To celebrate the Stairwell Carollers’ 40th anniversary, director Pierre Massie has created a special Christmas program, featuring a wide variety of Canadian composers from across Canada and across different time periods, including himself.

In this blog post, he shares a few thoughts about three of his own compositions.

“To honour our 40th anniversary, and also Canada’s 150th anniversary, I wanted to write a special Christmas carol. It is a bilingual carol called, “A Baby is Born / L'Enfant est né?”

“Part of the melody had already been created years back. I have a folder of melodic ideas, which I listened to. I then chose one and built from that, until the arrangement was almost complete. Finally, I wrote season-appropriate lyrics in both official languages making it truly Canadian.

“In addition, we will be performing my new arrangement of an audience favourite, “Carol of the Bells.” I wrote this in 2016, but we will be doing the premiere performance this Christmas.

“The motivation here was to create new settings of traditional carols for our audiences, the ones they would recognize as tried and true - to give the songs a fresh and different appeal.

“Finally, we will be singing “Eya, eya, gaudeamus”, which in 2007 placed first in the Toronto Amadeus Choir Carol Competition.

“I started with a melody line and it grew from that point forward. I have a tome of Latin text and hymns that I use for inspiration, as with this carol. It harkens back to my youth when I would attend midnight mass and sing French and Latin Christmas carols.”

by David Rain, tenor

(From an interview with Pierre Massie, Director and Founder of The Stairwell Carollers )

Podcast excerpts from Stairwell Caroller rehearsals, edited by Holly Massie

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A registered Canadian charity, we also help local charities with our concerts andCDs !

The Stairwell Carollers:

Pierre Massie started our a cappella choir in 1977 while he was a music student at Ottawa University. The Stairwell Carollers are ranked among the best of Ontario choirs, winning both the 2010 and 2013 Ontario Music Festival Association competitions.