Celesta So Many Voices

This CD, full of repertoire from way off the beaten track, is taken from a brace of concerts given by Celesta Women's Choir and the West Vancouver Secondary School Treble Choir, from whose alumni conductor Peter Vanderhorst had formed Celesta. Despite the fact that something went bizarrely wrong with the once spacious and gracious CD cover (to err is human; to utterly screw up takes a computer), a great deal went very right with the concerts, owing in no small degree to the dedication, high spirits and musicality of the singers. I conducted a bit of the concert, but mostly Peter was at the podium with me sitting up front, waggling my eyebrows in empathy. Sometimes working as two separate choirs and sometimes joining forces, the young women not only take convincing ownership of pieces frequently done by other choirs ("Bonny Wood Green", "The Virgin Mary Had A Baby Boy"), but, much to my gratitude, excel at repertoire less well represented in the catalogue. These rarities include the premiere of "Girl of the Branches", a gorgeously melodic suite in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, written for Celesta; a fluent, shivery-good "Gaudete" (with me singing the bass line); my a cappella blues on adolescent angst ("Just Can't Stand It"); my country-choral ode to the queenly female role in the dating and mating game ("The Next Room"), whose honky-tonk piano part sounds splendid on a battered old upright that also gives the right downhome, Fats Domino style to "Acceptance Speech", the tale of a terrible brat who grows into a wonderful brat. There are first rate performances of "Heaven Bound Train" and "Three Ways To Vacuum Your House", plus a deep, informed reading of "Crimson, Ivory and Aquamarine" that shows better than any other recording currently available what might be done with a percussion accompaniment. I remember many of the singers with great fondness, having worked with several of them on numerous projects, and being sufficiently bewitched by their sound that I wrote "Ahe Lau Makani" for them, certainly one of my most dreamy and beautiful charts.