St. Matthias Church Choir

*After 10 years at the helm I left my position as the Director of Music at St. Matthias in June of 2016. It was a remarkable decade and I couldn’t be happier with the time we spent in Montreal with these wonderful musicians in such a supportive environment. This page will stay up as a reminder for all of the many moments of fantastic music making. Below are some of my reminiscences.

During my era with them St. Matthias Church Choir was a semi-professional choir in Westmount. We met twice a week from Labour day to mid-June. We presented some of the most beautiful music ever written during church services three of every four sundays during that period, from medieval to modern, and solo to 16 voices. We created an enviable environment any who wished to learn to sing in a high level were asked no annual fees, just a desire to make great music. As you will hear from the clips below, we had an amazing musical staff who made our time together a sheer delight. There were so many high caliber singers who came through our doors I can’t name them all. Our amateurs were also very, very fine in their own right. Our era with Bill Porter and Chelsea Barton at the organ was the absolute culmination for us – we reached our peak with their fantastic collaborative support. The Duruflé Requiem we performed in 2015 will forever remain as our crowning achievement together.

What made what we did so special was a number of elements, the best was the setting aside of egos to just let the music speak for itself. This took some doing, people are proud of what they know, but it was so worth it. I don’t think anyone could have asked more of a church.

Here is a picture from our last day of music making together – it was a beautiful day and a wonderful way to end a fantastic decade.

About 4 years after I started we really started cooking – great singers were making themselves available for us and we responded in just a few years with a lovely CD that we self produced. You can hear more about it here:

Buxtehude – Magnificat