The Langley Fine Arts School Senior Choir (treble choir) has been given the opportunity by Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (VSO) conductor, Bramwell Tovey, to join the professional soloists, the VSO and the University of British Columbia choirs in Afghanistan: Requiem for a Generation, a production by Canadian composer, Jeffrey Ryan.
The text of this work is by Suzanne Steele, Canada’s first war poet. Steele joined the 1st Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry in 2009 during the war in Afghanistan, and documented her experiences in her poetry and at warpoet.ca.
Steele saw the fear, the belief, and the sacrifice. She met people who did not come home alive. She met people who did come home, but broken, to a life shattered by post-traumatic stress disorder. These experiences provide the foundation for this hour-long concert.
Ryan has set texts in English, French, Latin and Pashto.
For Steele, this work is “a love letter. Not just to one person … but to each of us, to our country, and to a generation that will be paying for this war emotionally or financially for another generation.”
The performance takes place Friday, Jan. 27 at 7:30 p.m. at the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver.
For more info and tickets, click here.
