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A lot of people like to put you in a slot musically,” says Don Fraser. “Well, I challenge those people to try to figure me out.” His primary job as director of the choral program at the Confederation Centre might fit him in one “slot”; his accomplishment as a church organist might suggest another—but his orchestrations for symphonic “pops” concerts, and his performances with rock-, jazz-, and country-influenced musical theatre shows might leave compulsive categorizers stumped. “For me,” he says, “variety is the spice of life.”
At the Confederation Centre, the choirs Don conducts—the Children’s Chorus and the Confederation Singers—provide variety from the get go. “Immediately, there’s a huge age range,” he says. Members of the two choirs span ages from eight up. “There’s also a full range of musical experience, from people with a great depth of musical experience, to people who sing occasionally, to people who sing occasionally in the shower.”
“Everyone has the capability of singing,” he insists. “Children come into the choir sometimes with just two or three notes around middle C. By Christmas, they have two octaves. And that’s not a rare occurrence,” he says. “Both choirs are akin to a musical immersion. You walk into the atmosphere, and before you know it, you’re doing it.”
Whether you’re a singer or an audience member, you are a part of the music and part of the moment that Don is helping to shape as a choir director: “You have to be physically involved with [music], or it’s just dots on a page.”
As an example, Don describes conducting the Confederation Singers in Handel’s “Messiah” as a “sheer thrill”: “Even though Handel’s notes haven’t changed, really the interpretation does change every year. When you attend a performance, that performance hasn’t existed anywhere else before. Every year, ‘Messiah’ is a gift to the audience, a gift to the community, a gift to the singers.”
The repertoire of each choir includes mostly “choral masterpieces,” like “Messiah.” “You could go to a concert stage anywhere in the world and hear these pieces performed,” Don explains.
In the coming weeks, the Children’s Chorus will be taking their repertoire to concert stages in France, where they will be on tour. And admirers of the choir will also be able to take some of their “core repertoire” home on a new CD. The Confederation Centre Children’s Chorus “On Tour,” was recorded in sessions in local churches over two years. Don says the recording consists of the chorus’s “most-requested tunes” that, above all else, “represent the choir members and what they enjoy singing.”
“I used to in the last ten minutes of rehearsal have a time for requests. It was amazing to realize what the kids wanted to sing.” The most-often selected piece? Deposuit Potentes, by Pergolesi. “It’s in Latin, in three parts—and it’s not easy.” Don comments, “Sometimes we assume we have to kitschy or gimmicky for kids, when in fact, I think kids recognize quality almost faster than adults.”
This summer, Don will serve as musical director for “Fire” and Associate Music Director for “Anne.” The Charlottetown Festival offers a chance to play a more styles of music, a challenge Don enjoys.
“If I had time, what would I spend my time doing?” Don asks aloud. His tone suggests he doesn’t expect a great gift of time in the coming months. “I would learn the complete organ works of Johannes Sebastian Bach,” he says. “And I would spend more time doing jazz.”
To those who might suggest that Bach and jazz belong in different “slots,” he elaborates the connection between the two. “Bach was an improviser,” he says, “and jazz is based on improvisation. The Baroque basso continuo is akin to the jazz rhythm section—like an engine under the music…” Don continues to name similarities, breaking down assumptions that might bar the broadest variety of people from enjoying the widest variety of musical styles.