!!! CAFÉ RCCO !!!

In this next Café RCCO ZOOM forum, we’ll get together to discuss the continuing challenges we face during the pandemic. We’ll have as a focus (but not a limitation) for the discussion some ideas and approaches to handling Advent and Christmas online. Are you doing an online Carol Service? Should we collectively do an online Carol Service with contributions from across the centre? How are you handling Christmas Eve? These services are often very crowded and in their historical form will contravene social distancing requirements. Share your ideas for different ways to work through this season of the church year.

Please register for this session at events (@) rcco-ottawa (dot) ca.

The Basics of Recording a Choir and Organ

Come join us for a webinar entitled 'The Basics of Recording a Choir and Organ.' If you would like to record your choir and organ, but have no idea where to start, this presentation is for you. Matthew Larkin and Devin Crawley have agreed to speak to us about their experiences. Topics covered will include what worked and what hasn't, process, and production, as well as types of equipment, e.g. microphones.

Please register for this session at events (@) rcco-ottawa (dot) ca. You will receive a link to the Zoom meeting the day before.

The Kiwanis Music Festival Organ Classes

As you may recall, when the general lock-down took place last March, the Ottawa Kiwanis Music Festival announced that all its classes would take place in April by video entries only. At that time, that seemed impractical for the organ classes, as so many of the students were no longer allowed to practise in the churches they had been using. The RCCO Ottawa Centre asked, and the Festival agreed, that the organ classes be postponed until the autumn when the churches might be more accessible. Even though there are still one or two students who are unable to practise at all, we have been able to arrange enough practice time that the classes will be held on Saturday November 21 at the Christian Science Church. There will be four students performing in five classes, and Rachel Laurin has kindly agreed to be the adjudicator. Because of Provincial regulations, we cannot have an audience for this event - what with the students and teachers and the adjudicator, there will already be ten people present in the church - but we do want the membership to know that the Ottawa Centre is continuing to make things happen for the students. The Kiwanis Music Festival is making the usual scholarship money available to us for this purpose, but otherwise the Ottawa Centre is covering the costs.

We will announce the results of these classes on the website home page and in Pipelines.

Café RCCO

Join Ottawa Centre colleagues for a discussion on our responsibilities for obtaining licenses and copyright permissions for performance and broadcasts. Many of us are supporting congregations by recording music for our parishes to broadcast worship services, e.g., live streaming, YouTube, or Facebook Live or Zoom.

Where do we go to find assistance in receiving permission to broadcast and/or perform not only contemporary music but also music that has been in existence for hundreds of years? Do you or your parish have a license to use hymn texts on the screen?

Do we know a composer who earns their living by composing daily? Let's use the person as an example of whom we are supporting when we make certain that we and our parishes are following the regulations. It takes time but it keeps us on the right side of the law.

Gordon Johnston will guide us as we thoughtfully prepare our services and concerts. Please indicate your interest by registering at events (@) rcco-ottawa (dot) ca. You will receive an invitation to the meeting the day before the gathering.

Sondra Goldsmith Proctor, organizer

Café RCCO

How are you thinking about supporting Lent and Easter services with the unknown logistics facing each one of us? Gilles Leclerc, Organiste Titulaire and Composer for Église Saint-François d'Assise, will speak about his planning and moderate the discussion. He will also share some of his explorations of the many skills each of us must maintain. Sign up now at events (@) rcco-ottawa (dot) ca. You will receive a Zoom invitation to the meeting the day before the gathering.

Café RCCO

Café RCCO will feature Blake Hargreaves, the former program convenor for the Ottawa Centre, who is living in Budapest, Hungary for the moment, and is the creative host of the podcast FutureStops which is supported by the RCCO. To learn more about Blake's exploration and improvisations on the world's organs, and why Budapest has been the perfect place to explore during the pandemic, please register at events (@) rcco-ottawa (dot) ca. You will receive a Zoom invitation to the meeting the day before the gathering.

Café RCCO

SARAH MACDONALD is a Canadian-born UK-based organist, conductor and composer, where she is Fellow and Director of Music at Selwyn College, Cambridge, and Director of Ely Cathedral's Girl Choristers. She has been at Selwyn since 1999, and is the first woman to hold such a post in an Oxbridge Chapel. Sarah studied at Toronto's Glenn Gould School, and at Cambridge University, and her teachers were Leon Fleisher, Marek Jablonski, John Tuttle, and David Sanger. She has performed across the UK, North America, the Middle East, and mainland Europe, and is in demand as a conductor and teacher for international residential courses. She has made over 35 commercial recordings, and her liturgical works are performed regularly throughout the world. She is a Fellow of the RCO, and writes a popular monthly column for The American Organist and Organ Canada. Sarah recently received the honorary ARSCM in recognition of her contribution to choral music in the UK and Canada.

