Co-commissioning

Although my symphonic choir in Edmonton, the Richard Eaton Singers, has commissioned a good number of works in the past 15 years, our two most recent commissions were unique in that they presented us with very exciting collaborative possibilities.  In 2002 we were contacted by Gillian Wilder, manager of the Vancouver Bach Choir (Bruce Pullan, conductor) to inquire about our interest in putting together a joint grant application to the Canada Council for the Arts' Commissioning Grant program, together with two other choirs from Ottawa and Montreal (see below).  My recollection is that the first submission, an application for a 30-minute choral/orchestral work by Toronto composer Christos Hatzis,  did not make the cut with the jury, but we were encouraged to reapply for the next round six months later.  The second application, again fronted by the Vancouver Bach Choir with the support of the other three choirs, was successful.  The Council jury awarded $10,000 toward the commissioning fee of ca. $16,000, meaning that each of the four choirs would only be required to contribute $1,500 from their individual resources to make up the difference, and of course, agree to absorb the costs of reproducing choral and orchestral scores and parts once Hatzis had completed them.

With a pair of choirs in western Canada and the other pair in the fairly close centers of Montreal (St. Lawrence Choir) and Ottawa (Ottawa Choral Society, both conducted by Iwan Edwards), the two pairs of choirs entered into a second level of collaboration by arranging an exchange visit, so that both choirs would have the benefit of two performances. In Vancouver and Edmonton, the two choirs paired Hatzis's new work, The Sepulcher of Life, with Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony, utilizing the Vancouver and Edmonton Symphony Orchestras in each city.  A similar plan was developed with the Ottawa and Montreal choirs (their choice of complimentary work was the Beethoven Mass in C.)  

The benefits of this joint commissioning project were many:

• In contrast with the normal "one and done" scenario that accompanies so many newly commissioned choral works (especially those involving larger instrumental scoring), the Hatzis cantata received four performances in the space of about six months in Canada.  Within two years of this project being realized, it had been performed over a dozen times, in Canada, the USA, and as far away as Finland.  
• The repeat performances gave the composer the opportunity to tweak and slightly revise passages from one performance to the next, in consultation with the conductors involved.
• The project brought with it a highly successful collaboration between the choirs, resulting in new and renewed friendships amongst singers, conductors and management, and an opportunity to visit one another's cities on a weekend.
• The high profile this project gained attracted the interest of the CBC, and the first performance in Vancouver was recorded for national broadcast.
• Cost-sharing made each project much more feasible economically, and permitted more resources to be put toward the cost of the exchange visits.

The success of this project spurred the Vancouver and Edmonton choirs to initiate another co-commissioning project several years later, in 2006.  For this application we selected Edmonton composer John Estacio, a talented and highly facile composer of mostly orchestral music who in recent years had had significant success in writing operas for the Calgary Opera Association and the Banff Centre for the Arts (Filomena and Frobisher).  Two other choirs from Ontario, the Grand Philharmonic Choir of Kitchener-Waterloo (Howard Dyck, conductor) and Chorus Niagara (Robert Cooper, conductor) agreed to support the co-commissioning application, which was also approved by Canada Council.

The Vancouver Bach Choir also received a major grant from the Olympic Arts Festival Committee in Vancouver for this project, as part of that city's pre-Olympic celebrations which took place in February 2008.  The occasion provided the theme for Estacio and the choirs to agree on: a text which would focus on international cooperation and reconciliation in a time of conflict.  Rather than choosing from an already existing text, Estacio asked his long-time librettist partner John Murrell to write a text for this work, and the result, The Houses Stand Not Far Apart, is a powerful four-movement cantata, for soprano and baritone soloists, chorus and orchestra that focuses on the conflicts between two neighbouring communities on opposite sides of a river.  Again, the Edmonton and Vancouver choirs collaborated to have an exchange, first performing the work in Vancouver in March 2008, and three weeks later in Edmonton.  In these concerts the complimentary work was Welsh composer Karl Jenkins' very affecting work from 2000, The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace.  Again, the symphonies from each city were engaged, with the performances playing to excellent houses in both cities.  The Edmonton performance was recorded by CBC for broadcast, and if you are interested, it can be heard on the CBC's "Concerts on Demand" page (http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/cod/concerts, and write "Estacio" in the search box).  The two Ontario choirs performed the cantata this past fall.  In Edmonton, the ESO has decided to present this cantata as part of its regular Master Series in 2009-10, paired with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (Jean-Marie Zeitouni, guest conductor).  Eaton Singers will thus benefit from a third opportunity to perform this moving new work.

As one might expect, these collaborative commissioning and performing projects were very exciting for each choral organization to be a part of.  I expect that we will do it again soon, and highly recommend it as an effective way of contributing to the creation of new works for your chorus.