When Artistic Director Timothy Shantz founded Calgary’s professional choir, Luminous Voices, in 2012, it was to fulfill a “longstanding dream.” After completing his master’s in choral conducting in Edmonton, Shantz became chorus master at the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO) and founded a community choir, Spiritus Chamber Choir, in the same city. There was a gap, however: it was “one of those moments where you just say, we do it now, or you just don’t do it.” And so, Luminous Voices became Calgary’s first professional choir.
Timothy Shantz
Thanks to Shantz’s CPO connection, he was able to program the new choir’s first concert within the established orchestra’s season. A core group of professional singers from the CPO Chorus joined Shantz’s enterprise and, from the start, “have been fully invested, and helped with a lot of the startup.” Many are still members today.
As Luminous Voices established its permanence within Calgary’s thriving professional arts scene, it began to attract local singers who had left the city to pursue voice studies, and had subsequently returned. “That has really been one of the most heartening elements of establishing the ensemble,” Shantz said. “We have become a little bit of a magnet for singers who want to be doing concert and singing work.” They realize they can work professionally and “don’t have to go to another city to do that.” Quite unusually, Shantz has also made it a priority to engage exceptional singers from outside Alberta. The choir covers travel fees and arranges homestays. There are “plenty of people willing to travel and be part of this,” said Shantz.
Luminous Voices’ 2024-25 season includes a special program on Feb. 23 featuring a reprise of American-Canadian composer Zachary Wadsworth’s The Far West, which the choir premièred in 2014. An exploration of the AIDS crisis, the performances were recorded for Bridge Records and won Outstanding Choral Recording at the 2016 National Choral Awards. Lawrence Wiliford, the original tenor soloist, will return to Calgary in February for this remount.
Also on that program are new works by Southern Alberta composers Jesse Plessis and Sonny-Ray Day Rider. Plessis is currently a doctoral candidate in composition at McGill University, while Day Rider, who is Blackfoot from the Kainai Blood Tribe, is pursuing a master’s in composition at the University of Lethbridge. Shantz notes Day Rider’s penchant for slow-moving tempi that hearken the “sweeping winds that go through the rocks that are steady and haven’t moved.”
The season is rounded out by a Monteverdi program on Oct. 20, a New Year’s Eve concert and, on Good Friday (April 18), the music of Tallis, Bach and Howells.
