Life Imitating Art

I’ve written a bit recently about my new series, Austen Echoes, and I’m thrilled that the first book, All the Wrong Notes, has been released and is getting some terrific reviews. If you like contemporary Austen and music, these are definitely books you’ll want to take a look at.

This series of three retellings is centred around a concert choir, the Eglinton Echoes, and all three stories happen at the same time. What this means is that many of the same events are in all three books, but seen from completely different perspectives. And, since the music is a key part (pardon the pun) of these stories, the choir needs to sing the same repertoire in all three books.

What this meant for me was coming up with a full concert season.

I’ve been around the classical music world for long enough that this was something I was confident doing. I’m not a singer, but as an orchestral musician I’ve played a lot of the big pieces with choir, and as a listener, I’ve heard a lot of it as well. And so my task began.

I went digging through real choirs’ concert schedules, searched around for some fabulous pieces I wanted my characters to sing, and took a little dive into my other modern musical retelling, Preludes, to get composer Anne Elliot to write something for the Eglinton Echoes, my fictional choir. It was fun, and I felt like I’d put together a reasonable season.

Then real life happened.

My son is a singer. He began singing with a concert choir while he was a student in Ottawa, but stopped when COVID shut everything down and he moved back home. In the meantime, the conductor of his former choir moved to Toronto to lead the big choir here, and my son kept in touch with him. As I was working through the edits for these books, I reached out to this local choir and was honoured to be able to sit in on a rehearsal, just to make sure I got that part right. Research is everything, even in contemporary stuff, right?

Well, the choir was amazing, and my son decided to audition for them, and was accepted into the choir. This is his first season with them. At the risk of blatant bragging, check out the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, just because they’re amazing.

Anyway, this is where it got interesting. Because it turns out that my completely imaginary, made up, only-in-my head, completely fictional concert season maps on almost exactly to the TMC’s season!

My first concert included a specially composed piece by a local composer. The TMC’s first concert included a specially composed piece by a local composer.

My second set of concerts were a program of carols and Christmas music, followed by a performance of Handel’s magnificent oratorio, ‘Messiah’. The TMC’s second set of concerts are a program of carols, followed two weeks later by ‘Messiah’.

My Eglinton Echoes’ season includes a large mass with the symphony in the spring (in my case, Mozart’s ‘Coronation Mass’). The TMC’s season includes a large mass with the symphony in the spring (they are singing Verdi’s ‘Requiem’).

If I didn’t know for a fact that I made this up before knowing what the TMC was singing, I’d suspect myself of cheating! A real case of life imitating art.

Sadly, I won’t be able to attend any of the Eglinton Echoes’ concerts, except in my imagination, but I have been enjoying listening to The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir’s season. And yes, indeed, we’ll be in the audience when they perform Messiah! Hallelujah!

Here is an excerpt from my upcoming Emma-inspired musical romance, The Matchmaker’s Melody.

***

The choir sang their first concert a couple of weeks later, to great acclaim. This concert was the world premiere of a piece the group had commissioned, and there was a lot of media attention around it. Emma was in her element. She thrived in the spotlight. She haunted the internet for the next few days, searching for posts on all the social media channels about the performance, and especially for ones including photographs. The composer was shy and disappeared as quickly as possible, but Emma was more than happy to pose for any number of flashing cameras and handy cell phones.

She began amassing a collection of suitable shots for her own purposes and linked to all the best ones in all the right places.

Interesting. In almost all the pictures of her, Phil Elton was somewhere in the same frame. He certainly looked acceptable, and she wasn’t embarrassed to be seen with him, but she hadn’t recalled him hovering about quite so much. He must want to be seen as well. Advertising, and therefore publicity, was also his business.

After the concert and subsequent media attention, the choir took a one-week break before starting on rehearsals for the next set of concerts. There were to be two of these at the end of December. The first concert was a simple affair, a selection of Christmas and other seasonal songs, offered for free for anyone who wished to add some music to their enjoyment of the holidays. The music was straightforward, and the choir had sung all the pieces in previous years; it would take relatively little rehearsing to present an excellent show. The second program was a set of two performances of Handel’s ‘Messiah’, the first presented in a town about an hour out of the city and the second performed in Toronto. Again, most of the choir members had sung ‘Messiah’ several times, but it was a big piece, and Randall had dedicated a lot of rehearsal time to it, wanting to offer the best performance the very capable ensemble could manage.

As much as Emma loved all this music, she was the most excited about another, completely non-musical, aspect to these concerts: the arrival of Jean-François Gagnon.

From the moment she had heard about him at the very first rehearsal of the season, she had found herself fascinated by him. Or, rather, by the idea of him. What it was that intrigued her about him she could not say; perhaps it was the mystery, the romance, of a stranger joining their ranks.

She could not rest until she had wheedled all the information she could from Randall, who laughed at her as he recounted what he could.

Jean-François was 31 years old, a baritone, and had sung with a rather good choir in Montreal since he was a student at a university there. He was to be in Toronto for six months for work, doing a secondment in the Toronto office of the company where he was employed, and was delighted to keep singing during his time away from home.

Randall could not tell Emma what he looked like, for he had only heard him on a sound clip, without video. But that did not stop her from building him up quite admirably in her mind. She imagined him to be tall, with dark hair and eyes, and très français, with a cute accent and a certain je ne sais quoi about him. She was ready to fall him love with him at a moment’s notice.

Reality was even better than her imagination.

At exactly the right time, Jean-François strode into the rehearsal room and every female eye—and one or two male ones as well—turned in his direction, and more than one jaw dropped. He was very handsome indeed, with the dark hair Emma had expected, and an exceptional profile. His cheekbones were chiselled, and his dark hair was coiffed to perfection. But rather than the dark façade Emma had imagined, his eyes were a lovely blue, deep like a pristine mountain lake, and he was dressed beautifully, the model of a suave sophisticate who somehow gave off the impression that he’d put no effort at all into his elegance. The only thing that kept him absolute perfection was that he was not tall.

Oh well. You can’t have everything.

***

While all three stories in the Austen Echoes series are independent and stand-alone, they’re all part of the same world. Make sure you read the first book, the P&P-inspired musical romance, All the Wrong Notes.

And, for a free short story about Janet and Carlos (my contemporary Jane and Bingley), you can download a copy of The Perfect Love Song. It’s free, and yours to enjoy.