A northern-inspired choral program took centre stage in Dawson and Whitehorse this month, as the Vancouver Chamber Choir tailored its True North concert series around its visit to the Yukon.
The choir performed in Dawson City and Whitehorse between Oct. 15 and 20, with the program designed to reflect northern landscapes and composers. Artistic director Kari Turunen said the idea emerged from a personal connection between the choir’s former executive director and Whitehorse conductor C.D. Saint.
The True North program featured works by Indigenous composers Russell Wallace and Andrew Balfour, alongside Nordic pieces that echo themes of winter, wilderness and northern light.
Turunen, who grew up in Finland, said the Yukon’s northern setting added emotional depth to the music.
“When you sing about the Northern Lights and then you see them, it changes things. It’s just something you know that the experience makes it feel different.” he said, recalling a vivid aerial display during the choir’s flight from Inuvik to Whitehorse.
The choir’s visit included a school performance at Robert Service School in Dawson City, where students joined in singing selections from the Indigenous repertoire. Turunen described the visit as one of the choir’s most memorable school engagements.
“We had kids from kindergarten and I think grade six and it was a really successful school visit. To be honest, that was one of our favourite ones ever.” Turunen said.
Among the selections was Wallace’s The Gift, a song about community and Balfour’s Qilak, inspired by his travels in Baffin Island. Both pieces blend English and Inuktitut, reflecting the composers’ role in bridging Indigenous traditions and contemporary choral forms.
The program also included Carmen Braden’s Crooked by Nature, a reflection on gender perceptions from Tudor times to today. Braden, born and raised in Whitehorse, was one of several Canadian composers featured in the Yukon tour.
Other works explored themes of winter and light, including Laura Hawley’s O the Snow!, R. Murray Schafer’s Snowforms and Eriks Ešenvalds’ Rivers of Light, which draws on Sámi yoik and explorer writings to evoke the aurora borealis.
The Klondike Institute of Art and Culture hosted the Dawson concert. Turunen praised the venue’s atmosphere and audience turnout, noting that the percentage of Dawson residents who attended would translate to tens of thousands in Vancouver.
“Atmosphere, absolutely brilliant. It’s fairly small and we had a pretty good audience. I mean someone counted at the doors and if we had the same kind of percentage of population in our concerts in Vancouver, we would have 60,000 people,” Turunen said.
The choir also collaborated with the Whitehorse Chamber Choir, premiering Angel’s Light by local composer Nick Turnbull. Turunen said the joint performance added a meaningful layer to the tour’s community engagement.
While the choir has performed some of the True North pieces before, Turunen said the program was curated specifically for the Yukon tour. A follow-up performance is scheduled in Vancouver on Oct. 24.
Turunen said future programming may revisit some of the works, though not necessarily under the same thematic umbrella. “Many of these pieces I’m sure will be somewhere in the back of my head in the upcoming few years,” he said.
The choir hopes to return to the Yukon, though no plans are confirmed.
“We hope that there would be a chance of making such visits more regular in the future,” Turunen said.
Contact Jake Howarth at jake.howarth@yukon-news.com