Video Premiere: VISION CHANT
SING THE NORTH World Premiere: VISION CHANT
What an exciting weekend we just had a SING THE NORTH - Our video of VISION CHANT by Cree composer Andrew Balfour received its world premiere on Sunday, November 27 at 9am Pacific Time!
We hope you will enjoy our video, which is set as a transformational fantasy that is inspired by the sparks rising at twilight from a wilderness campfire:
Our video features singers from seven countries, spanning North America, Europe, and Australia.
Vision Chant Text
| He-hya! | Hey! |
| Babamadizin | Journey |
| Windigo | Ice monster, cannibal |
| Mishomis | Grandfather |
| Nokomis | Grandmother |
| He-hya! | Hey! |
Please note: translations provided here are approximate. Please see Ojibwe language keepers to learn about the meaning of these words.
Andrew Balfour
Of Cree descent, Andrew Balfour is an innovative composer/conductor/singer/sound designer with a large body of choral, instrumental, electro-acoustic and orchestral works.
Andrew is the founder, Artistic Director, and composer in residence of the Winnipeg-based choir Dead of Winter (formerly Camerata Nova). He has written works for many of Canada's leading ensembles, including the symphony orchestras of Winnipeg, Regina and Toronto, the Kingston Chamber Choir, Roomful of Teeth, the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.
Andrew was Curator and Composer-in-Residence of the WSO’s inaugural Indigenous Festival. In 2017, he was awarded a Gold Medal by the Senate of Canada for his contribution to Canada’s Indigenous and music communities.
Read more about Andrew Balfour here.
Our Creative Team
Like all virtual choir videos, our VISION CHANT video is the result of hundreds of hours of work by the STN Team.
The video was produced, designed, and created by our director, Kathryn Whitney. Assistant Videographer Leslie Painter created the beautiful singers grids. The audio track was created by Bryan Estabrooks and Kathryn Whitney.
We hope you are inspired by our performance of this stunning piece. If you like it, please view the video on our YouTube channel. While you're there, we'd love it if you could please Like and Subscribe to the channel to help support the choir!
Another beautiful score from Cypress Choral
Vision Chant is published by Cypress Choral Music, a superb publishing house, based in Vancouver, that does so much to support and promote choral works and composers from Canada.
We encourage all choirs to learn more about this superb piece for SSAATTBB a capella choir. Follow this link to view the score of Vision Chant at Cypress.
Our second Andrew Balfour video at SING THE NORTH
VISION CHANT marks our second STN video of a choral composition by Cree composer Andrew Balfour. We also sang his beautiful piece Qilak in Season 2.