Oops! All Vibes – Spring 2025

Stream

Accord Ensemble

Accord Ensemble is a community choir for young adults who supplement their busy daily lives with a little bit of awesome choral music. We focus on singing repertoire from composers who are traditionally under-represented in the concert music landscape: women, people of colour, and people from the LGBTQ2S+ communities. We believe that choral music is relevant to our lives and our communities today and we perform it for that reason.

Program

Waiting for the Moon
Words and Music by Sherry Blevins, Jeffrey Huang, and The West Vancouver Schools’ Mixed Honour Choir

Soloist: Emma Kartes

I’m standing by the still fire,
Waiting for the moon to come.

Who I Want To Be
Coty Raven Morris, arr. Saleel Menon

Soloists: Rebecca Ritz, Rebecca Alley & Yaroslav Veremenko, Neal Neigel , Caleigh Seitz

I lead with my spirit keeping love in the circle around me.
Expressing my spirit
Loving what I can see and cannot see, I’ll take care of the vessel I am in
I love the me that’s under the skin
Taking care of my mind
Envisioning the me I want to be.

In the Beginning
Music by Jane Berry
Text by Titilope Sonuga

This is the mythology of us
All the world is a song we make of our stories pulled from the rubble, forged from dust.
After the fire we gather the ash.
After the storm we emerge from the water.
The end is an invitation to start again, new beings still unbroken.
And in every beginning there is just you and I, how we make and unmake the world.
In our speaking and in our doing, in our brutal and our tender, our beastly and beautiful.
This is the mythology of us.
What we make of our own healing, how it turns us to face the wound, how it urges us to touch, to name it, say the word, and call forth the light.

As
Words and music by Joel Forth

It’s just a season that I’m living where ev’ry end’s a new beginning.
The days are long but the years are slipping.
And I would do anything to stay here.

We remember the first but never the last one.
One day it’s in then it’s out of fashion.
So ev’ry time I’m gonna take a chance on.
‘cause who knows who we’ll be this time next year.

Refrain:
As long as you need me, as long as night,
I’ll be here as a comfort, I’ll be here as a guide.
So as long as you’ll have me, as long as this life,
I’ll be here as a beacon as loud and as bright as you need.

It’s just a season that I’m living with wooden trains and tiny kitchens.
I can stay in time if I find the rhythm.
And I would do anything to stay here.

I forget the words but remember the feeling
Like the lines are blurr’d from awake to sleeping.
Gotta keep the focus ‘cause the moment’s fleeting.
I won’t look away in case it disappears.

I lie awake beside you ready to embrace you should your slumber need a hand to find the way.
But still I know tomorrow or some day beyond you’ll tell me this is not your place.

Evocation (Mon-Nee-Joh)
Text by Sowol Kim (1902-1934)
Music by Hye-Young Cho (b. 1969)

Unable to forget, you will miss them.
Let it be, that will be a life all its own,
There will come a day when you forget.

Unable to forget, you will miss them.
So be it, just let the years pass on by.
You will one day forget some, if not all.

Yet, for all that, is it not also true,
With blood and bones yearning alike,
How can the thought ever leave you.

and Einstein said
by Trent Worthington

I. There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
II. When you are courting a nice girl, an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder, a second seems like an hour. That’s relativity.
III. That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
IV. The unleashed power of the atom has changed ev’rything except our way of thinking and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. The solution to this problem lies in the heart of man.
V. Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count, and everything that counts cannot be necessarily counted.
VI. God always takes the simplest way.

Pelicans We
Music by Cosmo Sheldrake
Arrangement by Hanneke Hommes
Lyrics by Edward Lear (1812-1888)

King and Queen of the Pelicans we
No other Birds so grand we see
None but we have feet like fins
With lovely leathery throats and chins
Ploffskin, Pluffskin, Pelican jee
We think no birds so happy as we
Plumpskin, Ploshkin, Pelican jill
We think so then, and we thought so still

We live on the Nile, The Nile we love
By night we sleep on the cliffs above
By day we fish, and at eve we stand
On long bare islands of yellow sand
And when the sun sinks slowly down
And the great rock walls grow dark and brown
Where the purple river rolls fast and dim
And the ivory Ibis starlike skim

Wing to wing we dance around
Stamping our feet with a flumpy sound
Opening our mouths as Pelicans ought
And this is the song we nightly snort

What did you think?

Take our post-concert survey!

New Members

Accord Ensemble will be welcoming new members for September 2025. If you are interested in auditioning or would like to learn more, contact info@accordensemble.com

Cabaret!

Can’t get enough of Accord? Love flowers? Enjoy a good drag performance?

If you answered yes to any of the above, join us at the Muttart Conservatory on June 7 for our Cabaret show, Best Buds.

For only $30 you will get an evening of solo and small group performances by Accord’s choristers, hors d’oeuvres, and access to the Muttart until midnight, all hosted by Lady Tenderflake. There will be a cash bar and silent auction.

For more information or to buy tickets, head over to universe.com!

Acknowledgements

Accord Ensemble would like to thank:

St. Paul’s Anglican staff and congregation for the use of their facilities for our rehearsals
Isabella Xavier for our poster and art design;
Matthew McGuigan for running our livestream;
Our front-of-house volunteers for their gift of time;
Our board of directors for all the behind-the-scenes work to make this concert happen.

We would also like to thank the Edmonton Arts Council for their financial support.