By Rachel Alflatt
RCCO Vancouver Centre presented its 18th annual Halloween Concert on October 27 at St. John’s Shaughnessy Anglican Church, where our co-president Michael Dirk is principal organist and artist in residence. In a church transformed by spooky decorations and lighting, the audience of nearly 200 was treated to a varied selection of spine-chilling music, interspersed with corny jokes and riddles delivered by MC Heller.
The concert opened with Bach’s “Toccata in D minor” BWV 565, in an excitingly unconventional arrangement using the organ’s midi capacities and performed by the arranger, Gilles Parenteau. Then came the Canadian premiere of a new work by Denis Bédard, “Désolation” (performed by the composer), Franz Lachner’s organ duet “Introduction and Fugue in D minor Op. 62 (Denis Bédard and Rachel Alflatt), a very assured performance of Burgmüller’s “Ballade” Op. 100 No. 15 (eight year old Max Cifelli), the “Imperial March” from Star Wars (2023 RCCO National Competition semi-finalist Isaac Howie), and Bruckner’s “Fugue in D minor WAB 125 (Huiyuan Ma).
Next up, five year old Zenkay Harrison gave a perfect rendition of Linda Niamath’s “March of the Trolls”, and his nine year old brother Issa and their teacher Jannie Burdeti performed “This Is Halloween” from “The Nightmare before Christmas”, arranged for organ duet by Jannie and including spoken phrases from the original song (“I am the one hiding under your bed!”), which was a resounding success with the audience.
Following this, the audience (which included many children, mostly from the elementary school where Michael Dirk teaches music) was treated to Bach’s Prelude in A minor BWV 543 (Jannie Burdeti), Boëllmann’s famous Toccata (PJ Janson), “Lebhaft” from Hindemith’s Organ Sonata No. 2 (Jonathan Robinson), Bach’s “Fugue in D minor” BWV 565 (Gilles Parenteau), as well as a wonderfully crazy rendition of The Phantom of the Opera and Jurassic Park by the Phantom himself (Michael Dirk), with Annabelle Ip on percussion and a visit by a T-Rex, brilliantly and hilariously brought to life by Sydney Roland!
