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Artistic director Dr. Richard Heinzle Photo by Handout /jpg, LA, apsmc
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EXETER – Two upcoming concerts from the South Huron Community Choirs will celebrate Canada and its songs through the ages.
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The South Huron Community Choirs – consisting of the Adult Choir, the Handbells and the Kids Choir – will present Songs of Our Land on Friday, May 2 at 7 p.m. at Exeter United Church and Sunday, May 4 at 3:30 p.m. at Kingsfield-Zurich Mennonite Church in Zurich.
While music director Dr. Richard Heinzle chose the Canadian theme for the shows last summer, he says it fits in well with the current feeling of patriotism in light of the tariff war with the United States.
Heinzle chose the theme when he heard Song of the Land as sung by Susan Aglukark. From there, Heinzle decided to base the choirs’ spring concerts around Canadian songs and composers.
After singing O Canada and God Save the King, the Adult Choir will kick off the show with We Rise Again, written by Nova Scotia composer Leon Dubinsky and described by Heinzle as “a very Canadian piece.”
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The choirs will also pay tribute to legendary Canadian jazz pianist and composer Oscar Peterson with a rendition of his Hymn to Freedom, written in the early 1960s during the Martin Luther King Jr. era. Heinzle noted 2025 marks 100 years since Peterson’s birth in Montreal.
A note of humour will come to the concert with a performance of Wade Hemsworth’s Black Fly Song, written in the 1940s after Hemsworth was tormented by black flies while working in northern Ontario.
“It’s quite a fun song,” Heinzle said, adding there are lots of lyrics for the choir to work through.
Heinzle has also arranged a medley of Canadian folk songs for the upcoming shows, which will include both familiar and unfamiliar numbers, he said, adding he’s included an Inuit lullaby.
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The Handbell Choir will perform an arrangement of The Maple Leaf Forever, as well as a traditional Welsh song called Ar Hyd Y Nos, and O God Beyond All Praising.
The Kids Choir, in its second season with the South Huron Community Choirs, is a popular addition to the shows, Heinzle said. This time around the children, under the direction of Katherine Neeb, will perform songs including a traditional Canadian sea shanty called Donkey Riding, Hina Na Ho as made famous by Aglukark, and more. Neeb will also perform a solo, and the choirs will be accompanied by Lori Danylchuk.
Heinzle, who was born in Austria and moved to Canada with his family in 1982, said he hopes there will be a feeling of unity at the concerts.
“We hope to get a big audience so they can hear all the songs of Canada,” he said.
Tickets are available at the Hansen’s Your Independent Grocer courtesy desk and the Exeter Animal Hospital in Exeter, as well as the Pine Dale Motor Inn and The Garden Gate Gifts and Florals in Grand Bend. For full ticket information visit southhuronchoirs.ca.
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