UBC School of Music celebrates 10 wonderful years with Chan Centre

Chan Centre 10th Anniversary Celebration March 21, 2007

The Vancouver Sun

by Lloyd Dykk

The Chan Centre has been a friend of the music department since opening in 1997.

They couldn’t really play Beethoven’s Consecration of the House overture because the place has already been running for 10 years.

But that’s the whole point of the University of B. C. School of Music’s celebration on Saturday: a special all Beethoven concert celebrating the decade- long existence of the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, which opened on March 13, 1997 and has been both a venue for and a friend to the university’s music department ever since.

As in the inaugural gala, pianist Jane Coop will be a featured soloist in the concert, which includes the not- often performed Fantasia for Piano, Chorus and Orchestra, Op. 80.

The choir is made up of the University Singers and the UBC Choral Union; the orchestra is the UBC Symphony, the conductors being Bruce Pullan of the Vancouver Bach Choir and Jesse Read.

The orchestra also plays Beethoven’s overture to Goethe’s tragedy, Egmont. But the main work is Beethoven’s epic symphony, the Ninth, with the choirs and symphony orchestra.

The four soloists are recent rising alumni and current students: soprano Rhoslyn Jones, presently with the San Francisco Opera in their Adler Fellowship program; mezzo- soprano Rose Ellen Nichols, who has been featured in performances with the Vancouver Symphony; tenor John Arsenault, recently having been given a part in Mozart’s The Magic Flute for Vancouver Opera; and Andrew Stewart, who presently sings with the Canadian Opera Company ensemble studio.