Nova Voce Decoder

Where does all of Nova Voce’s beautiful music come from?

 Audiences and choir members may think that the Nova Voce concert themes and the music selections presented in concerts just happen.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Before we get into how pieces are chosen for the choir to sing, we need to back up to see what our Co-Artistic Directors, Bill Perrot and Bryan Crocker start with, since up to now, they have been solely responsible for the seasons’ repertoire. 

As Bill points out, some of the concerts, such as the Holiday concert with the Halifax Boys’ Honour Choir centre around songs of the season.  Other concerts, such as our Spring 2026 combined concert of Duke Ellingtons Sacred Concert with Truro’s Cantabile Singers has been planned for years – we just had to find a slot in the schedule suitable for both choirs. The same is true for another joint concert with Cantabile, where we will perform Scott MacMillan’s Celtic Mass for the Seas.

Those examples aside, the concert themes, the shape of each concert and the specific choice of pieces is time-consuming and surprisingly complicated.

Themes may be set because our directors heard a particular set of music performed by other choirs. For example, Our May 31/ June 1 Arrr! Pirates and Sea Shanties concert upcoming in Yarmouth and Annapolis Royal came about because Bill and Bryan heard choirs perform pirate songs at the Unison Choruses Festival here in Halifax and thought they could build a concert around that theme.

Other times, it is just a lot of scouring YouTube videos and publisher websites listening to music and following leads to see if songs fit one of the themes and are in four parts.  Bryan said if he and Bill like a particular piece, we may contact the composer or arranger to see if they would consider arranging their piece into a lower voice version. Once a piece is identified and it is on theme, the next to last step for the directors is to determine the complexity of the piece and whether it will ‘fit’ with Nova Voce’s special sound.

After all the planning, searching and locating, the last step is to find the sheet music. Sometimes we can dip into Nova Voce’s extensive music library. Other times we might borrow from other TTBB* choirs. Regardless of how we acquire the music, the parts are in the hands of choir members in good time to bring the song up to performance standards.

Recent changes at the Nova Voce Board level include the establishment of a Music Selection Committee made up of choir members. In the future, this committee will be responsible for setting themes for upcoming concerts; thus, sharing the load the Co-Artistic Directors have carried admirably up to now.

TTBB – Tenor Tenor Baritone Bass