Interwoven Voices: Reflections on Tour, Tallis, and Tapestry in Elora
Written by Laura Hawley, Alto in Pro Coro Canada
There is a unique magic to the end of a choral tour. As Pro Coro Canada wrapped up our recent journey through Ontario, our final stop brought us together with the incredible Elora Singers for a joint concert that felt like a culmination of so many different strands of my musical life. Standing in the choir loft for this performance offered a rare view of the stage: not only was I experiencing the music as a core singer in the ensemble, but as a conductor and composer, I was also listening to the inner workings of the sound and hearing my own music brought to life from deep within the alto section.
One of the lovely things about the tour was running into musicians I’ve known from earlier chapters of my life. As we met up for the first time with the Elora Singers, I realized that four of the singers were people I’d shared the stage with years ago. Jeff and Kieran I performed with on tour with the Canadian Chamber Choir in pre-pandemic years; Kirsten I toured with in the UK in the early 2000s—responsible for some of the most memorable singing moments of my life; and Simon I sang with during my university days in Ottawa in Euphonia Chamber Choir—a group started by a handful of young adults looking to create a high-level chamber ensemble reminiscent of our Ontario Youth Choir experiences. The Canadian choral landscape truly is one long, continuous tapestry of shared history.
What a joy it was to share the stage with the Elora Singers, and to efficiently put together not one, but two works for 40 individual voices: Spem in alium by Thomas Tallis, and 40 Words for Yes by Douglas Jamieson. With 48 singers combined between the two choirs, most of us were alone on our respective parts—a total thrill for any ensemble singer!
Another major highlight for me personally was that the concert program included two movements from my four-movement piece, Tapestry, which both Pro Coro and the Elora Singers co-commissioned back in 2023, alongside the Vancouver Chamber Choir and Halifax Camerata Singers in a true sea-to-sea consortium. Pro Coro performed movement two, Remembering Angels, on our own during our set. Then, movement three, Warrior, brought both choirs together to conclude the entire concert.
Several singers asked me beforehand how it felt to have Warrior on the combined program, wondering if I was beside myself with excitement. Oddly enough, the reality of being inside the choir was quite different from what I might have expected! As we rehearsed, my focus was anchored in the immediate work of ensemble singing: performing accurately, singing well, watching for interpretive cues from the podium, listening across the choir (now twice as large as the group I’d been singing with all tour), and carefully coordinating my voice with the two Elora singers on either side of me - new singers to blend with!
On top of that—full disclosure—because I had only ever conducted or practiced the piece individually, some of my brain power was inevitably hijacked by my inner composer. From my new vantage point in the alto section, I found myself picking the score apart and critiquing what I might have written differently! So, was I excited? Absolutely. But the sheer thrill of the moment only fully landed about one second after the final chord, when my job as a singer was complete and my brain could finally shout, "WOW! That was amazing!!"
And that final chord was truly amazing. With Pro Coro reaching the end of our tour and the Elora Singers wrapping up their festival, the "ending energy" in the room was palpable. As the final fortissimo chord resonated through the Gambrel barn, I thought to myself, "This is maximum-level loud and exciting!"—only to be completely floored as one last, powerful conducting gesture pushed the energy higher. What an epic conclusion!
That final concert, and indeed the entire tour, will continue to resonate with me for a long time, weaving new threads into the next chapter of my choral tapestry.
