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Directly From the Fraser Valley Wineries Association Press Release:

Langley, BC… The Fraser Valley Wineries Association (FVWA) is thrilled to announce their 2nd Annual Wine & Culinary Extravaganza, coming to Langley’s Highpoint Equestrian Estate Community (2 Avenue at 200 Street, Langley) on June 27, 2009 from 2:00-5:00PM.  The wineries of the Fraser Valley are once again pairing up with the hottest local restaurants for a spectacular afternoon of food, wine and live entertainment. This year, participating restaurants include: Bacchus Bistro, Coza! Tuscan Grill, Memphis Blues, Restaurant 62, Sonoma Grill, The Seasonal Experience, and more.  Be sure to check the website for up to date information. Last year’s event was hugely successful, and this year we anticipate no less.  Tickets are $50 + tax and are available now at 1-800-663-1900 or www.fvwa.ca.

Once again, partial proceeds raised from the FVWA Wine & Culinary Extravaganza will go to Langley’s Pacific Riding for Developing Abilities. This organization was established in 1973 to provide therapeutic horseback riding to individuals with physical, cognitive and emotional disabilities. Equine assisted therapy has long been recognized as an excellent means of providing physical, psychological, social and recreational benefits to children and adults with disabilities. Pacific Riding for Developing Abilities is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for people with a wide range of disabilities.  For more information on Pacific Riding for Developing Abilities, visit www.prda.ca.

The 12 wineries of the Fraser Valley Wineries Association are located just outside of Vancouver, making for a short drive to enjoy a taste of the Valley. With great local wines, food and farm-fresh ingredients, the FVWA Wine & Culinary Extravaganza is your opportunity to celebrate country life in BC. Formed in 2006, The Fraser Valley Wineries Association includes: Domaine de Chaberton Estate Winery, The Fort Wine Company, Lotusland, Lulu Island Winery, Mt. Lehman Winery, Pacific Breeze Winery, Real Estate Vineyards & Winery, River’s Bend Winery, Sanduz Estate Winery, St. Urban Winery Ltd., Wellbrook Winery, and Westham Island Estate Winery.  For more information, visit their website at www.fvwa.ca.

Directly from the VSO Press Release:

Bramwell Tovey and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra perform Carl Orff’s thrilling Carmina Burana in a sensational Season Finale concert!

Vancouver BC – The VSO’s Season Finale is a real barn-burner: Carl Orff’s extraordinary masterpiece Carmina Burana is a musical setting of medieval poetry, from the sacred to the profane, from devotional love and piety to drinking songs and debauchery! It also happens to be one of the wildest live concert experiences you can possibly have. Combined with Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, this concert is a magnificent Season Finale for Lower Mainland audiences, and a prelude to the excitement of the 2009/2010 Season!

Maestro Bramwell Tovey wields the baton in this massive concert that features soprano Laura Whalen, tenor Colin Ainsworth, baritone Hugh Russell, the Vancouver Bach Choir, and the Vancouver Bach Children’s Chorus. Concerts take place on Saturday and Monday, June 13th and 15th, 8pm at the Orpheum Theatre.

Carmina Burana was German composer Carl Orff’s first and greatest success. It is a scenic cantata composed between 1935 and 1936 based on 24 of the poems found in the medieval collection of the same name. In 1803, at the monastery of Benediktbeuern in Upper Bavaria, musicologist J. A. Schmeller discovered a manuscript collection of lyrics, dating from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and eventually published it in 1847. The polite side of the collection includes six plays based on the Christmas, Passion and Easter mysteries. The earthier part contains some 200 drinking songs, love lyrics and recruiting songs.

When Orff came across the manuscript in 1935, he saw in it the ideal vehicle to express the kind of basic, uncomplicated human emotions he had in mind. Choosing two dozen poems from the collection, with the assistance of Michel Hofmann, he matched them with equally direct music, featuring simple yet striking rhythms, melodies and harmonies. “It’s not sophisticated, not intellectual,” he wrote, “and the themes of my work are themes that everyone knows…There is a spiritual power behind my work, that’s why it is accepted throughout the world.” The premiere took place in Frankfurt on June 8, 1937.

The illuminated pictures that accompanied the original poems intrigued Orff virtually as much as the words. The cover showed luck as a revolving wheel, blindly governing people’s destinies. Orff begins his Carmina Burana with a grandiose hymn, Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (Luck, Empress of the World), saluting this inscrutable, unpredictable concept. O Fortuna is one of the grandest statements in all of music, and has become famous world-wide. This extraordinary music from the beginning of Carmina Burana has been used in movies, commercials, and in sports arenas around the world as a trigger for creating feelings of drama and thrilling anticipation. Primo vere (In Springtime), follows. It deals, mostly in quiet, mysterious fashion, with the anticipated arrival of that season. Joy eventually breaks forth as Spring itself appears. It is celebrated in the section entitled Uf dem anger (On the Green).

The next segment, In Taberna (In the Tavern) salutes the juice of the grape in riotous fashion. The tenor soloist, singing in falsetto, takes the role of a swan roasting slowly and sadly on a spit. The baritone is an Abbot who launches the men of the choir into a rollicking ode to drink.

Cour d’amours (Court of Love) brings several of Orff’s loveliest, most lyrical moments. The soprano solo In trutina (In the Balance) a glowing anticipation of fulfillment, is a particular highlight. After the ecstatic fervor of Blanziflor et Helena (Blanchefleur and Helen, the principal characters in a medieval romance), Orff’s ode to luck returns, to close Carmina Burana as majestically as it began.

Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms was commissioned in 1929 by conductor Serge Koussevitzky, for the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He used this opportunity to realize a project he had been considering for some time: a setting of selected Biblical Psalms for chorus and orchestra.

“I began with Psalm 150,” Stravinsky wrote. “After finishing the fast-tempo sections, I went back to compose the first and second movements…The first movement, Hear my prayer, O Lord, (Psalm 39) was composed in a state of religious and musical symbolism in any of my music before The Flood. It consists of an upside-down pyramid of fugues.

“The Allegro in Psalm 150 (Finale of the Symphony) was inspired by a vision of Elijah’s chariot climbing to the heavens; never before had I written anything quite so literal as the triplets for horns and piano to suggest the horses and chariot. In setting the words of this final hymn, I cared above all for the sounds of the syllables, and I have indulged my besetting pleasure of regulating prosody in my own way.”

Stravinsky, who had become a regular communicant of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1926, inscribed the score of Symphony of Psalms “To the Glory of God.” The orchestration includes enlarged wind and brass sections, but excludes violins and violas.