The Laudate Singers and Early Music Vancouver perform Festive Cantatas - Praetorius Christmas Vespers, Dec. 20 at 3 p.m., Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, Vancouver. Tickets $17.50-$66. For more information visit earlymusic.bc.ca.
When Lars Kaario was 15 years old and singing in his church's choir, he didn't guess that one day he'd be leading rehearsals for his own group in the same building.
As the artistic director and conductor of the professional chamber choir the Laudate Singers, he uses St. Andrew's United Church in North Vancouver as a rehearsal space, returning to the place where his musical spark was first ignited.
"My parents did not like that, but I was just on fire," Kaario says, about deciding he would become a musician when he was 15 years old. "They didn't really want me to take it too seriously, they just wanted me to enjoy it." Like many parents, Kaario's weren't entirely thrilled with their son wanting to become a musician, but they did lend a hand in his musical education nonetheless.
"My parents loved music. We'd always have the opera on on Saturdays - the Metropolitan Opera," he says. His musical curiosity blossomed with this early exposure to opera, as well as by participating in his church's choir.
"When I was 15, I started singing in a choir, my voice had changed, and I thought 'Wow, this is great,'" he says. He was also part of his high school's choir and adamantly studying both the piano and the French horn. He was practising hours every day and immersing himself in music when his eureka moment finally arrived: "This is what I want to do," he says he realized.
Kaario and the Laudate Singers have many concerts coming up. Some of these performances are going to be bigger, intricate showcases, while others will be much smaller. But a lot of thought and dedication goes into each program no matter the size or the venue.
On the larger scale, the Laudate Singers, alongside a vocal and instrumental ensemble, have an upcoming performance at the magnificent Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. Audiences who come to the performance, entitled Festive Cantatas - Praetorius Christmas Vespers, will be treated to an authenticate replication of what the holy musical piece might have sounded like 400 years ago. "This will be a unique experience. You can put yourself back in the day of the 1600s in the Dresden area (of Germany) and just try to put yourself into that time period and imagine that this is what you would have heard. These kinds of concerts are unique, they're not done too often in Vancouver," he says.
On the smaller scale, Kaario describes an upcoming family-friendly Christmas concert at the West Vancouver Memorial Library.
"This program is organized for young families," he says. "We encourage parents to bring their 1, 2, 3, 4, 5-year-olds to the concert because they really have very few places they can take their children to hear really good quality choral music."
Kaario accommodates people of all ages and backgrounds when it comes to a performance, whether it's a concert of classic choral music or, in this case, classic Christmas songs.
"The kids are noisy, but everybody knows that's what it's like so no one's offended if their child is noisy," he says, regarding this specific performance. "We have kids walking up to the choir and grabbing their legs and stuff like that."
Kaario knows young people well. Not only is he the conductor of the Laudate Singers, he also shares his knowledge of the craft as the head instructor at Capilano University's Conducting Certificate Program.
"Obviously the people who go into it have a real passion for it. They love it. They obviously all want to have a career in those fields," he says. "It's very hard work. It's far more demanding than most of the programs." Kaario also acknowledges that a career in music can be more demanding in the real world as well, where employment opportunities are often scarce. Many students in his program, he says, go on to teach music part-time and perform whenever possible.
Many of the performers in the Laudate Singers are graduates of Capilano University's various music programs; almost all have extensive musical backgrounds and educations.
Conducting and organizing a group of professional musicians is no easy task, says Kaario. But it's the role of the conductor to lead the charge forward.
"Being a musician, you're multitasking. All musicians, even a pianist, is multitasking. A conductor, I think, is the ultimate multitasker. There's so many things going on. Obviously the most important thing for a conductor is to have an image of what they want. They have to know in their mind their aural image, or the image of what they want. But there are a lot of other things at play," he says.
"You have to be aware if your first violinist is having trauma in their life, or if a couple of your sopranos are sick. There's a lot of psychology involved with leading a group," he explains. "How you relate is very important."
A bridge between Kaario's work as a conductor and an educator is the composer-in-residence program that the Laudate Singers sponsor every year. The composer-in-residence creates choral pieces for the group to perform. A young composer gets the opportunity to create original music for professional musicians, while the Laudate Singers get to try out something new and fresh. Kaario says he believes this back-andforth is vital to the art form.
"There's a lot of old choral music and a lot of its great - but we have to keep the art alive," he says. "We have to have new creations all the time. I've commissioned over 60 pieces over the years."
Kaario says that some of these pieces end up staying in the repertoire while others get phased out. Either way, he says, "I think it's crucial we keep on having new pieces created."
