Choir Tour Daily Updates #5

Nanaimo and Safe Home!

For our final day of tour, we got an early start and headed from Parksville to Nanaimo, where we were invited to participate in the morning service at St. Paul's Church, Nanaimo. It was wonderful to join forces with their choir to sing joyful service music on the feast of St Peter and St Paul (and their dedication festvival day).

Our choir almost exclusively sings services, but on this tour we sang primarily concerts. Donald spent some time encouraging us (in concert) to perform a little bit more. In services, we aren't performing - we are acting as part of the liturgy and offering music to the glory of God. It was nice to be able to relax into the familiar rhythm of a Sunday morning Eucharist - it's our bread (ha!) and butter.

A welcome surprise before the service: The Reverend Vernon Foster led us in a vestry prayer, which was followed by all the gathered servers and musicians praying together this text:

Bless, O Lord, us thy servants who minister in thy holy temple.

Grant that what we sing with our lips we may believe in our hearts

And what we believe in our hearts we may show forth in our lives,

Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This is a prayer our Young Choristers and Youth Choir know well from having sung it at countless installation and promotion ceremonies in the cathedral. It was touching to see them slip into it from memory with the rest of the group and connect the dots about its meaning, perhaps some for the first time.

After church, we were treated to lunch in the lovely church hall of the St Paul's Centre for Ministry. What a wonderful facility! This two-story, fully accessible building, opened in 2016, is designed to accommodate both the church's needs and community groups. The centre includes a large hall, four meeting rooms, and a commercial kitchen, which is used every Sunday to serve lunch to parishioners alongside the street population in Nanaimo.

Today, we were blessed to break bread with them all!

After lunch, coffee (and some slushies for an extra jolt of energy) it was onto St Andrew's United, the home of "Old City Arts' Hub, an emerging centre for the arts, where Mark McDonald quickly prepared some registrations on the organ, and our two embedded guest musicians (Müge Büyükçelen, chorister mum and violinist and Nathan Malzon, choir tenor and guitarist) tuned up their strings.

Though we are always thrilled to be accompanied by any of our resident organists, it was a treat to get to sing alongside some other musicians on this tour!

A wonderful concert ensued - the venue acoustic was lovely and we sang to about 85 people. Here's a nice coincidence - some of those in attendance sang in an diocesan choir at Dean Thomas's installation as Dean last fall. At that service, they premiered an anthem which we also performed today - How Lovely is thy Dwelling Place by our Director of Music.

Upon their return, the travellers bid farewell to each other before they (and their laundry) were collected by families and loaded into cars. These (tired) singers have a lot to be proud of from this week. They represented the cathedral and its school well across the diocese, sang beautifully, and strengthened friendships across age groups. In the bottom left corner of the above image you can see the cassocks and surplices of the Young Choristers, ready to be washed and mended before being reassigned in September - since they'll all have grown about 3 inches taller by then!

Thanks for reading!

And thanks also to those of you who support our tours financially, particularly the Anglican Foundation of Canada for their generous support.

Here's our encore from today's concert -- "Abide with me" arranged by Moses Hogan: