honour equality, diversity and inclusion in choir cultures. We’ll discuss topics such as cultural appropriation, tokenism, and colonization and how they impact our musical choices.
Ryan Cho is a Vancouver based music educator and social justice teacher. A second generation Chinese Canadian, Ryan has received awards related to anti-racism and equity issues, but is still constantly practicing humility and changing his mind on the things he has been convinced of or taken for granted. Ryan serves as a choral director and arranger. He teaches music, social studies, and EAL at Terry Fox Secondary in Port Coquitlam. He sang with the Chor Leoni Men’ s Choir for over a decade, is a former member of ES Choir (a part of the East Van Choir Collective). He is a part of Ache Brasil Capoeira working as a (gringo) musician with their paid performance group, teaching Brazilian martial arts, and leading (and learning) as one of the music co-directors of the group’s student bands over the last few years.
Dawn is the founder and artistic director of the Roots ‘N’ Wings Women’s Choir and teaches master classes and workshops all over Canada. In past years, she directed the Voice Ensemble and Youth Choirs at the Sarah McLachlan School of Music. Dawn is a member of the BC Choral Mentorship Program and has been studying choral conducting and vocal pedagogy with Dr. Geoffrey Boers (University of Washington) and Richard Nace since 2011.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27 (VIDEO NOW AVAILABLE)
Black Voices Matter: Considerations for Anti-Racist Choral Environments
with Dr. Alexander Lloyd Blake
This talk will include the description of the Black Voices Matter pledge, how to engage in meaningful conversations around diversity, and steps to take in order to create equitable environments. Alexander will share his work with the Black Voices Matter Pledge of Anti-Racism in Choral Practice which he hopes will guide the choral community to a more just and equitable place where all voices can flourish.
Dr. Blake is a recognized conductor, composer/arranger, singer, and music activist. He is the co-author of the Black Voices Matter Pledge of Anti-Racism in Choral Practice. He is the Founding Artistic Director of Tonality, a new choral ensemble focused on spreading a message of unity, peace, and social justice through a culturally diverse choral setting. He also serves as the Choir Director at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. He is the Principal Associate Conductor of the National Children’s Chorus in Los Angeles and New York City. Blake has recently been commissioned by the New York City professional ensemble, Inspire to compose a work on environmental justice. Blake completed his Doctorate in Musical Arts degree at the University of Southern California in 2019.
SATURDAY, MARCH 6 (VIDEO NOW AVAILABLE)
From Vive la Canadienne to Vigneault: Singing French Canadian Choral Music
with Patricia Abbott
French Canadian music is a rich component of our national choral landscape and a source of great repertoire for your programming. In order to sing it with confidence, success and respect, an understanding of its history, provenance and the language itself is key. Pat Abbott will guide us through different genres — folk and original music, both classical and popular — as well as the appropriate language and tone to use whether arranging or performing it.
With deep ancestral roots in French culture stretching back to the 16th century, Patricia leads workshops across Canada and internationally on the performance of French Canadian music. She is a singer, teacher and arts administrator in Montreal where she conducts several choirs including the Chorale du Gesù women’s choir, the English Montreal School Board Chorale, l’Ensemble vocal Cantivo and Les Voix du Carrefour. She is a lecturer at the Schulich School of Music, McGill University and at the Université de Sherbrooke. Patricia served as Artistic Director of the Canadian Amateur Music Centre in the Quebec Laurentians and was the Executive Director of the Association of Canadian Choral Communities (now Choral Canada). She has received many awards including the National Choral Award for Distinguished Service from ACCC, the Ordre du mérite choral from the Alliance des chorales du Québec, and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. Pat obtained a Master’s degree in voice performance and vocal pedagogy from McGill University.
SATURDAY, MARCH 20 (REGISTRATION NOW OPEN)
Honouring Indigenous Musics: Conversations around Voice, Place, and Solidarity
with Jonathon Adams and Nadia Chana
We are Jonathon Adams and Nadia Chana. We grew up singing together in choir in Amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton) and reconnected years later, which led to many fertile conversations about our relationships to decolonial processes in our work and music-making. We invite you to listen in on one of these conversations.
Jonathon Adams
Born in amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton), Jonathon is a baritone of Cree-Métis descent. Passionate about imagining the cross-cultural sounds of music in the colonies, Jonathon combines music from the Metis Songbook with early European music. They recently performed as a soloist with the Against the Grain Theatre’s daring new interpretation of Handel’s Messiah. Messiah/Complex is a cross-Canada performance with 11 vocalists and 4 choirs from across Canada. Jonathon attended the Royal Academy of Music and the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, and has sung in a variety of choral settings as well as having a successful career as a soloist. They are currently living in The Netherlands where they hold the Netherlands Bach Society’s “Young Bach Fellowship”.
Dr. Nadia Chana is an assistant professor of ethnomusicology at UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music, and an affiliate faculty member both of Project Spectrum, and of UW’s Centre for History, Culture, and the Environment. Her recent dissertation, Listening on Indigenous Land: Method, Context, Crisis included fieldwork in northern Alberta to consider how singing and listening become critical tools for building a felt relationship with a more-than-human world. Nadia is interested in voice (audible and metaphoric), racialization, embodiment, practice-based ways of knowing, Indigenous–settler relations, settler-colonialism, nonhuman agency, and experimental and collaborative ethnography. While Nadia situates her work within music studies, thinkers in critical Indigenous studies and feminist science studies have often been her guiding stars.
