On Sunday, November 17 at 7 PM, the Fall 24 Ottawa Choral Workshop choir and orchestra presents Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem in D minor, along with a selection of complementary works on the theme of Paradise by Harris, Bainton, Stanford, and Graham, featuring soloist soprano Susan Elizabeth Brown, baritone David John Pike, violinist Adam Nelson, and organist Matthew Larkin under the direction of OCW founder Roland Graham, at Southminster United Church in Old Ottawa South.

Gabriel Fauré composed his Requiem, Op. 48 in 1888, in the months after the death of his father. Shortly after its first performance, his mother also died, giving the work an added poignancy at that stage of Fauré’s life. In its sequence of seven movements, Fauré’s Requiem departs from the standard liturgical text, purposefully omitting passages focusing on death and damnation. The prevailing mood is one of peacefulness and serenity, and the work has often been described as a Requiem without the Last Judgment.

The concert will feature the premiere of a brand new composition, a choral setting of poet E. E. Cummings’ i thank you God for most this amazing day, commissioned by a member of the OCW community in memory of her departed husband.

The other complementary works include William Harris’ ravishingly beautiful Faire is the Heaven, an a cappella double choir setting of texts depicting the heavens by Edmund Spenser, Charles Villiers Stanford’s gorgeous part song, The blue bird, depicting a perfect moment in time (set to a text by Mary Coleridge), and Edgar Bainton’s And I saw a new heaven, a setting of verses from the Book of Revelation promising an end of suffering in a whole new heavenly dwelling place.

Tickets available through Eventbrite and at the door of the concert as seats remain (cash only)