Further to my question about musical madness happened later on Saturday evening. There is an incredible choir in the South Okanagan called Musaic Vocal Ensemble. Directed by Tracy Stuchbery, a graduate of McGill, and accompanied by Dennis Nordlund, who has studied at U of Toronto (A.R.C.T.) and UBC, this choir draws on singers from Kelowna down to the border. But all this is simply biographical. The real strength in this choir comes from its commitment to presenting intriguing concert themes.

Saturday night was no exception. For the first time in BC, the Annelies concert was performed. If Eugene Onegin is about risk in love and relationship, Annelies is about risk in life and humanity. It is, to quote the concert program notes, “the first adaptation of the diary of Anne Franks into a large scale choral work”. While the story of Anne Frank is likely quite well known to you, it takes on a whole different impact when an excellent musical score is added.

The presentation is not light. There are many excerpts from her diary along with a few quotes from the Old Testament (i.e. the Jewish scriptures). There also are a couple of references to German songs (Anne was born in Germany and didn’t leave until she was four when the family emigrated to the Netherlands). There is even an insertion or two of factual statements from other sources. The entire script of the words used throughout the concert was provided as an insert to the program.

Sometimes following the words at a concert can be a distraction. Not this time. It only added to the depth and the darkness. Simultaneously the music at times reinforced the incredible optimism Anne had that things were going to get better or at least turn out okay. While there were visual reinforcements provided by a computer-driven projector, seldom was that even necessary other than to remind the audience as to where we were in the program. The singing, the accompaniment, the atmosphere thus created, were enough.

This concert is being repeated this coming weekend on Friday in Oliver and Saturday in Kelowna. If you can make it, go. Don’t expect to be entertained, but do count on being moved. In 1995, while studying with the Vancouver School of Theology in France, a group of us on the last day drove out to the site of a concentration camp near Strasbourg. Even though I was driving a well-equipped, air-conditioned Mercedes, I will never forget the cold chill that enveloped me (and the other travelers) as we rounded the bend and came up to the gates of the camp. It was eerie. The exploratory walk through the camp did not brighten the day, nor did the sun decide to shine. It was an event that is even today, after also visiting seven years ago the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, hard to erase from my psyche. This concert by Musaic incredibly brought back all those feelings and questions: how can humanity be so inhuman and inhumane?

The concert was dark. How the choir was able to practice the pieces for several months is a testament to their commitment to tell the story. And with the world once again witnessing atrocities by people who seem bereft of a sense of the humane, let alone humanity, maybe this concert has helped remind us we have a ways to go before we sleep. Hopefully Musaic will inspire other choirs to take on this challenge, for Annelies is an experience that all ages and all peoples should encounter.

g.w.