British choral music ensemble VOCES8 brings ‘Lux Aeterna’ to Toronto

For lovers of choral music it’s been a long wait but finally Britain’s much-recorded, multi award-winning and globe-trotting VOCES8 is set to make its Toronto debut, thanks to the determination of Canada’s Daniel Taylor, widely regarded as one of the finest counter-tenors at work today and a leading figure in the field of early music.

VOCES8 began informally in 2003 as a group of young choristers who loved singing together.

“We began to have sleepovers at our parents’ house,” says VOCES8 artistic director Barnaby Smith, the ensemble’s counter-tenor. Barnaby and his brother Paul, both former choristers at London’s Westminster Abbey, formally established VOCES8 two years later when the group entered its first choral competition. Paul, who left the ensemble in 2016 to head its very active charitable educational arm, the VOCES8 Foundation, is also an established composer. His setting of the Nunc Dimittis is included in the Toronto program, which takes it overall title, “Lux Aeterna,” from a staple of the ensemble’s repertoire, a setting of the “Nimrod” variation from Edward Elgar’s “Enigma Variations”. VOCES8’s recording of this sublimely spiritual work has had almost four million views on YouTube.

Daniel Taylor was naturally very aware of VOCES8 but it took an accidental meeting to pave the way for the ensemble’s Toronto debut.

About six years ago Taylor was in London making a recording at the Sony studios when he met a woman whose face seemed very familiar.

“It so happened I’d been watching one of VOCES8’s videos just minutes before,” recalled Taylor.

The woman turned out to be VOCES8 soprano Andrea Haines.

“Because of that chance meeting I ended up singing for Daniel,” said the long-serving VOCES8 member.

It was the start of a professional connection that enabled Taylor to develop a relationship with VOCES8 that fuelled his resolve to bring the group to Toronto. But like so much else, COVID-19 disrupted everyone’s lives and VOCES8 was unable to tour.

Taylor, who apart from heading the Theatre of Early Music, the vocal and instrumental ensemble he founded 20 years ago while still based in Montreal, has been a professor in the faculty of music at the University of Toronto for a decade now. During the pandemic, as classes went online, Taylor continued to offer students enriching experiences by involving leading professional performers in virtual workshops. Andrea Haines was one of them.

Once pandemic restrictions began to lift, Taylor was in touch with VOCES8’s touring agent, only to discover they were solidly booked, trying to catch up with postponed engagements.

“Then in August,” said Taylor, “I got a call out of the blue. ‘We have a date for you, Oct. 11’. It was rather short notice but I thought if we delay now there is no saying how long we might have to wait. So immediately I said we’d take it.”

VOCES8 performs a repertoire that extends from the late Renaissance and baroque eras all the way to very recent compositions. Although they are best known as an a cappella ensemble, they have also worked with instrumental soloists and ensembles.

The group’s just-released recording with violinist Jack Liebeck of Paul Drayton’s arrangement of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s beloved “The Lark Ascending” is likely to become another of their global hits.

The “Lux Aeterna” program comprises a range of sacred music — by England’s William Byrd who died almost 400 years ago to contemporary American composer Jake Runestad. Its spiritual foundations, both in music and poetry, transcend specific religious traditions to offer solace and hope in what Taylor calls “this partially lit darkness we live in now”.

Whether it’s the climate crisis, right-wing extremism. or the war in Ukraine, the world has become an uncommonly troubled place. Taylor points to the sadness many felt at the death of the queen, as readily comprehensible within this broader context of global turmoil.

“My Soul there is a Country,” one of Hubert Parry’s “Songs of Farewell,” was sung at the queen’s funeral and is included in VOCES8’s Toronto program, as is the British composer’s setting of verses from Psalm 122, “I was Glad”. Parry wrote this now famous anthem for the coronation of Edward VII in 1902. It has been sung at every British monarch’s crowning since.

In an unusual departure, VOCES8 agreed to Taylor’s request to incorporate some of his students and professional choristers from as far away as Vancouver in the Toronto performance. This massed choir of almost 50 voices, which will sing three pieces in the program’s second half, will likely raise the roof of St. James’s cathedral in “I was Glad”.

“I’ve told the choristers they must come well prepared. We have very little rehearsal time,” said Taylor.

VOCES8 will arrive in Toronto, the ensemble’s only Canadian stop in a three-week North American tour, in time to give an evening choral workshop at St. Paul’s Basilica (83 Power St.) on Oct. 10.

For those yet to experience the uplifting power of choral music, Barnaby Smith has a message.

“The human voice has a power to communicate in a way that instruments don’t. We’re programmed from birth to respond to the tone and quality of someone’s voice. And when it’s unaccompanied, that’s very naked, very bare and very direct. Also when you not only hear but see VOCES8 you see eight people working to attain perfect harmony. I think there’s actually something very beautiful about that.”

“Lux Aeterna”, Oct. 11; St. James’s Cathedral, 65 Church St.; more information and tickets at rcmusic.com/tickets/seats/258001

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