The Nanaimo Malaspina Choir will sing in remembrance and peace.

The Malaspina Choir will combine music, Christian Mass, the Islamic call to prayer and poetry to present a Remembrance Day concert dedicated to peace.

This coming weekend, the choir will perform “The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace,” written by Karl Jenkins and first performed in 2000. Fiona Blackburn, director of the Malaspina Choir, said it was a concert she wanted to give to many people. years.

“We went through all of this (in rehearsal) and the singers, I think they realized that all this work they put into the piece is really paying off and it’s really telling a story – that we have a war and that we’re going to do with it,” she said.

Before beginning the main piece, the choir will perform Mozart’s “Te Deum” and sing along to “Amazing Grace.”

“I always like to have a little audience participation… I just think it changes the energy in the room – because the people who come to hear the singers are very often singers themselves, and even if they aren’t, they love to sing along. Blackburn said.

“The Armed Man” begins with the singers marching and singing the 500-year-old French tune “L’homme Armé” (“The Armed Man”), followed by the Islamic call to prayer, and then a piece called “The Charge”, which , according to Blackburn, “just mind-blowing.”

“It’s so loud and the singers actually create the battle with their voices and all the players, 11 professional players in total.”

Blackburn said she hopes the concert will instill a sense of remembrance and hope in the audience.

“It has a really great storyline about the impending war, and then there’s this massive piece in the middle, and then there’s silence and ‘The Last Post’, and then towards the end of the piece it gets softer, and there’s a longing for peace and a sense of contemplation, but, of course, a call to end the war,” she said.

The concert will take place at St. Andrew’s United Church on Sunday, November 10th at 3:00 pm. Tickets are $30 for adults, $13.50 for youth and free for children 12 and under. Visit

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