North Okanagan Community Concerts Association is embarking upon its 66th season.
The inaugural gala concert will be Saturday, Oct. 27 at 7:30 p.m. at Vernon and District Performing Arts Centre.
Patrons are invited to dress in their best for this transcendent evening of grand opera. We will travel an emotional and spiritual journey featuring third act arias and choruses sung by Quartom, a male acapella quartet based in Montreal.
Quartom is a closely knit group of artists and friends who have a burnished vocal sound, bred of their own arrangements and their love of fine singing.
The group coalesced in 2008 when tenor Gaëtan Sauvageau, baritone Julien Patenaude, baritone Benoit Le Blanc and bass-baritone Philippe Martel decided to form a vocal quartet. Le Blanc and Patenaude have known each other since childhood as fellow choristers in the Petits Chanteurs du Mont-Royal.
They met Sauvageau during their student years at the Université de Montréal and became acquainted with Martel during a singing contract during the 1990s. In the past 10 years, the quartet’s work and performances have taken up a greater part of their time and artistic endeavours.
During the evening’s performance, Quartom will present works selected from operas drawn from a wide spectrum of musical time periods. We will hear works by Rameau, Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Gershwin and other familiar composers.
Related: NOCCA announced upcoming season
Quartom has a gift for providing an accessible introduction to opera of all periods. Their selected pieces are an open book for listeners entirely unfamiliar with opera and wanting to know more. Their performances are a hit with young listeners as well as with seasoned audience members hearing melodies again for the first time.
Quartom’s presentation is filled with good humour and friendly banter. For this performance, the material they have chosen is selected from well-loved operas’ third acts. At this point in operas, we all know the story and its complexities are well-advanced and laden with the complications of human quirks and misadventures. Emotional content permeates the moment.
Part of the fun of the evening is Quartom’s engrossing recapitulation of each operatic plot and their description of how the characters got to such a pass. And where do they go from there anyway? Come and find out.
Quartom’s four singers imbue the house with all the fullness of orchestral sound, with chorus and soloists together. They are each well-seasoned soloists and ensemble performers, with broad experience in choral works, and in operatic and orchestral productions.
Come and hear serious art brought to joyous life.
Tickets are available for a single performance for $40 (adult), and $20 (youth); or for NOCCA’s 2018 – 2019 five concert season for $125 (adult) and $62.50 (youth) through TicketSeller, 250-549-7469, www.ticketseller.ca.
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