Feb. 26 & April 2, 2022
Bridging tradition and modernity through vocal arts and choral music with Hussein Janmohamed
Hussein Janmohamed is a singer, choir conductor and composer. He facilitates choral conversations that spark dialogue, engage diversity and tell new pluralistic narratives, invoking music’s unique power to transcend barriers, discover unity, and manifest the depths of the human spirit though the power of co-creation.
His two-part continuation of the BCCF’s ongoing RESPECT workshop series is an opportunity to join in a conversation that explores possibilities for inclusion, representation and intercultural choral being. Join us for one or both sessions – Part 2 will build upon the knowledge and experiences shared in Part 1, offering concrete approaches and ideas for use in your choral practice.
Part 1: Peace, love and understanding
Saturday, February 26 – 9:30 to 10:45 am PST on Zoom
Hussein will share perspectives on interpretive living Muslim traditions that invite open and dynamic dialogue between cultures. As a South Asian Ismaili Muslim growing up in Central Alberta, Hussein experienced a fascinating juxtaposition while singing in choirs: While the choral environment was a place of harmonized belonging and safety, it also lacked representation of cultures that reflected his identity. In this session he will share stories of dissonance and counterpoint, of harmony and resonance – themes throughout his lifelong journey to understand and create new kinds of choral environments for personal and communal thriving. Hussein invites our choral community to join in this conversation to envision new possibilities for intercultural choral dialogue.
Part 2: Representation through repertoire
Saturday, April 2 – 9:30 to 10:45 am PST on Zoom
Expand your notions of choral music of the Muslim world through this interactive presentation. Hussein will share a diverse range of published and unpublished choral repertoire, including his own compositions. Learn how an open, intercultural approach to performing this music might offer pathways forward for inclusion and collaboration, while helping to avoid over-generalizations that can narrowly define Muslim cultures. An ideal session for singers, educators and conductors alike!
RESPECT-Hussein-Final-1
Hussein Janmohamed is a dynamic Canada-based singer, composer and choir conductor working in professional and community- based music and research. Singing in choirs and in congregational community settings helped Hussein transform the negativity of racism into positive feelings of belonging and contribution. These transformative experiences inspire his appetite to harness the power of singing to develop a pluralist musical sound.
Hussein is the inaugural recipient of the BCCF Malcolm McDonald Youth Achievement Award recognizing his inspirational leadership. Hussein has performed with award-winning Canadian choirs including the Elmer Iseler Singers as the James T. Chestnutt Choral Scholar, Chor Leoni Men’s Choir, UBC University Singers and Phoenix Chamber Choir. He is a doctoral candidate in Music Education and the 2017 & 2018 Irene R. Miller and Anoush Khoshkish Fellow at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music. His research builds on music as a universal language and the co-creation of vocal culture(s) that support socio-spiritual development in a pluralist society. Hussein collaborates with musicians across cultures to produce concerts that bridge diverse musical traditions.
Hussein is the Artistic Co-Director of the Awaaz Ensemble, an a multicultural professional a cappella choral ensemble dedicated to creating music inspired by traditional and contemporary approaches to vocal expression. Hussein founded the Vancouver Ismaili Muslim Youth choir and was the inaugural artistic director of the first ever National Ismaili Youth Choir. Hussein has led choirs such as the Vancouver Peace Choir, Canadian Ismaili Choirs, University of British Columbia choirs and the Sarah McLachlan Children’s Choir who appeared on the Young Artists of Haiti Video featuring K’naan. Hussein was the inaugural co-conductor of Cor Flammae, Vancouver’s summer chorus of classically trained, queer singers, performing queer content. Hussein has also facilitated global Ismaili music collaborations to commemorate the 80th birthday and Diamond Jubilee of His Highness the Aga Khan.
As a composer Hussein weaves choral sound and Muslim cultures into choral soundscapes that explore possibilities for peace, hope and harmonious coexistence. He has been commissioned by leading arts organizations such as Ontario Presents for Awaaz Ensemble; The Esoterics for a concert of music inspired by the Muslim world; the Aga Khan Museum for the Elmer Iseler Singers; the Westcoast Sacred Arts Society with First Nations composer Russell Wallace for a Youth Peace Choir at a Tribute Concert to His Holiness the Dalai Lama; Amabile Choirs of London; and, by Classical Movements on behalf of the Nai Syrian Children’s Choir for the 2018 Serenade! Choral Festival as part of the Eric Daniel Helms New Music Program. Hussein was named one of two composers by Chorus America as part of the 2019 Composition Consortium program.
Hussein has served community-based music organizations such as Nai Children’s Choir, MABELLE Arts, Jumblies Theatre and St James Town Arts collaborating with underserved newcomer communities in the creation and production of choral art. Hussein is a TEDx speaker and has been recognized for his inspirational leadership, community building and visionary thinking to bring people together through music.