Sarah will join us for a discussion of the similarities and differences in the responses to the pandemic in the UK and Canada. Please indicate your interest by registering at events (@) rcco-ottawa (dot) ca. You will receive an invitation to the meeting the day before the gathering.

Café RCCO

RACHEL LAURIN leads a dual international career as a concert organist and a very prolific composer. She devotes herself to composition, recitals, master classes and lectures. She has performed organ recitals in major cities in Canada, the United States and Europe, and has made more than twelve recordings, including two CDs devoted to her own compositions. Rachel Laurin has served as ‘house composer’ at Leupold Editions since 2006. She has composed hundreds of works for various solo instruments, voice, instrumental ensembles, choir and orchestra. Most of her compositions are published and recognized internationally, having been performed and recorded on the five continents. She has won many prestigious awards, including the Holtkamp-AGO Composition Award in 2008, First Prize in the 2009 Marilyn Mason New Organ Music Competition, the First Prize in the Category ‘Do-Organ Solo’ at the Orgelkids Tenth Anniversary Composition Contest (2019) in the Netherlands; and more recently she was selected as the commissioned composer for the prestigious Pogorzelski-Yankee Composition 2022. Her works are published by Doberman, Éditions du Nouveau Théâtre Musical, RCCO Music Publications, Europart, Hinshaw/Fred Bock, and Leupold Editions, a division of the Leupold Foundation. In 2020, the American Guild of Organists granted her the ‘Distinguished Composer Award’ in recognition of her important contribution to the organ repertoire, as a composer.

Rachel Laurin is a member of the ‘Comité d'Honneur de la Fédération Francophone des Amis de l'Orgue’ (FFAO) since 2016.

Rachel will join us to describe and discuss her processes through the first suggestion of a composition commission to the delivery of a completed work to the commissioner and the publisher. Please indicate your interest by registering at events (@) rcco-ottawa (dot) ca. You will receive a Zoom invitation to the meeting the day before the gathering.

Café RCCO

THOMAS ANNAND was a student of Graham Steed, John Grew and Marie-Claire Alain. In 1987 he won First Prize at the RCCO National Organ Competition and since then has pursued an active career as a performer on organ, harpsichord and as conductor. He has been Director of Music at St. Andrew's Church, Ottawa, since 1992, giving over 200 recitals there including a series of weekly recitals where he performed a vast repertoire including the ten symphonies of Widor, the complete organ works of Liszt, Franck and Mendelssohn. As harpsichordist he performed all the major works of Bach in seven marathon recitals in 2004-2005. He has performed as soloist with the National Arts Centre Orchestra and Les Violons du Roy, touring with them to Carnegie Hall on three occasions. He has been a featured artist in the Boston Early Music Festival, the Carmel Bach Festival, the International Congress of Organists and the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival. As a conductor he was the founder of Capital BrassWorks with whom he recorded for the CBC SM5000 series, and a frequent guest conductor of the Thirteen Strings. He has appeared on film (Denys Arcand's Le Règne de la Beauté), radio and television. In addition he has had his choral music published and performed and has contributed continuo realizations to editions of early music. Thomas Annand is a Fellow of the RCCO for which he has worked as an examiner and a jury member for the Organ Playing Competition, and is a past-Chair of the Ottawa Centre.

Thomas will lead us in a discussion of artistic changes that we are able to consider to improve our own interpretations of Bach. Please indicate your interest by registering at events (@) rcco-ottawa (dot) ca. You will receive a Zoom invitation to the meeting the day before the gathering.

Student Recital

The Ottawa Centre of the RCCO is delighted to post their annual student recital which was held virtually this year. We appreciate the co-operation of various churches who allowed the students in to practise and record their pieces. Some of the pieces were recorded for classes in the recent Kiwanis Music Festival, hence a couple of duplicate recordings of the same piece. But it features different students with different teachers. My thanks to Shawn Potter for assembling the various video files into a comprehensive video playlist for your enjoyment.

The Students playing in this recital in order of appearance are: Aleesha Katary, Minako Uchino, Aurora Xu, Maria Gajraj, Rebecca Lee and Samuel Lee.

Here is the program and student biographies for the recital. The video link will remain until Aug 31, 2021.

AGM