Composer, poet and photographer Robert Evans passed away peacefully on March 10th.
Evans was a highly respected composer and conductor within the choral music community. He composed in an accessible yet challenging style for a wide range of performers – children, amateurs, sacred and secular communities and his fellow professionals – including the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, the Amadeus Choir, the Toronto Children’s Chorus, and King’s College Choir, Cambridge.
Robert Evans had a considerable number of commissions, performances and broadcasts to his credit, and his works appear on five different choral CD anthologies. His works include three Cantatas, WhaleSongDancing, For the Children, and Bridges, which was performed by the Toronto Mendelssohn Youth Choir & Orchestra, in 1993, 1996 and 2000. Evans’ works rounded off the century with large comments on the state of the world: his WhaleSongDancing features five cantos on the plight and beauty of the largest of mammals, and his For the Children draws on several poems written by children of the Terezin concentration camp.
Robert Evans had several awards to his credit, including the 1998 Association of Choral Conductors’ Outstanding Choral Composition Award and a 1st place award for the Amadeus Choir Christmas Carol competition. In 2000, Evans was further honoured by becoming one of 60 composers from across Canada supported by the Music Canada Millennium Project. More recently, he was invited to write for the National Prayer Book Societies’ 450th international celebration of Cranmer’s Prayer Book of 1549.
Evans also had a great interest in advancing the arts in his community. In 1996, he mounted the four-concert, three-day exibition festival In Your Own Backyard with 22 visual, spoken word and musical artists exhibiting, performing, and celebrating the arts with the community. In 2003, Evans mounted Passage at the Wellington County Museum and Archives, a multimedia exhibition of photographs and haiku, as well as launching a new CD of his Cantata 4 “Carved By The Sea” with the Tactus Vocal Ensemble. Passage was launched with a handmade leather bound book of photographs and poetry accompanied by Cantata 4 on CD.
In 2004, Evans was awarded the top prize in the biennial Outside the Bachs choral music competition. He and four American composers were selected as finalists from a very competitive field of 126 international entries. Evans took the prize for his work’s serene harmonies and resonant choral timbres.
Up to his passing, Evans enjoyed new commissions and broadcasts, as well as producing his award winning photography and poetry. In his honour, the family requests donations to The Elora Festival, to which Evans so passionately contributed for so many years.
(Ontario Notations, 2005)