Vancouver Bach Choir

Vancouver Bach Choir's former Music Director Bruce Pullan celebrated a final farewell at a Gala event held in his honour on May 19, 2010.

At the event, David Lemon, a close friend of the Choir, delivered a great tribute to the man that shaped and guided the Bach Choir for many years. David writes:

A big turning point for the choir and its audiences. Bruce Pullan, the Vancouver Bach Choir's leader has left the stage, released for a new phase of life. A generation of music making has passed, and how exciting it was! The work lives on within us, and for all of this, we owe Bruce so much gratitude.

Bruce Pullan is very much a man of the nineteenth century. Not just because he feels like one sometimes, but because he has attributes that he shares with the prodigious figures of that vigorous period. Look what the writers got through, Dickens, Scott, Tolstoy. Then the composers, with reams of symphonies, well usually nine anyway, and those who despatched a dozen operas and more.

These men practiced their art with sureness, professionalism, energy and good humour, interrupted only with intolerance of charlatanism and impatience for lazy work, and managed to leave enough time to do a darn good job of a whole lot of other things. This robust, rigorous, uncompromising, unfussy, outward-reaching, thoroughgoing professionalism is not easily found today. Bruce Pullan is made of this sterling stuff.

How to find a metaphor that somehow evokes Bruce's accomplishments over his tenure with the Vancouver Bach Choir. Two thousand four hundred rehearsals of the Adult Choir, over four thousand five hundred of the children's choirs, the one hundred and fifty performances for Bach Choir audiences with him at the podium, the eighty works prepared for the VSO. Then there are the major works given first performances in Vancouver by the Choir, including the now ubiquitous Mahler 8th Symphony. And so much more; the fund-raisers, the tours, the house concerts, the workshops and studio work; and this is only about the Vancouver Bach Choir. In the intricacy of the planning required to undertake this great body of work, to labour arduously and travel great distances in the process, the heaving of its parts together under all manner of strain, to fashion it superbly in the light of utter dedication to music's meaning and power to carry congregations of audiences along as a leader of them as well as of musicians, to decorate the whole with grace and a generous spirit; it is as if a single devout man built a cathedral and filled it with the faithful.

How well earned what assurance he has, and what fun to hear him express it. Who has not heard him say, "I'm sorry, that's just wrong," and be pretty sure that either no further investigation into the topic need be undertaken, or to suspect that it is an invitation to a hurly-burly argument requiring considerable fortitude on the part of the interlocutor.

There are people who are good at whatever they do, and Bruce is good at a lot of the arts of life. A wonderful cook, he has rebuilt houses, and I'm grateful to say, not just his own. He is a deeply insightful reader, a scholar, an illuminating teacher, a passionate traveler, has built wonderful gardens and has an enologist's nose. He is a warm, entertaining and enthusiastic companion. I don?t know anyone who has as much right to self-congratulation and is yet so generous and self-effacing. How characteristic that at his last moment on stage after thirty-two years of service to the Bach Choir, to Vancouver audiences, to generations of children, he gave to two young singers not only a great opportunity to sing, which he would generously regard as earned by their hard work and abilities, but a sublime moment when Cameron asked Catherine to marry him. Here, a man who sang in the 1970's for the ancient Stokowski, born in 1882, brings together a couple whose grandchildren, in 2082, will speak of the not quite ancient Bruce Pullan who gave a place for music and love on his last Vancouver Bach Choir stage.

So for us then, who have been the beneficiaries of Bruce's passions and dedication, the singers who have learned and audiences who have heard under his leadership for more than a generation the greatest of all choral music, which is among the greatest music life grants us, this is a moment to wish him well, but with a regretful sigh signifying that these gifts we have enjoyed are now wrapped in our deeply affectionate memory. We salute him tonight for his love for music, and for singers, and for audiences. I ask that we toast—

Bruce, our great friend of music

David Lemon 19/05/10

David Lemon has been closely involved as a friend and sponsor of the Vancouver Bach Choir since the late 80's. Among other things he is responsible for the choir's travelling to Calgary to perform Berlioz' Damnation of Faust with Mario Bernardi and the Calgary Philharmonic in 1989, and the reciprocal visit to Vancouver of the Calgary Philharmonic Choir the same year. He also commissioned Job, an oratorio by internationally famed composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, of which the Vancouver Bach Choir gave the premiere performance with the CBC Orchestra at the opening of the Chan Centre in 1997. The performance was recorded and a CD issued by Collins Classics.

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