MUSICIAN OF THE MONTH: JEFF JOUDREY
After a long month of snow, snow, snow, we’re more than ready to say goodbye to February and hello to our newest Musician of the Month, Jeff Joudrey!
Jeff Joudrey is highly regarded for his vision, musical leadership, and standards of excellence in choral music. Founder and former director of the First Baptist Girls’ Choir (1983 – 2012) and founder of Halifax Camerata Singers (1986), his leadership has provided challenge and reward for many Nova Scotia singers.
His choirs have established enviable reputations for performance excellence and innovative programming. The Halifax Camerata Singers has four recordings to its credit and, in addition to promoting choral music throughout the Maritimes, was awarded the prestigious Healey Willan Grand Prize as well as first place in the Chamber Choir category in the 2010 National Competition for Canadian Amateur Choirs.
Jeff is an enthusiastic supporter of Canadian choral music, and his choirs frequently commission works from both established and emerging composers. Committed to the development of young singers, conductors and composers, he has been guest conductor of the Nova Scotia Youth Choir’s 15th anniversary tour and Unisong 2009 in Ottawa.
In addition to being Director of Music at Trinity-St. Stephen’s United Church in Amherst, Jeff is Chorus Master of the Symphony Nova Scotia Chorus. He is also in demand as a guest conductor, choral clinician, teacher, and adjudicator. He has served on the faculties of Dalhousie and Acadia universities as well as the Nova Scotia Choral Federation’s Institute of Choral Conducting. Elected President of the Association of Canadian Choral Communities in 2012, he also is a former president of the Nova Scotia Choral Federation. He has served on juries for the Juno and East Coast Music Awards, the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the Association of Canadian Choral Communities.
A native of Nova Scotia, Jeff studied organ at Acadia University and the Haarlem International Academy in the Netherlands before going to McGill University to study with organists John Grew and Raymond Daveluy. His choral mentors include Canadian conductors Elmer Iseler and Wayne Riddell, and German conductor Helmuth Rilling.
1.What is your idea of perfect happiness? As much as music is a part of my life, I really value spending time with friends and family, whether it be a walk in Victoria Park or having a dinner party with friends, or having all our family home for the holidays. Family dinners are a blast at our house – the kids all sitting around the table telling “Jeff” stories of years gone by and me there denying the whole thing!
2. What is your favourite musical memory? There are many, but the two that stand out are conducting Mendelssohn’s Elijah and my first Bach B minor Mass. Elijah was in celebration of a Nova Scotia Choral Federation anniversary years ago, and the massed choir of over 180 was a combination of choirs from across the province. The stage manager of Symphony Nova Scotia at the time, the late Jimmy Tasco and our Camerata Manager, Randy Wilkie had to cobble together additions to the risers in the break, the first time we all were on the Cohn stage. It was wild! The B minor was memorable in a different way: as much as I had prepared and studied the score and as much as I had listened to the piece so many times over the years, I was unprepared for how much the music would emotionally affect me both in rehearsals and in the performance.
3. What is something people would be surprised to know about you? I’m a huge Bruce Springsteen fan! I saw him live in Moncton a few years ago and it was one of the greatest concerts ever!
4. If you weren’t a musician, what would you like to do, all things possible? As a kid I wanted to be a veterinarian but I soon realized that my brain was not hard wired for the level of science needed for that profession. (I live that part of life vicariously through my daughter who works as a vet in Toronto). I’m not sure what I would do if I wasn’t a musician – I still get excited for rehearsals and making music with friends has to be the greatest gift ever. But on my bucket list I really do want to drive a Zamboni on a rink somewhere!
5. Where would you most like to live in the world? I love Montreal and still have family there. We visit once or twice each year and I love to roam the old city, and explore downtown to find new and interesting places to eat. And the Jazz Festival is so much fun. But Nova Scotia is home and as clichéd as it sounds, this is where I want to live. We are so lucky here…we have world class camping and hiking, wonderful beaches, cities small enough to be intimate and easy to get around in, but large enough to have a fabulous symphony orchestra, theatre companies, (and of course choirs!), wonderful restaurants…. where else would I want to live?!
6. Which composer (dead or alive) would you most like to share a meal with and why? It would have to be JS Bach. The idea of churning out over 260 cantatas for each Sunday of the Church year, to me, is mind-boggling. I know how hard it is to get the anthem rehearsed for Sunday…. how in the world did he write the cantata (some of these were over 25 minutes long!), get the parts copied, rehearse the choir, rehearse the orchestra, and put it all together for a Sunday service?! And then on Monday he would begin it all over again. I’m not naive enough to think that all of these performances were like us today, clicking on a YouTube link to an impeccable John Eliot Gardner or Philippe Herreweghe performance, BUT, they were performed week after week in church. They were part of the service – .a three-hour service, by all accounts. I’d like to ask the old boy how he pulled all that off week after week in addition to everything else he was doing at the time. I expect he would have some interesting stories to tell.
7. Favourite movie? My movie choices are alI over the map! I relax by watching movies, but there are so many…. I love political dramas, so going way back All The President’s Men was a classic. I am also a big Jack Nicholson fan and so his films like A Few Good Men, Terms of Endearment and The Bucket List are all favourites. And as much as I don’t want to admit it, I love action films – the Mission Impossible series, James Bond, etc.
8. Favourite Canadian composer? I’m not going to touch this one with a barge pole as I regularly commission from many composers across the country! There is a new crop of younger choral composers coming along now and they are doing extraordinary work: Cy Giacomin (a big plug for the Nova Scotian!), Matthew Emery, and Camerata recently premiered a really fine piece by a talented Quebec composer, Marie-Claire Saindon. Jeff Enns is a favourite as he cares so much about the texts he sets. But there are others doing really great work – Kristopher Fulton, for instance. I think the best way to answer this question is “the composer I am working with at the present time.”
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- Susan, Jazz, and Jeff
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- An off-duty conductor!
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- With Lydia Adams and Elise Bradley: Podium buddies.
Keep up with Halifax Camerata Singers’ activities here and here.