The Bird’s Lullaby
SING THE NORTH started our Season 2 with Canadian composer Sarah Quartel‘s joyous piece The Bird’s Lullaby for SATB a capella chorus.
This project was sung by STN – our founding SING THE NORTH choir.
Singers on our project will took weekly full-choir rehearsals and sectional rehearsals by voice type.
The project also featured a wonderful live in-person interview and Q&A session with composer Sarah Quartel.
We also travelled together on the STN Virtual Choir Tour Bus to beautiful Algonquin Park in Central Ontario, where we had a live personal virtual tour of the Alonquin Wildlife Research Centre.
We are grateful to Oxford University Press, who kindly made a special arrangement to issue a digital score of the SATB version of The Bird’s Lullaby specially for SING THE NORTH.
We hope you will enjoy our video of The Bird’s Lullaby, which features as many Canadian birds as we could fit in three minutes of singing!
The beautiful audio track was produced by UK-based viola da gambist and audio engineer, Sam Stadlen, and the video was made by STN director Kathryn Whitney.
We send a warm thank you to all our singers for their heartfelt singing! And a very special thanks to composer Sarah Quartel!
The Bird’s Lullaby
The Bird's Lullaby is a beautiful piece for SATB a capella voices written by Canadian composer Sarah Quartel.
Now published worldwide by Oxford University Press (OUP), the piece was originally conceived for SSAA voices and was commissioned by the Prince Edward Island choir, Sirens.
We are especially grateful to OUP for kindly producing a special digital score of the SATB version specially for Sing the North.
A charming and uplifting setting, The Bird's Lullaby a poem by E. Pauline Johnson (1861-1913), the first indigenous poet to have her writings published in Canada.
Born on the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory in Ontario, her father was a Mohawk chief and her mother was English. In addition to her success as a writer, her colourful life included 17 years on the stage, touring Canada the US and England.
Meet Sarah Quartel
Canadian composer and educator Sarah Quartel is known for her fresh and exciting approach to choral music.
Deeply inspired by the life-changing relationships that can occur while making choral music, Sarah writes in a way that connects singer to singer, ensemble to conductor, and performer to audience.
Her works are performed by choirs across the world, and she has been commissioned by groups including the American Choral Directors Association, the National Children's Chorus of the United States of America, and New Dublin Voices.
Since 2018 she has been exclusively published by Oxford University Press, and she continues to work as a clinician and conductor at music education and choral events at home and abroad.
Virtual Field Trip
Algonquin Park
Every SING THE NORTH project features a trip in our virtual choir tour bus, a special session when we travel together as a choir to a different part of Canada to meet the people who live and work there.
At the request of our composer Sarah Quartel, who has many happy memories of childhood holidays there as a child, Sing the North are travelling on our virtual choir tour bus to beautiful ALGONQUIN PARK in South Eastern Ontario.
Algonquin is one of Canada's most beautiful wild open spaces, home to thousands of species of plants and animals, and the first park to be designated in Canada.
A site of some 7,653 square kilometres (2,955 sq mi), the park contains over 2,400 lakes and 1,200 kilometres of streams and rivers. Some notable examples include Canoe Lake and the Petawawa, Nipissing, Amable du Fond, Madawaska, and Tim rivers. These were formed by the retreat of the glaciers during the last ice age
It was named a National Historic Site of Canada in 1992 in recognition of several heritage values including: its role in the development of park management; pioneering visitor interpretation programs later adopted by national and provincial parks across the country; its role in inspiring artists, which in turn gave Canadians a greater sense of their country; and historic structures such as lodges, hotels, cottages, camps, entrance gates, a railway station, and administration and museum buildings
SING THE NORTH travelled to Algonquin on the STN Virtual Tour Bus, where we had a fantastic tour of the Algonquin Wildlife Research Station with Station Manager, Kevin Kemmish.
We send special thanks to Kevin, whose enthusiasm for the birds, large animals, and especially the turtles of the park inspired us to sing Sarah Quartel's beautiful piece with even greater joy in the natural world.