Spine-tingling

Toronto Welsh Male Voice Choir performs this Saturday

It is a sound that comes very much from the heart and the soul.” That is how Garth Manning describes the effect of the approximately 50 men who comprise the Toronto Welsh Male Voice Choir. The Choir is performing at the Regent Theatre this Saturday in a concert to benefit Prince Edward County Memorial Hospital Foundation.

Manning was once a member of the esteemed vocal group. He explains that the tradition of all-male Welsh choirs evolved out the hardship of the working lives of the men in his native country.

“The origin of Welsh singing is in the coal mines of south Wales and the slate mines in the north part of the country,” said Manning. “The conditions in these places are horrifying—hundreds of miners have died in those mines. I believe nature is compensating for the dreadful life Welshmen lived underground through wondrous singing.”

He says the sound of 50 well-trained voices rising at once will raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

“It is a gripping and beautiful experience,” said Manning.

In his parents’ hometown of Aberdare is a statue of the famous conductor known as Caradog that honours the achievement of the Côr Mawr, a choir of some 460 voices that twice won first price at the Crystal Palace choral competitions in the 1870s.

“They sang for Queen Victoria in Buckingham Palace,” said Manning. “This is a measure of the elevation this style of music had risen.” When the Toronto Welsh Male Voice Choir was formed 13 years ago, most of its members had once lived in Wales. Today the proportion is smaller but the choir remains rigorously true to its origins and tradition—with several songs sung in Welsh.

The Toronto Welsh Male Voice Choir has performed across Canada and in concert halls in England, Wales and the United States, including Carnegie Hall in New York City.

The repertoire currently ranges to the contemporary, including songs by Leonard Cohen and Ian Tyson. Joining the choir on stage this Saturday will be the County’s songstress Jeanette Arsenault and fiddler Josh Colby—who, when not entertaining audiences, works is a physician with the Prince Edward Family Health Team.

According to Manning, the Toronto Welsh Male Voice Choir is a musical spectacle that is not to be missed.

“There are few other choirs in the world that make a sound quite like it.”