Choral Fest 2025
Choral Fest Performance: A Season to Sing
by Antonio Vivaldi and Joanna Forbes L’Estrange
Clinician and Conductor: Joel Tranquilla
Accompanist: Gibson MacMillan
St. Paul's United Church, Sussex, NB
Sunday, October 26, 2:30 PM
Thank you!
Another Choral Fest has come and gone. Thank you to everyone who helped make Choral Fest 2025 one to remember. And stay tuned for news about Choral Fest 2026!
About the Piece
“The Four Seasons is the first piece of music I can remember hearing from my childhood. I used to dance around the sitting room to it! I thought a great way to mark its 300th anniversary would be to make it possible for choirs to perform it. Vivaldi’s tunes are so magnificent they deserve to be sung!”
So writes Joanna Forbes L’Estrange, British composer and singer, and former member of The Swingles, about her new work, A Season To Sing. It is a 40-minute work published in 2025 to mark 300 years since the publication of Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. The piece re-imagines the melodies and harmonization of The Four Seasons, with texts in English drawn from the Bible, poetry contemporaneous with Vivaldi, and more modern poetry. It includes a new setting by Forbes L’Estrange of Ecclesiastes 3:2 – To everything there is a season.
The work is being performed by community choirs worldwide throughout 2025.
Read more about A Season to Sing!
Listen to a preview of A Season to Sing on YouTube
About the Conductor
Dr. Joel Tranquilla is a conductor and music educator noted for his versatile musicianship and creative programming. As the Artistic Director of the Halifax Camerata Singers and Chorus Master of Symphony Nova Scotia, he oversees a busy schedule of local choral performances, educational outreach, and community engagement.
Joel has conducted the New Brunswick Youth Choir several times, and is a past Guest Conductor of the New Brunswick Choral Federation’s Celebrate in Song in 2022 and the Diocese of Fredericton Choir School in 2024, as well as the Nova Scotia Youth Orchestra and the Manitoba Provincial Honour Choir. He is the longstanding Associate Conductor of the Canadian Chamber Choir
About Choral Fest
Since 1982, Choral Fest has been a joyful opportunity to join with singers from everywhere in New Brunswick and around the region to learn and perform a major work under the direction of a leading conductor and educator. Held annually in a different New Brunswick community, Choral Fest brings singers together for a weekend of in-person rehearsal culminating in a final performance, in a celebration of community music-making.