Stephen Chatman
Stephen Chatman, Professor of Composition at the University of British Columbia, is one of Canada’s finest and most frequently performed composers. Born in 1950, Stephen Chatman is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory and the University of Michigan (DMA). He is the recipient of three BMI Awards, a Fulbright Grant, an MB Rockefeller Fund grant, and the Charles Ives Scholarship from the U.S. National Institute of Arts and Letters. He has received numerous commissions, including works for the Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Windsor and Madison symphonies, CBC Vancouver Orchestra, the Verdehr Trio (Michigan), SMCQ (Montreal), pianists Jane Coop and Marc-André Hamelin, contralto Maureen Forrester, the Association of Canadian Choral Conductors, and Vancouver’s Chor Leoni, Cantata Singers, and Phoenix Chamber Choir. Chatman has had a long association with the Vancouver Chamber Choir, which has sung almost all of his choral music over the years, commissioning and premiering several works. In addition to this disc, Due West, the choir has recorded a first volume of Chatman’s earlier choral pieces under the title Due North on the Centrediscs label (Canadian Music Centre). His works have been published by E.C. Schirmer, Jaymar, Boosey & Hawkes, Waterloo, Frederick Harris, the Presser and Jobert, and recorded on CRI, Centrediscs, and CBC Records. Chatman’s many published pedagogical piano pieces and more than forty published choral works are widely performed. His orchestral compositions have been performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, and the symphonies of Sydney, Seoul, San Francisco, St. Louis, Calgary, Detroit, Dallas, and Winnipeg, and the New World Symphony. Chatman has lived in Vancouver since 1976.

Jon Washburn
Jon Washburn is the Conductor and Artistic Director of Canada’s outstanding professional vocal ensemble, the Vancouver Chamber Choir. Well known internationally for his mastery of choral technique and interpretation, Washburn travels widely as guest conductor, lecturer, clinician and master teacher. In addition to Canada and the United States, he has performed, taught and lectured in fifteen countries on four continents. Washburn’s musical experience is wide-ranging and eclectic: jazz bass player and band leader, viola da gamba and violone player, teacher at the secondary, college and university levels, artist-in-residence, radio host, music engraver, music librarian, record reviewer, chorusmaster, conductor and artistic director. He is particularly known as a champion of new choral repertoire, having commissioned and premiered over 130 new works by Canadian, American and European composers (mostly with the Vancouver Chamber Choir), and is himself an active composer, arranger, lyricist and editor. He has recorded over 35 discs for several labels, including EMI/Virgin Classics, Grouse Records, CBC Records, Naxos and Centrediscs (Canadian Music Centre).

Due West
Due West was commissioned for the Vancouver Chamber Choir in 1997, with the assistance of the British Columbia Arts Council. This set is similar to the earlier Due North in general character, but here the texts, charming poems by lyricist Tara Wohlberg, ring specifically western Canadian themes. Chatman uses simple but exquisite harmonies for Prairie Lullaby and Sunset, and applies a humorous touch to the other three.

Thou Whose Harmony is the Music of the Spheres
This beautiful piece for mixed voices and oboe solo was composed in 1994 for the First Unitarian Society of Madison, Wisconsin. The lyrical obbligato oboe part has an other-world feeling appropriate to the first line of the poem, a theme that is also expressed by the poised and harmonious movement of the vocal parts.

Two Rossetti Songs
These two settings of evocative Christina Rossetti poems were commissioned in 1999 by the Vancouver Chamber Choir with funds from the Canada Council. They were premiered by the VCC in October 1999 on an all-Chatman concert/broadcast at the University of British Columbia, just prior to the recording of this CD. The first, Song and Music, has an undulating modal melody, often shadowed or mirrored simultaneously in one or two additional parts, which seems to emulate the flow and nuance of a mellifluous poetry-reader. Remember uses a simpler style and texture to match the poet’s plaintive plea. There is a folk-like simplicity to the melody, too, based on the rise and fall of the words.

Rose-cheek’d Laura, Come
Rose-cheek’d Laura, Come was written in 1998 for the University of British Columbia Singers. The poem is by the Elizabethan/Jacobean English poet and lute-song composer, Thomas Campion. In this piece Chatman’s style echoes that of Campion himself: a simple homophonic, strophic approach which highlights the words and gently nuances them with numerous suspensions and appoggiaturas.

Dryads’ Bells
Dryads are wood nymphs (or “nature-spirits”) who live in trees and forests. They are long-lived but not immortal, according to Greek mythology, and are fond of music and dancing. People who see or hear them become nympholept, that is, filled with madness! This piece was composed for the Powell River Academy Chamber Choir in 1998.

An Elizabethan Summer
An Elizabethan Summer was commissioned by Vancouver’s Music in the Morning Concert series in 1989 for the Phoenix Chamber Choir. The texts are Elizabethan: Shakespeare and Thomas Dekker, along with an anonymous balletto text complete with fa-la for the third song. The style of the music also echoes the English Renaissance, but is spiced with some harmonic surprises and thoroughly-modern mixed meters.

Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind
This famous Shakespearean lyric (from As You Like It) is an excellent example of Chatman’s characteristically fluent harmonic and melodic style. It starts and ends with a dark but lovely tune; but that alternates with a “heigh-ho” section which is much sprightlier, though still tinged with Shakespeare’s melancholy. The whole piece is underpinned by a richly-appointed piano accompaniment. This work was commissioned in 1991 by the Mount Royal Youth Choir in Calgary.

Five Canadian Folksongs
Having provided the Vancouver Chamber Choir with an excellent and popular set of British Columbian folksongs in the early 1980’s, Chatman wrote these cross-Canada folk settings in honour of the Choir’s 25^th Anniversary in 1996. There are five songs, depicting regional character and style from Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

Lux Aeterna
The Lux Aeterna is one of the most beautiful passages from the text of the Latin Requiem Mass, calling on the Lord to grant eternal light and rest to the departed. Chatman’s setting was commissioned in 1999 by Kantorei of Calgary, Alberta. Written for five vocal parts (SSATB), it starts with a call-and-response idea, where one voice states a motive which is then echoed or mirrored by the others. This leads to a gently contrapuntal middle section which culminates in four softly beseeching calls of “Domine” before returning to the call-and response texture.

Gloria
Gloria in excelsis Deo (Glory to God in the highest) is the most jubilant section of the Latin Mass. Chatman’s setting is for double-choir, as though two hosts of angels were gathered on opposite sides of heaven shouting their praises back and forth. There is a short middle section of calmer exchange and then a return to the antiphonal praising. It was written in 1997 for the Jubilate Chamber Choir in Vancouver.

In Flanders Fields
In Flanders Fields, commissioned in 1998 for a Remembrance Day concert by Chor Leoni of Vancouver, exists in several voicings: the original TTBB version found here, another for SATB and a third for SA and piano. It is a simple, hymn-like setting of the famous poem by the Canadian medical officer John McCrae, who wrote it during the second Battle of Ypres during the First World War. 

In the Glow of the Moon
In the Glow of the Moon for women’s voices and piano was originally composed to a different text in 1992 for the Canadian Children’s Opera Chorus, Toronto. In 1995, the composer asked Tara Wohlberg to write new lyrics, resulting in the version heard on this CD.

Songs of a Prospector
Songs of a Prospector, composed in 1988 on a commission from the Nova Scotia Music Educators’ Association, is a collection of five songs with texts by George E. Winkler, an early British Columbia pioneer and miner. Originally written for SAB chorus, Stephen Chatman produced an SATB version in 1999 for this recording.