Graduate Conducting Recital: Clara Johnson, Nicholas Renaud

Graduate choral conducting students Clara Johnson and Nicholas Renaud present a graduate degree recital: "Songs My Grandmother Taught Me," featuring works by Canadian composers, arrangers, and poets from the year 1600 to present. With collaborative pianists Kyle Hanks, Stephen Swanson, and Chiao-Yu Wu. 

Program

Songs of New France

Ah! Si Mon Moine Voulait Danser - arr. Donald Patriquin (b.1938)
UW Recital Choir Treble Voices

Dans la prison de Londres - arr. M. Bégin (b.19??)
Seattle Francophone Choir

Magnus Dominus - ed. Erich Schwandt
UW Cohort Ensemble; Helen Woodruff & Scott Fikse, soloists

Songs of Nature

“alternatives: one two three - Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm (b.1965)
ii. indian soul food”

Epitaph for Moonlight - R. Murray Schafer (1933-2021)
UW Cohort Ensemble; Chiao-Yu Wu, percussion

Thoughts on a Still Night - Alice Ping Yee Ho (b.1960)
UW Recital Choir

When the Earth Stands Still - Don Macdonald (b.1966)
UW Recital Choir Tenor & Bass Voices

J’ai vû le loup - arr. Stephen Hatfield (b.1956)
UW Cohort Ensemble

Songs of Sorrow

“my grandmothers” - Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm (b.1965)

Parlez-moi - arr. A. Bevan (b. 1951)
Seattle Francophone Choir

Nukum - Alex Vollant (b.2000)
UW Cohort Ensemble; Clara Johnson, soloist

Friend, Pass Softly Matthew Emery (b.1991)
UW Cohort Ensemble

Songs of Faith

“i will be” - Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm
Ave Joseph - ed. Elisabeth MacIsaac (b.1960)
Treble Choir; Kris Bryan & Heidi Blythe, soloists

Three Poems from the Parlor: -Eleanor Daley (b.1955)
Miss Jane Austen
Treble Choir

Rise Up, My Love, My Fair One - Healey Willan (1880-1968)
UW Chorale

Songs of Story

“the book you left: - Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm
in memory”
Marie Madeleine arr. Jeanette Gallant (1961-2025)
UW Cohort Ensemble; Kyle Hanks, Diane Johnson, & Michael McKenzie, percussionists

Red River Valley - arr. Leonard Enns (b.1948)
UW Recital Choir; Helen Woodruff, soloist

Three Poems from the Parlor: Eleanor Daley
Mrs. Austen
Treble Choir

Feller From Fortune - arr. Harry Somers (1925-1999)
UW Recital Choir

Songs of the Land

“names” - Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm

J’entends le Moulin - arr. M. Snelgrove (b. 1962)
Seattle Francophone Choir

Walk Out on the Water - arr. G. Kroeker-Lee (b.19??)
UW Chorale

All Too Soon - arr. Stephen Hatfield
UW Recital Choir

Les Voyageurs de la Gatineau - arr. Jennifer McMillan (b.19??)
UW Chorale

Programme Notes: Songs My Grandmother Taught Me 

This programme of Canadian music is both deeply personal and widely communal. Songs My Grandmother Taught Me is a tribute to the women who plant music in us before we even know we’re musicians.

My grandmother, Henriette (affectionately known as “mémé” by her dozens of grandchildren and great grandchildren)—French Canadian, a church organist, a quiet force of grace and patience—was my first piano teacher and my first French tutor. A beacon of our French Canadian heritage, she would come over to teach us how to cook traditional meals (tortière), sit down with us for hours at the kitchen table helping us with our homework (all in French so that we could connect with our heritage, even while growing up in the very anglophone community of Vancouver), and when the recession made formal piano lessons inaccessible, she taught us for free. She was ever present to guide me not only through music but through language, faith, and resilience.

Her passing this March, after years of living with dementia, was a tragic loss for our family.  I felt compelled to reflect on the many ways she remains present—in how I teach, in how I lead, in how I learn. Her favourite advice when I struggled through a tough passage on the piano was always the same: “just try it one hand at a time.” That phrase reminds me to approach challenges with compassion and clarity. It’s a principle I carry into every rehearsal and every classroom, regardless of what I am teaching. Life’s challenges are often less daunting and complex than we think, if we can find ways to give ourselves grace and break things down into smaller, more manageable steps. In so doing, we can allow ourselves to be a support to others. My other grandmother, Sylvia, an immigrant from England, models this type of support: a lifelong volunteer, a generous and caring friend to many, and dedicated mother and grandmother, always putting others before herself. I feel so grateful to both Sylvia and Henriette for the lessons they have imparted upon me so that I may too embody these cultural ideals and contribute positively to my community.

