For the members of the Accord Choir, one of the most memorable moments of their recent trip to the Baltic states came in an unlikely place: a restaurant in Lithuania.
After a concert, assistant conductor Frank Yang called artistic director and conductor Linda Crawford over to the restaurant’s bar area.
“They’re playing a song that we had just sung,” Crawford recalled.
The song was Est-ce d’antan, a piece from Winnipeg.
After travelling thousands of kilometres from home between Monday, June 29, and Tuesday, July 7, the choir members found themselves singing along to a Canadian song being played in a Lithuanian restaurant.
“We all sang lustily,” Crawford said. “It was wonderful.”
The moment was one of many highlights of a nine-day tour earlier this summer, when 12 members of the local Accord Choir joined the 55-voice All Voices Community Choir for a tour of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Led by Crawford of Vankleek Hill and Yang of Ottawa, and accompanied by Nick Busch of Ottawa, the All Voices Community Choir performed six concerts in Tallinn, Riga, Nida, and Vilnius during the trip.
The concerts featured Canadian composers and arrangers, as well as a wide variety of musical genres. Two of the performances were collaborations with local choirs, with the groups coming together for combined pieces.
For Crawford, who is also Accord’s artistic director and conductor, the tour offered local singers an opportunity the growing choir likely would not have had for several years on its own.
Accord had about 37 singers last year and has since grown to more than 40 members. The organization grew out of a group of singers who had participated in various choirs around the region, many under the direction of Rosemary Harden.
Harden remains involved with Accord, accompanying rehearsals while focusing more on singing during concerts.
The All Voices Community Choir, meanwhile, has the experience and infrastructure required for a major international tour. The organization is preparing to celebrate its 50th anniversary season.
The trip combined performances with opportunities to experience the history, art, culture, and natural beauty of the three Baltic countries.
Some concerts took place in large, historic churches, while another was held in a smaller, contemporary church in Nida, a picturesque community that Crawford described as developing into a resort town. The choir also sang during a church service following the concert.
One of the most memorable performances came on Canada Day at a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military base near Riga, where the choir performed outdoors during a barbecue and picnic. The informal setting brought together military personnel from the 13 other nations represented at the base.
“It was a very international gathering, and a lively celebration of Canadian music and culture,” Crawford said.
The choir performed Vive la Canadienne, an arrangement associated with Québec’s Royal 22nd Regiment. The piece became something of a theme song for the tour and was performed repeatedly.
The concerts featured an overwhelmingly Canadian repertoire, something Crawford said was intentional.
“We have such a good choral community here in this country, and we don’t show it off enough,” she said.
In Vilnius, the choir performed with the Garfunkels, an international jazz choir whose members come from several different countries and use English as their common language.
Following the concert, the Canadian ambassador to Lithuania, Jeanette Sautner, hosted a reception for the singers. Crawford initially did not realize that Sautner was also a member of the choir, singing alto.
“She made it her Canada Day celebration,” Crawford said of the reception, which also brought together Lithuanian guests and other members of the choir.
In Tallinn, the Canadian ambassador to Estonia, Laird Hindle, attended one of the choir’s concerts as an honoured guest.
For the Accord members, the trip was more than visiting a part of the world less familiar to many Canadian travellers. It was also a chance to represent their communities and country through music.
Crawford said the Baltic states were chosen in part because of their strong choral traditions and because they offered a less familiar destination for Canadian singers.
The experience, she said, was ultimately about two things.
“Singing together. And sharing our own music.”
