March 2003 Newsletter

March, 2003 Volume 15 Number 3

Letter from the President

Since I spoke to you last the Bach Choir and Orchestra have experienced a most successful Advent concert in December of last year and then, in February we again put on the children’s concert for the first and we hope not the last time in the Leacock Theatre at Mount Royal College. We thank all the groups and individuals who helped to make it an exciting afternoon for the young people. As always it was a thrill to see how much the children enjoyed trying out the instruments lent to us by Scot’s Music, St John‚s Music and Sing Move Play Orff Music.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes a group of us, board-and choirmembers, is following up on an initiative put forward by Les Meares, one of our tenors, to put our membership and music inventory on data base. This means hours of work at Jytte Christiansen’s in whose house all the music scores are stored. The task is made easy with cups of good coffee and goodies and, most important of all, lighthearted comradeship. It will stand the Society in good stead once this task is completed.Now promise not to groan when I tell you that the venue for our concerts is changing. As of December 2003 we will be performing in Scarboro United Church, 134 Scarboro Avenue SW.

It will be sad to leave St. Matthew’s because the people we dealt with there are so wonderful and parking is no problem BUT Scarboro has a splendid Casavant organ as well as a recently enlarged sanctuary which lends itself extremely well for musical performances.So, even though it means that we all have to change directions when coming to a Bach concert, we will be coming to a place that is centrally located, has ample parking AND you will be able to hear the beautiful organ.

As a follow up point from the last newsletter: we have had no response to the request for a social convenor. So, for the second, and last, time of asking “Is there anyone out there who would want to take up this volunteer position?” The job entails preparing, serving and cleaning up refreshments for orchestra and choir on rehearsal days and after the March concert. (This happens only 7 times a season)

One more point to inform you about. Our newsletter, starting with the September issue, will be expanded. Is there anything or anyone you would be interested in reading about? Please let us know. Remember if we don’t give our opinion we have no right to complain!

I hope you’ll forgive this lengthy epistle. Till we meet again, in print, in September. But,before that, I hope to see many of you at Bach’s Birthday Concert on March 23 at 3 pm still at St. Matthew’s United Church. And some of you will be joining us for our 15th anniversary dinner that same night. What a grand day that will be.

Marijke van Wijke

Calendar of Events

Bach Birthday Celebration Sunday, March 23, 2003 - 3 p.m. St. Matthew’s United Church - 2039-26a Street SW

Other Events

Early Music Voices Sunday, March 9, 2003 - 2:30 PM Christ Church Elbow Park

ProMusica "Anima" Monday, March 24, 2003 - 8:00 PM University Theater

"Celebrity Series" Ensemble de la Rue Sunday, April 5, 2003 - 8:00 PM Rozsa Centre U of C

The Festival Chorus - Bach's "Mass in B Minor" Good Friday, April 18, 2003 - 7:00 PM Jack Singer Concert Hall

Renaissance Singers & Players Friday and Saturday, May 2, 3, 2003 - 8:00 PM Wesley United Church

Early Music Voices Friday, May 16, 2003 - 8:00 PM Christ Church Elbow Park

Spiritus Saturday, May 24, 2003 - 8:00 PM Cathedral Church of the Redeemer

Profile - Marc Jerry

by Anna Carnell

Marc Jerry has sung bass in the Calgary Bach Festival Choir for the past two years. With a BA in Economics from the University of Calgary and an MA in Economics from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, he is keenly interested in the theoretical and practical approaches to business. Marc is also a licensed flight instructor, and contributes to quantitative research in human factors in pilot training.

A Mount Royal College faculty member in the Bissett School of Business, he is pioneering classes in quantitative methods tailored to their new applied degrees including one in non-profit studies, the only program of its kind in Western Canada. “People who become executives in non-profit societies need training,” he says, “in planning, budgeting, motivation, reporting to boards and benefactors, and a myrad of other business related skills. They do not need to be mathematicians to run a practical and successful business.”

