Welcome back! Let’s get you caught up on Day 2 and 3.

After sleeping in on Monday morning… at least by CCC standards, we headed to the beautiful North Park University campus where Julia works as Director of Choral Activities. With our biggest concerts still ahead of us, there was plenty of repertoire left to rehearse and we got right to work on some of the tougher pieces.

By midday we were in full recital mode, performing for the NPU School of Music and then leading a rehearsal with two of Julia’s choirs. We also had four student conductors take turns directing our ensemble. Very cool!

Before long, it was time to head to Northwestern University for a musical celebration in honour of Indigenous Peoples’ Day. (Thanks to our generous hosts at NU, the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian and the The Bahá’í House of Worship for North America!) It was our great honour to open the event with a traditional greeting from Sarain Carson-Fox and to perform Andrew Balfour’s Vision Chant and Jocelyn Morlock’s Exaudi with her and cellist Oleksander Mycyk.

We’ll let you in on a little secret about Exaudi: It’s one of those pieces that’s always kind of a gamble as to whether we’ll get through it without someone bursting into tears. It’s hauntingly beautiful in polyphony and text alone, but on a day devoted to highlighting, acknowledging and celebrating Indigenous peoples around the world, it hit everyone in the room like a ton of bricks.

As Sarain moved across the vast proscenium of the Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, the landscape came alive. She wasn’t just travelling through a performance space, but through people’s hearts, their minds, and seemingly through time itself. As the final notes lingered in the air, the entire audience seemed to freeze. And then the clapping started, the people rose to their feet, and many began patting at their pockets for tissues. (Even our general manager was, as he puts it, “ugly-crying” in the backstage wings…)

This performance was, by far, one of the most important musical moments the CCC and Sarain have shared together as collaborators so far – a journey taken together to a place we never could have gone without her captivating presence.

Another highlight came later in the evening when Lakota hoop dancer, singer and flautist Kevin Locke took the stage, after a rousing performance by Chicago’s own RedLine drum group. An engaging storyteller and veritable encyclopedia of historical events, he addressed the topic of Indigenous-Settler relations head-on, and with admirable humour, wisdom and showmanship to boot.

From start to finish, this Indigenous Peoples’ Day concert was a fantastic experience that put us in the perfect headspace to begin development on our latest project, Where Waters Meet, the following morning. (Don’t worry – we’ll tell you all about it in another blog post.)

Tuesday afternoon gave way to more workshops at North Park University, and a surprisingly delicious lunch at the school cafeteria. Seriously, this place was stacked – it had a salad bar, pizza bar, hot entrée bar and a sandwich station. Plus, there was soy milk on tap, a raft of cereal dispensers, and one of those waffle machines you’ve come to know and love from Best Western hotel lobbies around the world.

Truly, we’ve eaten like absolute royalty on every day of this tour. The potluck supper on Tuesday evening was an impressive feast of its own merit, with the added surprise of some frosty cold beverages making an appearance as well.

We finished off the evening with a workshop with North Shore Choral Society, Julia’s 140-member community chorus. What a blast it was to get so many voices in a room together and have two of her musical worlds collide in Chicago at long last.

Stay tuned for the next update, coming soon! We’ve got plenty to tell you about radio appearances, workshops and deep dish pizza…