The following excerpts were provided by some of our many satisfied customers. We hope that they will inspire you to use our services and make music an integral part of your event. Thank you for considering Walt Music in your entertainment planning!
Raeann & DarrellThank you so much for making our ceremony so beautiful. We are so fortunate to have you part of our special day!
Danielle Charbonneau Producer/Host, - Music for a While, CBC Radio TwoA short note to let you know that I will end my New Year’s Eve program with selections from Rhapsody in Red. I quite enjoyed the CD: both the music and the playing. Mark Warren sent it to me and I’m glad he did! Please tell him! And allow me to wish you and the Rhapsody Quintet a very Happy New Year!”
Marilyn Huber Salib-Huber WeddingThe beauty of the music at the church and reception was so exceptional that likely every guest at the wedding commented. Several were from England, Australia and other parts and many like Walter Kemp were also musicians. The whole performance was a tribute to your art and professionalism.
Brent and Jenn felt honoured to have musicians of your calibre for their day, and wanted to add their thanks to mine for the obvious passion and devotion you gave to the music. The final arrangement for the Processional was superb!
Pam Aung Thin Vice-President, Communications Royal Canadian Mint's unveiling of the Victory Anniversary NickelYou were an integral part of the event, and major contributor to its overall success. The musical performances you provided for us and our guests was exceptional and created a positive experience for our audience.
Margaret Sperry and Rich AllenThank you so much for helping to make our wedding such a special day. We received countless compliments on your beautiful music! Our sincere appreciation goes out to you and your wonderful musicians. We wish you continued success.
Hubert F. Hutton, COO, Edwina Hutton Atlantic Business Magazine's Top 50 CEO GalaWe wanted to make this a spectacularly elegant, memorable evening: your talented presence, and especially the exquisite music you provided, ensured that we achieved our goal.
Dr. Bertrum H. MacDonald & Dr. Mary Lu MacDonald Co-Chairs SHARP Conference 2005Bertrum and I, as well as our entire Organizing Committee, wish to thank you for the music you provided during and after our banquet. All our guests had a great time and most of them stayed right to the end. Everyone seems to have had a favourite moment in the varied entertainment. They were all still talking about it on Sunday morning.
We do thank you for providing exactly the entertainment we requested at the fee we specified and for supervising the evening so perfectly. All of it was superb.
Valerie Hepburn President, World Conference on Breast Cancer FoundationOne of the conference objectives was to create a place where women of the world could share their breast cancer experiences, be understood, cared for, and supported. We believe that your music assisted us in reaching this objective, providing emotional expression and healing through nonverbal means. It was a pleasure to meat you and experience your music.
Stephen Pedersen Arts Reporter, The Chronicle Herald
Lamentation requires a cantorial sound. For the performance Thursday night at First Baptist Church of Donald McCullough’s stirring Holocaust Cantata, Symphony Nova Scotia cellist Shimon Walt fulfilled that soulful requirement in partnership with pianist Diana Torbert, the First Baptist Choir, their director Allen Wayte and four readers.
Last year at the invitation of German and Polish consular officials, McCullough performed the 1998 work with his Master Chorale of Washington, in Krakow’s St. Katharina Church, the memorial site of the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, as part of the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
Thursday night’s performance was the Atlantic Canadian premiere of The Holocaust Cantata.
The work consists of choral settings of texts written by prisoners in the Nazi camps, collected by Aleksander Kulisiewicz. Soloists included sopranos Courtney Cain and Zoe Leger, alto Elizabeth Ashworth and baritone Alan Manchester.
Between movements Constance R. Glube, cantor Ari Isenberg, Joel Jacobson and Donna Thompson gave readings taken from diaries and other prison camp writings.
For the most part McCullough’s score is subdued. It paints a picture of suffering but does not ignore the efforts of prisoners to find meaning in the horror. There is salvation (Singing Saved My Life) and irony (There is No Life like Life at Auschwitz), but in general, the cantata paints a sombre view.
There is restraint as well, which is more effective than symbolic tearing of hair would be. Tears are not enough for grief as huge as this. There is a matter-of-factness about accounts of a horror like a mass execution and the defiance of a young boy who embraces death by his own decision rather than wait for the Nazi soldiers to kick the stool out from under his feet.
The overall effect, through music which sensitively resonates with Jewish folk music, is to put a human face on suffering. It elicits, as it ought, not so much our pity, though it does that, as our compassion, by using art to put us right there in the camps.
Following the cantata, Walt played Prayer, an intensely felt solo cello piece from Ernest Bloch’s Jewish Life..
Trish Vardy Advisor, Public Affairs & Community Relations, RBC Financial GroupThank you for your very professional services and for the wonderful atmosphere your Jazz Trio helped lend to our corporate event.