Marc is careful to keep music for personal enjoyment. What better entertainment than to sing with other people who love music as much as he does? He grew up singing with the Calgary Boys Choir, Church Choirs, and with several choirs in high school, including the Bishop Carroll concert choir, madrigal choir and jazz choir. Obviously he had a great high school conductor, Brian McCauley, who was recently awarded for his contribution to the musical life of his students, many of whom have remained committed to music.

Baroque Choral music remains Marc's favourite, including the memorable St. Matthew Passion which he sang at the tri-Bach festival in 1985 in Doug Parnham’s choir. He also enjoys the cantor sections in the masses, where the tenor or basses sing the opening movements. Mathematicians are often musicians, and Marc is aware of and intrigued by Bach’s approach to mathematical ratios and proportion in the timing of his music.

Marc is pleased to be singing with the CBFS in their 15th / 16th season, a milestone for the society. He believes the society continues to be successful, with frequent and active performances. The children's concert, he believes, is vital in building the future audience and future peformers. In his busy life with “no free time from September to June”, Monday night rehearsals remain an oasis of total relaxation and inspiration.

Profile - Alvin Albrecht

by Anna Carnell

Alvin Albrecht is the answer to the Bach society’s need for more sophisticated computer applications and information processing, another example of music and math touching base. He has accepted the position of data base manager with the Calgary Bach Festival Society. With Les Meares, he is working to computerize records concerning the CBFS music collection, membership list and newsletter matters. In future he expects the data base to evolve and expand to suit the society as the information is used. He hopes eventually to make the data more interesting and more automatic by interfacing systems with the internet.

They are actively working with the music collection, to make it accessible under any number of fields of data. Searches should be possible according to title, instrumentation, liturgical themes, and performance history of the work, to mention only a few. Not a musician himself, Alvin finds the cataloguing an interesting challenge. He likens it to working with two new languages at once, music and German.

Languages come easily to Alvin, especially computer languages. He has been toying with computers since he was 10 years old, when his teacher taught Alvin and some other students BASIC. In junior high, Alvin was writing his own programs and ‘picked up’ assembly language on his own. More musical language will undoubtably come later since he enjoys the live experience in CBFS concerts.

He first got involved with the Bach society as stage manager. He can fix anything, as the Jewish Centre and Jytte Christiansen will attest to, electronic or otherwise. Now, with degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Calgary and computer Science from the University of British Columbia, he has worked in Canada and the United States designing chips and embedded systems that can be application specific, depending on the users needs.

Though he enjoys fantasy literature and novels which speculate on future conflicts, he is concentrating at the moment on textbooks and computer literature, essential to maintain a high level of currency in a career field which changes so quickly. He’s considering local job interviews, but realizes he may have to move to a larger centre such as Vancouver, to access the more international market. In the meantime, CBFS is the beneficiary of his considerable technical expertise but even more so, of his generosity in giving us of his time and talent.

Editor's Website Picks

Interested in contacting other choral groups in Calgary? You will find the Calgary Region Arts Foundation client list at http://www.craf.org/clients4.htmlThe Academy of Ancient Music at http://www.aam.co.uk/ has program notes on works and shows pictures of artists, such as Bach. To find these, click on News and Features.A little embarrassed that you don’t know some musical term like appoggiatura? You won’t be if you check out the Glossary page of the Bach Choir of Bethlehem at http://www.bach.org/bach101/suites/glossary.htmlThe Denton Bach Socety revisits Bach’s first Leipzig Christmas at http://www.dentonbach.com/archive/magnificat9.htm where you can find program notes, commentaries, pictures and the full texts of the Magnificat in Latin and English. Don’t forget our own http://www.bachcalgary.org with newsletters back to September 2000, pictures of the choir and orchestra and profiles of our conductors.
 

Membership Information

The Calgary Bach Festival Society has a large library of cantatas which can be rented. If interested, please contact us at 282-8525 or e-mail Bill Zdep tcprint@telus.net

Volunteers are welcome and needed for several positions and projects. If interested, please contact us at 282-8525 or e-mail Bill Zdep tcprint@telus.net