Dear Editor:
Word has reached Vancouver that the choir program at Yorkton Regional High School (YRHS) has been cancelled for the coming year with no plans to revive it. Such a grievous mistake! It’s happening everywhere. This is a disaster for the future of Canadian music.
I was in the Grade Nine class when YRHS first opened its doors in 1967 and I was in the graduating class of 1970. I’m a grateful alumnus. The choirs, the bands and the annual musical were seminal to the life I now lead as a professional composer and university professor of music. Without those programs, my life would have taken a completely different turn, one I don’t care to contemplate. Because of the YRHS music program, I found my future as a composer writing music and a professor teaching it at Simon Fraser University where I co-founded the program in contemporary music and where I’ve taught since 1979.
The music I’ve created is performed around the world and I’ve been commissioned by producers everywhere including two shows in New York and performances in Paris, London UK, Sydney, Melbourne, Vienna, Madrid, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, Whitehorse, St. John’s and hundred others in between.
Without the music program at YRHS, the music I’ve written wouldn’t exist, and, like “It’s a Wonderful Life”, those performances wouldn’t have happened, those lives wouldn’t have changed.
Sure, I played hockey, baseball and football, threw bails of hay, was a roddy surveying highways and a jockey pumping gas. But it was singing in the Young Troubadours, choir and musicals, playing French Horn in the concert band and trumpet in the jazz band that gave my life purpose, meaning and direction. Hundreds of academic studies have been done about the importance of music on developing minds and the verdict is clear and unequivocal: music is good for us! Music gives us joy, purpose, community, meaning and direction, teaching us how to work together toward excellence while inspiring discipline and commitment for working alone. Music is an incredible gift of love.
Like others from Yorkton, I found my future in the music rooms of YRHS. The music I’ve written has its roots there. Cancelling the choir program is a huge, short-sighted mistake because there are kids who love to sing entering grade 10 this year. Where’s their future?
David MacIntyre,
Vancouver, BC
