Songs for the Season Friday, December 8th (8PM) at St. Thomas's Anglican Church
For Immediate Release: Toronto, November 20, 2006 –Toronto’s Exultate Chamber Singers continue their 26th season with their always-popular holiday concert. This year, the award-winning choir, under the direction of John Tuttle, performs a mosaic of works featuring Canadian, American and English composers such as Derek Holman, Herbert Howells, Arvo Pärt, Mark Sirrett, John Tavener, and Healy Willan. The evening also includes lesser performed works by both Arnold Bax and Arnold Schönberg. Songs for the Season will surely please any music lover this holiday season!
This concert celebrates the wonder and mystery of the season through an eclectic program which includes a rich selection of Canadian carols. It is also a rare opportunity to discover the exquisite and well-known work Friede auf Erden (Peace on Earth) by Arnold Schoenberg. This composition, written in 1907, begins the composer’s journey into atonalism and is complimented with Mater ora Filium by Arnold Bax, an English poet and composer whose musical style blends elements of Romanticism and Impressionism, always with a strong Celtic influence.
Exultate [egg-zool-TAH-teh] has established a reputation for performing a broad range of fine music – sacred and secular, ancient and modern – at a very high standard. "This is a serious choir with a serious director", commented John Terauds in The Toronto Star (May 17, 2004). In April 2004, Exultate repeated its 2000 triumph at the CBC Competition for Amateur Choirs, taking TOP HONOURS in the Chamber Choir category and also being awarded the Canada Council's Healey Willan Grand Prize for the best performance of the competition across all categories.
Praised for its sensitive, precise and seamless performances, the group has produced four recordings. A Choral Flourish; Make We Joy!; and The Present Time. Exultate’s most recent recording, All Around The Circle was released in 2005. Recorded last summer at Glenn Gould Studio (CBC) in Toronto, the album is a collection of Canadian choral gems, and spotlights the group’s clear sound, impeccable ensemble and fine musicianship – qualities that have earned John Tuttle and his award-winning choir superlative reviews and accolades over the years.
Conductor John Tuttle founded the Exultate Chamber Singers in 1981. He is also organist and choirmaster of Saint Thomas's Anglican Church in Toronto and adjunct associate professor of organ at the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto. In September 2005, John was awarded an honorary Doctor of Sacred Letters degree from Trinity College, University of Toronto.