                          –Nicholas Renaud

My grandmother, Anna, was a gardener. She tended plants, stories, people, and faith. In her hands, relationships were cultivated with care and compassion. She pruned away my childhood melancholy and watered me with her love, patience, and time. The songs she taught me in the form of resilience, laughter, and connection to the earth keep me company to this day, long after her passing; and her roots grow so deeply within me that no amount of time can fell her spirit. The music and poetry of this recital reflect my memories and gratitude for all that she was and all that she continues to be.

                          –Clara Johnson

To speak of "Canadian identity" is to speak of a mosaic: layered, dynamic, multilingual, and incomplete without the voices of Indigenous peoples, newcomers, settlers, and all those who contribute to the fabric of our communities. In this spirit, this afternoon’s repertoire features music in Innu, French, Mandarin, and English. These languages gesture toward a Canada that is not monolithic, but rich in diversity and story—one that aspires toward inclusivity, relationality, and justice.

Through Canadian poetry, memory, and song, we gather tonight to listen—not only to the music, but to one another. May this recital serve as a moment of reflection, gratitude, and hope. May the songs passed down through generations continue to guide us gently forward. May it invite us to listen with care, to remember those who shaped us, those who came before us, those whom we encounter in our walks of life, and to pass on songs, cultural understandings, and language not just for the sake of tradition, but for the sake of love.

We hope you enjoy these moments of music with us this afternoon!

                          –Clara and Nic, June 7 2025

Songs of New France

We open with music rooted in the traditions of the early French settlers in eastern Canada, known as New France from 1534 until 1763. These songs, passed down orally and reimagined in choral form, reflect both joy and struggle. They remind us that music travelled alongside people—by canoe, by prayer, by dance—and still carries the memory of those journeys. Ah! Si mon moine…is one of the most well-known folk songs in French-speaking Canada. It illustrates the comic trope of forbidden love as a girl unsuccessfully woos a monk with gifts to entice him to dance with her. At last, the girl mourns the monk’s vow of poverty as the true foil to her happiness, stating, “If he hadn’t made a vow of poverty, I’d give him other wonderful things too…” Dans La Prison de Londres, a folksong passed down through generations, tells the story of a prisoner and his one visitor: the jailor’s daughter. One can interpret the text in multiple ways, but I view it as the daughter letting him go so that their love could live on, even at a distance. Magnus Dominus is a motet preserved in three 18th-century manuscript books housed in the Ursuline Archives in Québec City—one of North America's oldest centres of sacred music. Likely copied from earlier sources, the piece may have been composed in Québec around 1700 for a specific Christmas celebration. Though the composer remains anonymous, the music reflects the elegance and stylistic assurance of French Baroque masters like André Campra. Québec's religious communities, including the Ursulines, nurtured a rich tradition of plainchant and polyphony from the 17th century onward, and Magnus Dominus stands as a beautiful testament to this early Canadian liturgical culture. This piece is one of the few surviving four-part choral pieces composed so early in Canada’s history and is a rare glimpse into the musical heritage of that time period.

Songs of Nature

This section explores the relationship between sound and landscape. From delicate moonlight to trembling trees, these works invite us into stillness and sensory attention. They ask: what does it mean to listen to the earth? R. Murray Schafer’s (1933–2021) Epitaph for Moonlight is a hallmark of Canadian experimental choral writing, evoking moonlight not through melody, but through texture, breath, and spatial resonance. Composed for youth voices, the piece challenges singers to blend speech, sound, and silence, creating an atmosphere that is at once ethereal and grounded in natural imagery. Drawing on Schafer’s concept of the “soundscape,” the work invites listeners into a meditative space where language dissolves into pure sound. Many of the words you hear through the piece are part of a made-up language from a grade 7 class that Schafer asked to create synonyms of “moonlight.” Thoughts on a Still Night is based on a Chinese poem by Li Bai. This setting captures the universal feeling of homesickness and longing under the gaze of the moon. The Mandarin text is matched with a still, reflective musical language in the piano and in the sustained choral melodies. When the Earth Stands Still is a contemporary Canadian work that explores the silence before the storm—both literally and metaphorically. This piece invites vulnerability and presence, offering a meditation on stillness, fear, and human connection. The medieval French folk song and nursery rhyme,  J’ai vu le loup, closes out this set. Arranged by lauded Canadian composer, Stephen Hatfield (b. 1956), this text has existed since the 1400s and serves as a possible reassurance to children not to fear the wildlife they may encounter as each animal is described partaking in common human activities such as singing and dancing.

