CHORAL ROUNDUP continued
CHORAL ROUNDUP continued FROM UP HERE to those monthly Saturday Tranzac afternoons, but from the ashes of that initiative, the weekly Saturday ZOOM gatherings were born, free to all participants, thanks to the generosity of volunteers and donors, and capable of reaching a much wider audience. Saturday Sep 15 1:30-3:30pm, Recollectiv goes back to its roots with A Little Help from Our Friends: a Recollectiv Benefit at the Tranzac Club, 292 Brunswick Ave, hosted by Sharon Hampson (formerly of Sharon, Lois & Bram) and featuring singer Heather Bambrick with Peter Hill on piano and Jordan O’Connor on bass. Come out in person to help raise money for this active group. Choir!Choir!Choir! Epic Anthems If somehow you haven’t yet heard about the Choir!Choir!Choir! phenomenon, head over to Youtube to check it out. And then join Choir!Choir!Choir! for Hallelujah: An Epic Anthem Sing-Along at one of their three stops in Ontario this September: Sep 21, 2 and 8pm at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa; Sep 26, 8pm at the Burlington Performing Arts Centre; and, Sep 27, 8pm at Centre in the Square in Kitchener. The Wholenote May 2019 cover featuring Choir!Choir!Choir! Singing with Shapes: An ethnomusicologist friend recommended I try this unique opportunity to sing in the city. At the Toronto Shape Note Singers, you don’t have to be able to read music in the conventional way, instead relying on a simple legend of shapes. Everyone is welcome. Music is from the Sacred Harp tunebook and the focus is on participation—not performance. I hope to make it out this fall. Sep 18 7:30: Friends House, 60 Lowther Ave. 647-838-8764. Pay what you can. Also Oct 16, Nov 20 & Dec 18. Compiled by Angus MacCaull Toronto Shape Note Singers ARTISTS ON BOARD! VIA’S GOOD-NEWS ANNOUNCEMENT SOPHIA PERLMAN The Canadian, for the uninitiated, is the train that travels twice weekly from Vancouver to Toronto. While it’s largely marketed as a “cross country” experience, its route also acts as an essential inter-community link for people who live north of the Trans- Canada highway. I was boarding for one of these shorter trips (only an hour, freight trains notwithstanding) when my service manager let me know the good news: After much uncertainty, VIA Rail has re-started its Artist on Board program, which allows musicians in solo or duo acoustic formats to travel in exchange for musical performances on board (and at some acoustically beautiful train stations during longer rest stops). Orit Shimoni sings “Winnipeg” aboard Via Rail Train “The Canadian” ORIT SHIMONI 14 | September 2024 thewholenote.com
Braden Phelan and Liv Cazzola TRAGEDY ANN Life is a train I immediately reached out to singer, songwriter and musician Orit Shimoni who is more intimately familiar with the Artist on Board program than anyone else I know. She generously shared her thoughts – many of them even more fully expressed online in her essay Life is A Train. “Unlike the majority of musicians who have a home-base somewhere and head out on tour, being on the road was a full-time existence for me for over a decade of my life,” she writes. “I had no home base. I was an ACTUAL hobo, (by choice) – nomadic, and transient in my way of living, and I was living that way entirely for the purposes of sharing my observations about life and this world through song. … The first time I performed on The Canadian, (for which one needs strong legs and a strong voice), it hit me in monumental levels that I was singing a train song on a moving train. I teared up and as I talked about it with the group of passengers who had gathered, everyone else teared up too. We were living a musical tradition in the here and now.” On one such trip, in 2020, she found herself in the Winnipeg train VIARAIL.CA station for longer than usual: “I had sat at that very station at least 50 times during the station break on my way across Canada, but it was the first time I was getting off there for a whole week, to play my shows in town. It just happened to be the week that the entire world suddenly closed down and the lock-downs were declared. When they said “Shelter at home,” I was beside myself, because I didn’t have one. The train and the road had been my home. Taken in by strangersturned-friends, distraught, shocked and scared, I went out to smoke a cigarette in the middle of the night, and I heard a freight train whistle. It brought me to my knees. I AM THAT TRAIN SONG, I thought to myself – the kind of train song where the singer is in prison and hears the train go by but can’t get on.” Nearly five years later, VIA announced the program was coming back. Shimoni was in Holland on tour at the time. “You could have probably heard my whoops and hollers all the way to the moon. I don’t think I’ve ever felt a jolt of joy like that. I sat down immediately to record an impromptu album of train song covers! Next thing you know, I was Via Rail’s first performer back.” Win-Win Not only do the creative relationships between music and the railroad run deep, the news is much-needed good news for independent musicians looking to tour Canada in smaller formats or to create collaborations with their peers. 24 25 THE ISABEL AT 10! SCAN ME! queensu.ca/theisabel Box Office 613-533-2424 Mon-Fri 12:30-4:30PM thewholenote.com September 2024 | 15
