Media
If you would like to be added to our media list, require a media pass for a concert*, would like to book an interview with a performer at The Elora Festival, or if you would like to request tickets for a review, please contact Jared Davison, Marketing and Communications Coordinator, at marketing (at) elorafestival.com, by phone 519.846.0331, by fax 519.846.5947 or at 136 Metcalfe St. Elora, ON N0B 1S0.
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Reviews
Elora Festival features world-renowned organist
The Elora Festival loves to showcase organ music; many talented musicians have played the organ keys at St. John’s Church. However, British-born David Briggs brings something new to the village of Elora.
Harper Government Invests in Elora Festival
“By investing in local festivals like these, our Government is supporting the economy and providing opportunities for people to connect in their communities though arts and culture.”
Federal funding announced for Elora Festival
Michael Chong, Member of Parliament for Wellington–Halton Hills, recently announced support for the Three Centuries Festival for the 2013 and 2014 editions of the Elora Festival.
Elora Festival Launches 2013 Season
The Elora Festival is hitting the right notes for its 34th season, with a new focus and a line-up of performers that celebrates the festival’s past and future.
Elora Festival Singers Nominated for a Juno - again
The Elora Festival Singers have been nominated for a Juno Award in the Classical Album of the Year category. And if traditional wisdom carries any weight, this time they should take home the prize, because third time’s a charm, right?
A powerful, satisfying Elijah kicks off Elora Festival's 33rd Season
In a world where conductors flit about from podium to podium, the Elora Festival’s Noel Edison is proof of the power of connecting one person to a community, allowing everything and everyone — including the audience — to grow in the process.
CBC Fresh Air: Interview with Noel Edison
Noel Edison is a busy guy. He's artistic director and conductor of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. He's founding artistic director of the Elora Festival AND he's also conductor of the Elora Festival Singers. Noel was busy preparing for this year's Festival when Mary Ito reached him by telephone.
Elora Festival's 33rd season-opener aces Mendelssohn's Elijah
The opening concert of the Elora Festival’s 33rd season on Friday night magically transformed a lowly public-works storage shed that serves as the event’s main venue into an intimate backdrop on which unfolded the high art of a Biblical epic.
Messiah: Elora Festival Singers give version special flavour
Of the many performances of Messiah on offer during this Christmas season, the Elora Festival Singers’ version, performed Sunday afternoon at St. Mary’s Church in Elora, is special. Unlike most of the choirs that hire professional musicians to perform the solo works of the piece, the group has enough depth in its chorister ranks to cover these off with the home team. The various personalities and talents give their take a feeling of spice and variety.
Festival Singers to usher in Christmas season
As the days become chillier and before the last leaf of autumn falls to the ground the world-renowned Elora Festival Signers will have commenced rehearsals for the Christmas season.
The Record: Elora Festival Singers welcome fall season with no-fear approach to Rossini
Sunday afternoon opened the Elora Festival Singers fall season with a rousing 90-minute work — “Petite Messe Solennelle” by Gioachino Rossini. Conductor Noel Edison took the first 10 minutes describing why he usually takes a pass on Rossini, but how he has come to love this particular work, explaining the composer's church music written later in his life exceeded much of his opera music in complexity and development. The music he coaxed out of the singers was good evidence of his new-found fondness.
"Heavenly Haydn" at the Elora Festival: Haydn's Theresienmesse
It was a blisteringly hot afternoon, but the Elora Festival people have got the air conditioning system in St. John's Church into excellent form, so we were all - a totally full house of us - able to concentrate on the music.
The Elora Festival: Bach's Goldberg Variations performed by David Jalbert
A full house at the St. John’s Church certainly got a good set of reasons why they chose this performer doing this work. There isn’t anything like it! Bach wrote no other variations for harpsichord (he did do a couple of notable ones for organ). And nobody - not even Beethoven - quite comes up to the standard set by J.S. Bach in this utterly remarkable work. Any presentor has a head start if he can find somebody who can play it respectably - but the Elora Festival went way beyond “can play it”: David Jalbert has become a veteran with the work, having played it, by his estimate, ten times in concert already, and having committed it to CD (due out some time, hopefully soon...!) He didn’t let us down.
The Wellington Advertiser: McManus, Swick and Breit to shine at Elora Festival
It sounds like the set-up to a very peculiar joke. What do you get when you cross an internationally-renowned Celtic guitarist of Scottish descent with the sultry, lyrically-haunting vocals of a prairie girl who grew up to become a singer-songwriter and a lad from northern Ontario whose guitar riffs and mind-blowing solos have generated a fan following of some of the most recognized musicians of our time?
The Record: Eggert keeps audience keyed in with solo cello
Relatively few instruments sustain interest in an unaccompanied solo format like the cello, and even fewer instrumentalists have the chops to command the rapt attention of an audience for an entire 90 minutes without break. David Eggert is one such artist.
Fergus-Elora News Express: Mozart Opens Elora Festival 2011
Mozart kicked off the 2011 Elora Festival Friday night, with two familiar works that highlighted the talents of the Elora Festival Orchestra and Singers.