Songs of Sorrow

In these selections, we acknowledge the ache of longing, loss, and memory. Through personal and communal grief, music becomes a way of holding space for stories that are not easily told, and of honouring those who have come before us. Parlez-moiis a rich, searching piece in French that asks for stories—of the sea, of the prairies, and of the earth—from Elders who may or may not be able to pass this knowledge down through the generations. The speaker longs not just for tales, but for understanding, so they might one day become a guardian of the land they inhabit. Sung in the Innu language (one of Canada’s Indigenous Peoples), Nukum is a poignant prayer from grandchild to grandmother. It speaks to memory, storytelling, and the shrinking of Indigenous territories—a tender invitation to witness the wisdom of Elders and the resilience of communities. Friend, Pass Softly is perhaps the most personal of Clara’s selections as she remembers the loss of her grandmother to cancer when Clara was only eight. This piece serves as an attempt to reconcile her childhood grief with the slow acceptance of fallible memory as she herself ages. “Spring forgets her now, and we count her summers by our grief…”

Songs of Faith

Here, we sing the sacred. Drawing on Catholic, Anglican, and domestic musical traditions, these pieces reflect the way faith lives in both grandeur and intimacy—from chapel to parlour. Ave Joseph highlights the intricacies of our educational lineage. Found in an Ursuline monastery in Quebec, this motet was transcribed from its original manuscript by UW Choral Conducting alum Elizabeth MacIsaac as part of her doctoral dissertation. Mirroring the well-known Ave Maria text, Ave Joseph calls upon the earthly father of Christ to protect and sustain the singer. Miss Jane Austen  provides a more comedic view of faith as the famed author plays a parlour game with her mother and sister to create verses that all rhyme with the word “rose.” The result is the unfortunate, but all too common, recounting of an ill-timed nap during a sermon.  Rise Up, My Love, My Fair One is a classic Canadian choral setting of verses from the Song of Solomon. This piece celebrates the arrival of spring and the renewal of love. It reflects the sacred within the natural world. Though not originally from Canada, Healey Willan (1880–1968) immigrated from England at the age of thirty-three, and was an influential church organist, music examiner and lecturer who helped to shape Canada’s musical landscape through the twentieth century.

Songs of Story

These pieces delight in narrative—from folk tales to personal anecdotes. Here, music becomes a way to share lived experience, laughter, and life lessons. Through these stories, we celebrate oral tradition and the art of remembering aloud. Marie Madeleineserves as a fantastic example of Acadian folk music. An ethnic group that originally settled in New France in the 1700 and 1800s, Acadians now reside mainly in the Maritime Provinces and Quebec. You will hear uniquely Acadian dialectical nuances in this tale of a girl who is terrorized by a mischievous cow. Red River Valley highlights how closely knit folk songs of the United States and Canada can be. Many choir members were surprised to learn that this piece originated in Canada, having thought of it most of their lives as a depiction of the love story of an American cowboy. In fact, the titular Red River Valley spans regions of both Canada and the United States. Mrs. Austen continues the Parlour Songs saga first encountered in “Songs of Faith” as Jane Austen’s mother contributes her verses that rhyme with “rose.” Mrs. Austen tackles the challenge by comically detailing the mundane events of a morning in her life. A light-hearted Newfoundland folk song, arranged for choir, Feller From Fortune tells a cheeky and lively story of love and mischief in a fishing village. The metaphor of “lots of fish” in the harbour represents the dating scene in early twentieth century Newfoundland, where religious piety, family values, and close-knit community (and gossip!) were interwoven into the societal fabric of everyday people. The piece’s buoyant rhythm and local dialect embody the lighthearted spirit of coastal storytelling.

Songs of the Land

We conclude with songs that ground us in place. These works sing of rivers, mills, and the land beneath our feet. As we lift our voices in these closing moments, we affirm our connection to the land and to one another. J’entends le moulin is a joyful French-Canadian folk song that evokes the rhythm of rural life through the sound of the millwheel. It’s playful, rhythmic, and points to the importance of labour, love, and tradition. All Too Soon shares the story of the resilience and grief of Nova Scotians who worked to create a place where their children could flourish, only to see those same children leave the province for better employment opportunities. The piece grapples with themes of anger, empathy, and loss couched in familiar Irish folk songs and mazurkas. Walk Out on the Water is a contemporary piece by Indie-Rock band Royal Canoe, arranged by Korean Canadian composer Geung Kroeker-Lee, and combines spiritual metaphors and imagery of the land with a pop-inflected idiom. It’s a song of strength, self-ownership, and transformation—a modern hallelujah. Les Voyageurs de la Gatineau is a folk song setting that captures the rugged spirit of the voyageurs: the French-Canadian workers who paddled trade routes and built camps. It reflects hard labour, nostalgia, and the pull of home and family.

Lyrics and Translations

View here

Biographies