Concert Reviews

“Under the direction of Ramona Luengen, this diminutive choir weaves brilliant aural tapestries.”
— Georgia Straight

“The choir carried the audience into a magical, enthralling world.”
— Lüdenscheider Nachrichten, Germany

This program (On the Threshold of Heaven) of mainly 20th century sacred repertoire was typical of the vision of conductor Ramona Luengen, who brings a certain high-minded austerity to her best work. This is not to say that things are stuffy, dull, or redolent of either the musicology seminar or the new music seance. Her repertoire is fresh and well chosen, and she shows minimal interest in pieces whose primary objective is to flatter singers or pander to superficial audience expectations. At a Phoenix program you can expect to encounter music truly worth learning and hearing, arranged with a composer’s ear for logic and contrast.
— The Vancouver Sun

Singing continuously, with neither breaks for applause nor interval, was no mean feat for the choir. An extraordinarily demanding repertoire, and mercurial changes in mood and idiom, were guided by Luengen’s full-bodied approach to her materials, and her choir delivered consistently. The evening’s final juxtaposition had the mystic ecstasy of James Macmillan’s Christus vincit segueing, almost more by faith than reason, into the quiet but confident final chorale setting of Bach’s masterwork, Jesu meine Freude.
— The Vancouver Sun

“One of the most beautiful concerts of the entire Mosel Festwochen took place in the Stiftskirche St. Kastor in Treis-Karden. With its spectacular acoustic, the church was predestined for an extraordinary concert of a cappella music. And it was not disappointed. The concert with the Phoenix Chamber Choir, one of Canada’s finest vocal ensembles, was for the audience a Gesamtkunstwerk of crystal-clear voices, precise intonation and a stupendous cosmos of sounds…”
— Rhein-Zeitung, Germany