MUSKOKA SOPRANO DODINGTON RETURNS TO SOLO ON BELOVED UKRAINIAN FOLK-SONG AT APRIL 28 MCA CONCERT
Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com
GRAVENHURST — Amy Dodington “loves Bach.”
But the soprano songstress is delighted to solo on Myroslav Skoryk’s “Melodia” April 28 when the Muskoka Concert Association presents the Elmer Iseler Singers at the Opera House in a Sunday night return engagement.
Skoryk was a Ukrainian composer and teacher whose contemporary music style contains stylistic traits from Ukrainian folk music traditions. He was awarded the titles People’s Artist of Ukraine and Hero of Ukraine.
A 12-year member of the choir, the 47-year-old Dodington comes via Port Carling where she grew up and attended BML high school, before now living in Toronto with her husband and son.
The MCA welcomes back Dodington and the prestigious Canadian choir under the direction of artistic director Lydia Adams — with Dakota Scott-Digout at the piano.
The Canadian chorus of 20 professional vocalists was founded by the late Dr. Elmer Iseler in 1979. The renowned ensemble has built an enviable reputation throughout Canada, the U.S. and internationally through concerts and recordings — performing repertoire that spans half a millennium with a focus on Canadian composers.
The MCA concert is entitled ‘A Tapestry of Song’ and part of their 45th season.
Dodington is featured in the first half singing “Melodia,” Skoryk’s most well-known composition a piece arranged by Mykola Hobdych.
It was featured in a movie, so it may be familiar to some, she says.
In a virtual address by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the U.S. Congress, in March 2022, it accompanied a video of the destruction in Ukraine. The work was part of the concert program of the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra during their tour in Europe, selected for its recognizability and sentimentality.
“I don’t have to sing in Ukrainian. I’m lucky I don’t have to show off my lack of Ukrainian pronunciation,” she jokingly told me this week in a phone call from her home in Toronto. She was between getting her son off to tae-kwon-do lessons and a rehearsal for Gravenhurst concert a week before a similar one in Toronto at St. George’s United Church.
She said there are members of the choir who are Ukrainian.
“Soprano has been my whole life. That’s the way my voice is made. Just for the range of my voice, it’s fairly high. Women’s voices are usually either soprano or alto. And alto’s a bit too low for me to be comfortable.”
“Melodia” is in small tenary form, with an opening theme, short development, and modified reprise of the original theme,” according to Wikipedia.
Also known as “Melody in A minor,” it begins mostly in common time with occasional single measures in 3/4. In the first eight measures the key is modulated from A minor to C major and then to E major, a recurring pattern in Ukrainian folk music. The opening theme is repeated, this time with a more complex counter melody in the accompaniment. The reprise includes additional voices and emphasis on the first four notes of the melody.
Dodington says “one of the coolest things about the choir is travelling. We’ve been to the Yukon and Northwest Territories.”
And Parry Sound-Muskoka frequently.
She says the choir has a number of additional singers who can sub in and know the repertoire well. The choir performs whenever and wherever they can and it has a number of singers who know the repertoire and can “sub in.”
They’re good sight readers like her, she admits.
“Yeah, that was one of the things in my audition for Iselers, when I first auditioned for the group. That was one of the things (Adams) was checking, how well you can read and how quickly you can learn stuff. And that’s important in this group.”
Dodington began piano lessons in Port Carling with Margaret Ezewski, who was at Iseler’s last concert in Gravenhurst (2016) when she was in her 90s.
“She just died a few years ago. She was an amazing woman.”
Dodington’s well-known dad, Paul, still lives in Port Carling. But has been staying with her the past few winters.
“He used to pride him self on living there all-year-round, stoking the wood furnace. But he’s at an age now (84) where that’s too tough and dangerous and when he’s at that age when he’s on his own.
“So we’ll be going up there and getting him settled in and he’ll be there till mid-November.”
She expects he will attend the April 28 concert in Gravenhurst.
Amy’s sister Victoria Banks is a well-known country singer living in Nashville.
Dodington says her voice remains consistently strong.
“There’s still people in the choir who are fairly old. As long as they can maintain control of their voice they stay in the choir and are quite welcome. Because the more experience they have the better performer you are and the quicker you pick things up.”
She says there are usually five or six sopranos in the choir.
“There’s usually five or six people per part and then sometimes there’s a second soprano who we borrow from the alto section.”
A freelancer, Dodington sometimes performs with the Cellar Singers, who her father famously soloed with for many years.
“I actually got my start with them when I was a kid. Albert Greer (conductor) was a big influence on me as a child. He started a children’s choir and I was with the Couchiching Young Singers when they first formed. Then I sang with the Cellar Singers when I got old enough. Now I come back. Mitchell Pady, the conductor, of the Cellar Singers is in Iselers. So he’ll often bring soloists from the Iselers along with others — so they also get their chance.”
Dodington has also sung recently with the Whispering River Orchestra in Parry Sound. “They do a “Messiah” and I sometimes come and they hire me to do a few other things.
“Just whoever is hiring. I’ll join a choir as a ringer at the last minute. I’m doing that in Toronto quite a bit.”
She also has a “steady church job” in Toronto — “a nice steady gig” — as a soloist at Fairlawn United Church under director Eleanor Daley, who is one of the composers on the Gravenhurst program with “Grandmother’s Moon.”
In summers Dodington sometimes sings at the Lake Joseph Community Church as a soloist. And the Islers are back “for sure” at the Parry Sound Festival of the Arts again this summer.
A tour of Newfoundland is in the offing if funding comes through. “I’m looking forward to it if they can pull it off.
“Certainly in the old days when it was the Festival Singers — when my uncle Ross (Dodington) use to sing with them — they toured Europe. And I think Russia or the U.S.S.R. at the time, ’cause there was a lot of funding back in the ’60s. So they had some really cool experiences. But of course those were the glory days for choirs.”
Another uncle, John Dodington, also sang with the Iselers.
The three brothers all had cottages near each other in Port Carling.
Dodington guesses these are still the “glory days” of choirs, because there are a lot more choirs.
“So that’s good. Maybe we don’t get as far and wide. We’re sort of staying within Canada. But at least there’s a lot more recognition of choral singing as a professional art form.”
She thinks Dr. Elmer Iseler was “one of the first to actually pay his singers and insist that they should be paid for what they do.”
The choir remains intact today under the general manager-ship of Jessie Iseler, Elmer’s widow, who is “very much still going very strong. She’s just fabulous.” Her daughter and granddaughters are also involved in the organization. “So I think that will be passed along in the family.”
And “I don’t know about Lydia. She hasn’t made any announcements about retiring any time soon. She is getting older, but she’s still going strong. She still has energy.”
Dodington says of the Gravenhurst concert: “I love the entire program.
“It’s challenging in many ways. Bach is challenging for its precision and its technique and just keeping it light and airy. The Daley you need to get really beautiful pure tones, really good blends, really good tuning. And some of them are challenging note-wise.
“I can’t remember because it’s been a while since I learned them. But I know they’re not always easy to learn.”
Adams’ arrangement of the Celtic Suites is “just really fun.”
Rehearsals are generally twice a week at Eglinton St. George’s United Church for two-and-a-half hours. But with the final concert of the Toronto season April 20, which includes two other choirs, they are spending time on the various programs for spring and summer performances.
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Come early for a reception at 6 p.m. in the Trillium Court, where you can enjoy good conversation with some tasty appetizers and maybe a glass of wine before the concert begins at 7 p.m.
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