In fine voice

A half-century of sweet-sounding voices who have won awards around the world will receive well-earned bravos from a devoted audience Sunday.

The Winnipeg Singers will celebrate their 50th anniversary at the Crescent Arts Centre and offer musical highlights that have taken them from small school auditoriums in Manitoba all the way to Sagrada Familia, Antonio Gaudi’s famous basilica in Barcelona.

The concert will also welcome back conductors and singers from its rich past, including Bill Baerg, who founded the company in 1972, Mel Braun and Vic Pankratz, who teamed up to lead the Singers from 1995-99, as well as present-day maestro Yuri Klaz, who has conducted the 24-singer choir since 2003.

“I love Winnipeg Singers because it does a variety of different music. Some choirs focus on specific eras of music, but Winnipeg Singers does it all,” says Donnalynn Grills, an alto who joined the Winnipeg Singers in 1984 and is part of two other choirs in Winnipeg and a couple more elsewhere in Canada.

“We did a Halloween-themed concert where we even did some movement — we’re not known as a motion choir, that’s for sure — but we did Michael Jackson’s Thriller, all in costume.”

Baerg launched the Winnipeg Singers from the CBC Winnipeg Singers, who performed and recorded for the Crown radio network in the city.

When the contract ended, Baerg dropped the CBC tag of the name and started a professional choir, the only one in Winnipeg at the time.

“He had all these amazing singers, so he said, ‘Let’s start our own thing,’ and that’s how Winnipeg Singers started 50 year ago,” Pankratz says.

While many of the Singers then were also performers on the CBC television show Hymn Sing, there was no formal connection between the two groups, says Pankratz, a Hymn Sing alumnus who began his singing career with the Singers under the direction of Baerg and his successor, John Martens.

“Both of them were inspiring and I learned so much from both of them about what it means to be a professional singer,” says Pankratz, who would turn his voice into a career, performing concerts across Canada, many with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and about 20 productions with Manitoba Opera. He now heads the choral department at Westgate Mennonite Collegiate.

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Baerg, 85, will conduct the choir he led from 1973-83 on songs it performed in those early years, such as Beati Quorum by Anglo-Irish composer Charles Stanford.

The concert will also pay tribute to former conductors Martens (1983-93) and Wayne Riddell (1993-95), both of whom died in 2022.

Braun and Pankratz will also be guest conductors Sunday and, including Baerg’s participation, the show should build a bridge from today’s company to its beginnings.

“I think they’re in good hands under Yuri Klaz and he’s doing great work with them,” Pankratz says.

Pat Wray, the Singers’ executive director and an alto voice in the group, joined in 1997 when Pankratz and Braun were in charge, says rehearsing with her old conductors brings back fond memories, and should do the same for the Singers’ audience, many of whom have followed them from their early days as well.

“They all had their own style and bring a different energy or a different focus with the different conductors, they’re all unique in their way,” Wray says of the conductors who will be leading the group on Sunday. “I really enjoyed singing under Mel and Vic so it was really fun to have them come again.”

Pankratz and Braun took over the Singers during a difficult financial period, which led to shrinking the choir to its present complement of 24.

“There were bumps along the way but at the same time, in the end it worked out well,” he recalls. “We worked hard at getting the singers to sing with a lot of energy and connect with the audience more, things we were really proud of.”

Its touring schedule has helped draw Canada’s and the world’s attention to the company, the city and Winnipeg’s strong choral tradition, which includes the Singers, the 100-year-old Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir, other professional ensembles, and community and school choral groups, not to mention Manitoba Opera, which celebrated its own golden anniversary last Saturday.

The Singers have performed at the Taipei International Choral Festival and the World Symposium on Choral Music in Kyoto, Japan, in 2005. As well, a 16-day tour of Germany, Austria and Italy in 2016 culminated with them winning the Golden David award at the Florence International Choir Festival.

“We were quite surprised that we had won the top award at that competition because there were many fabulous choirs,” Grills recalls.

Its last journey sent the group to Spain and Finland in the summer of 2019, which included a performance of Ave Maria at the Sagrada Familia concert, and winning the grand prix award at the Golden Voices of Barcelona competition.

The second half of Sunday’s concert will include highlights of those tours and other memorable shows, such as when Norwegian composer Ola Gjielo collaborated with the Singers in 2019, as well as two commissioned pieces for tours by Winnipeggers Leonard Enns and Sid Robinovitch.

Grills’ favourite tour memory is performing at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, the 16th-century landmark in the heart of the Austrian capital.

“We were up in the balcony, but it was a truly remarkable experience,” she says. “Some of the places that I’ve been because of singing with choirs I probably wouldn’t have been able to see or I probably wouldn’t have thought of going to.”

“Some of the places that I’ve been because of singing with choirs I probably wouldn’t have been able to see or I probably wouldn’t have thought of going to.”–Donnalynn Grills

Pankratz says the echo in giant medieval cathedrals is a bit like shouting at the Grand Canyon, with one notable difference.

“Except with 20 other people who sing really beautifully and make beautiful sound,” he says with a laugh.

Sunday’s gala holds extra significance for Grills, who spent two weeks in February fighting off the effects of COVID-19, which sparked a pandemic that silenced virtually all choral singing around the world for two years starting in March 2020.

She’s part of three choirs in Winnipeg and others across Canada, and fortunately her vocal cords were untouched by the virus. However, after testing positive, she had to follow along with rehearsals at home on Zoom or miss them entirely.

“Thankfully, it didn’t settle in my chest,” she says. “It certainly zaps your energy, at least it did for me. Made it through and I feel much better now, but it was a long journey.”

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Twitter: @AlanDSmall

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Alan Small
Reporter

Alan Small has been a journalist at the Free Press for more than 22 years in a variety of roles, the latest being a reporter in the Arts and Life section.

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