The Amadeus Choir of Greater Toronto will present its annual Choral Creation Lab Showcase on February 21. The Showcase is an evening of new Canadian choral works that celebrate the power of the human voice in choral music.
Together, the Amadeus Choir and the University of Toronto Chamber Choir will premiere works that were created via the 2025/26 Choral Creation Lab residency. The program, founded and led artistically by Amadeus Choir Artistic Director Kathleen Allan, puts emerging composers and poets together in a mentored residency.
The goal is to co-create original choral works, which are workshopped with the Amadeus Choir.
“Do not miss this virtuosic display of relevant, poignant, and straight-from-the-heart choral music,” says Allan. “These creators are the future of Canadian choral art, and this concert is where their ideas come vividly to life.”
The 2025/26 Choral Creation Lab residency participants include:
- Composer Sami Anguaya, who uses his roots in South American music to create rhythmic earworm music;
- Operatic soprano and composer Rebecca Gray, who pushes the boundaries of the human voice to examine questions that revolve around identity, gender, and origins;
- Poet Rohini Bannerjee, whose work delves into the immigrant journey, grief, and freeing yourself from the expectations inherited from childhood;
- Writer Qurat Dar, whose texts challenge gender norms with a bold voice, and offers an alternate view of the world;
- Poet Christina Wells captures the intimate tenderness of family love, and the ways that childhood memory can be inspirational.
More…
The Choral Creation Lab’s mentors are a group of acclaimed artists, and their work will also be showcased at the event. That includes composer mentors Iman Habibi, Matthew Emery, and Marie-Claire Saindon, and poet mentors Luke Hathaway, Coco Colleen Collins, and Gavin Barrett.
Each will contribute a work that resonates with the themes presented by the Lab participants.
In addition, music by Choral Creation Lab alumni Edward Enman (CCL 2021), Matthew Gwathmey (CCL 2021), and Emily Hiemstra (CCL 2023) present works with motifs of environment, responsibility, and a call to collective action for the protection of our natural resources.
- Find details of the February 21 event, and tickets, [HERE].
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