"Magnificent Mozart" began with the Symphony No. 40 and continued with the Requiem, where the singers were joined by guest soloists Karina Gauvin, Jennifer Enns Modolo, Christopher Mayell, and Matthew Cassils.
The Record: Mozart gets Elora Festival off to lively start
CENTRE WELLINGTON — With its post-concert fireworks, gala festivities and big choral work on deck, the ritual opening of the Elora Festival made for a splendid Friday night — the Gambrel Barn hosting the Elora Festival Singers, full orchestra, and a quartet of fine Canadian vocal soloists.
The Record: Elora Festival Reveals Eclectic Summer Lineup
ELORA — Noel Edison’s office exudes the sort of chaotic creativity one has come to expect from the successful artistic director. There is no thought here for frou frou curtains or espresso machines or even a fake Ficus Benjamina because in this space, which is really just the back of a store room, great things take place. Musical things. Things that attract crowds from across the province eager to see what the director of Elora Festival and Festival Singers has come up with this season.
Exchange Magazine: The Elora Festival Kids Camp, A Summer Treasure
Elora - The Elora Festival is best known for its intimate summer music concerts, the unique Gambrel Barn and the Grammy-nominated Elora Festival Singers. However, for many young people, The Elora Festival stands out for its Summer Kids Camp. Since 2004, a week during the Elora Festival has been dedicated to the Kids Camp. Participants from across Canada come together under the direction of Emily Petrenko to bring together a musical, which is performed for family, friends and the general public on the final day of the camp.
The Record: Elora Festival gives a taste of Westminster Abbey
ELORA — It was a royally British love-in Sunday afternoon, as the Elora Festival Singers continued their Winter Season with a program entitled Music from Westminster Abbey to a packed Church of St. John the Evangelist in Elora.
The Record: Elora Festival Receives Nomination
The Elora Festival Singers have received a highly coveted Grammy nomination in the Best Small Ensemble Performance category for their CD, Eric Whitacre Choral Music, recorded under the classical music, Naxos label.
ExchangeMagazine: Elora Festival and Singers – Oh! Canada
Elora - A tribute to Canadian Composers, Oh! Canada features works by Mark Sirett, Harry Somers, Derek Holman, Rob Teehan and Leonard Enns among others. For this special performance, The Elora Festival Singers and conductor Noel Edison welcome guest composer and commentator Leonard Enns to join them and guide the audience through his new work “the only face I want is yours” and the works of the other composers presented.
The Record: Elora Festival and Singers – Bach’s Mass in B Minor
Guelph - Grammy-nominated Elora Festival Singers will perform Bach’s great B minor Mass in Guelph on Sunday, April 3, 2011 at 3:00 p.m. Considered one of the greatest creations of all times, this spectacular work represents the pinnacle of Bach’s creative genius. Noel Edison will conduct the Singers with orchestra and soloists in this monumental work in the glorious acoustics of the Church of our Lady Immaculate in Guelph.
The Record: Nary an oom-pah-pah to be heard at Elora Festival
ELORA — For the cultural set, the antidote to Octoberfest was to be found in Elora Saturday afternoon, with the first of three concerts billed Harvest Festival in the Village. With nary an oom-pah-pah in earshot, the program was devoted to the French Romantics Ravel, Debussy and Poulenc. In a clever programming stroke, each set of choral works was interspersed with short piano numbers by the same composers. This provided a wonderful feeling of variety within a coherent overall frame.
CD Review: Eric Whitacre's "Choral Music" by The Elora Festival Singers
Listen to samples on Naxos.com
Eric Whitacre's choral works have been generously surveyed on disc, but only a handful of choirs have yet devoted an entire recording to his music. He couldn't have more luminous or illuminating interpreters than the Elora Festival Singers, a choir that I've heartily praised in the past and that deserves the same recognition here. Although there is much duplication, this program makes a fine companion to the 2005 recording by Polyphony (Hyperion) that I previously recommended (type Q9718 in Search Reviews).
CD Review: Audio File
Click to listen to a review
CD Review: Morten Lauridsen by The Elora Festival Singers
If I were Morten Lauridsen and my work was in the artistic care of a choir like the Elora Festival Singers I would feel that my creative vision was in exceptionally good hands. Although O nata lux (a movement from the larger work Lux aeterna) and O magnum mysterium have been recorded numerous times, they never have been done better--or more movingly--than here. And notably, the timing of the latter, at just short of six minutes, effectively demonstrates that (unlike the comparatively languorous performances by Polyphony and the Chamber Choir of Europe, for example) in this work slower is not better!
The Bay Area Reporter: Wonderful Chorale
Even before his YouTube Virtual Choir recording of Lux aurumque(Light of Gold ) became an international hit, Nevada-born Eric Whitacre, 40, had become the golden boy of American choral music. The reasons for his fame are abundantly clear on this new budget CD from Naxos. His music, with its easily assimilated, almost otherworldly strangeness and ethereal beauty, touches a deep core within our being.
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