The Canadian Music Centre in BC was thrilled to partner this year with the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival (VCBF) to co-present Vancouver Sings One Song (VSOS), a massed choir concert featuring several hundred singers in Christ Church Cathedral on Tuesday, April 3 at 6:30 pm. The massed rehearsal/performance was led by choral director Kathryn Nicholson along with Host Choir, Sound Eclectic, brilliantly organized by the dynamic VCBF Executive Director, Linda Poole.
The evening saw the premiere of Cherry Blossoms For You & Me, composed by JUNO award-winning Tom Landa and Robin Layne for VSOS, along with performances of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, and Japanese folk song Sakura Sakura in honour of Japan’s gift of cherry trees to our city in celebration of international friendship.
Additional Pop-Up Performances that the public is encouraged to join will take place on Thursday, April 5 — Cherry Jam Downtown at Burrard SkyTrain Station at lunchtime; on April 14 & 15, for Sakura Days Japan Fair, at the VanDusen Botanical Garden; and on April 14, The Big Picnic, at Queen Elizabeth Park, 12:00pm- 3:00 pm.
Please click here for more information including lyrics, music and videos of the songs, as well as additional information about Vancouver’s twelfth annual Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival.
In welcoming attendees to the rehearsal and performance on Tuesday night, I read the following lines from Wordsworth, remarking on how wonderful it is at such a trying time in the world that people of all backgrounds and ages can come together peacefully and join in song, creating, as Wordsworth writes “a thousand blended notes.”
Lines Written in Early Spring
By William Wordsworth
I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.
Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:—
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.
