Portrait of a man wearing a blue plaid suit jacket, light blue shirt, and patterned bow tie against a light neutral background. A Main Stage Concerts graphic in the upper left displays the date November 14.

MAIN STAGE CONCERTS

"Songs by Animals" Featuring Bass-Baritone Marcus Nance

This powerful new song cycle by composer Michael Donovan and poet John Sobol receives its world premiere, featuring bass-baritone Marcus Nance, pianist Carl Philippe Gionet, and a cast of local vocalists.

Saturday, November 14, 2026 • 7:30pm
 Stage at St. Andrews (Halifax United Church)
 Accessible Venue

Ticket Availability: Filling Up

This performance is made possible with the generous support of Christopher Hopgood.  

Season Sponsor: NICE MOVES / Red Door Realty

Program Information

 

This powerful new song cycle by composer Michael Donovan and poet John Sobol receives its world premiere, featuring bass-baritone Marcus Nance, pianist Carl Philippe Gionet, and a cast of local vocalists. Written for nine voices and piano, this all-ages work gives voice to the natural world through a series of poems imagined as written by the animals themselves, set within a northern landscape shaped by beauty, fragility, and change. At its centre is the Ghost of the Woolly Mammoth, who encounters a Polar Bear, Arctic Tern, Bowhead Whale, Krill, Wolf, Moose, Lemming, and Arctic Blue Butterfly. Hailed by The New York Times as “thrillingly powerful,” Nance is a compelling and versatile performer with acclaimed work across opera, musical theatre, and new music. Gionet is active as a pianist, collaborative artist, and vocal coach in Canada and Europe.

Program

We are all singing animals.
Dogs, cats, humans elephants. We all sing lullabyes to our babies, and we all howl at the moon, wailing for lost lovers.

But what other songs might animals sing?
What do they feel? What do they know?
What stories might they tell about themselves in this changing world?

Those are the questions we tried to answer in Songs by Animals.
By listening, learning, and imagining.

Of course we had no choice but to translate the songs we heard into human words and music. But we hope that something of their wild and wandering origins has been retained.

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Michael Donovan and John Sobol have been friends for 50 years, having met in their high school band as fellow sax players. Songs by Animals is their first collaboration since they were teenagers.

Michael went on to become a lifelong student of Lieder, aka art song; beginning with his year of private studies with the legendary Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in Berlin, extending through his PhD exploring Schubert’s harmonic ecology, and in recent years finding expression in a series of ambitious environmentally themed operas and chamber works, of which Songs by Animals is the latest.

Meanwhile John became a poetic explorer who worked in every oral, literate and digital setting he could find, always seeking new poetic contexts in which to create meaning and connect communities. Along the way he discovered the poet’s ‘multiplicitous eye’, a tool for seeing and feeling and knowing beyond our limited human perceptions. For we are not alone.
Michael and John are pleased to bring you Songs by Animals, a song cycle created in kinship with the many other thoughtful and caring beings with whom we share our beautiful and endangered world.

"Songs by Animals"
Music by Michael Donovan | Words by John Sobol

“Opening Monologue (Ghost of the Woolly Mammoth)”
“The Polar Bear’s Song”
“The Arctic Tern’s Song”
“Mammoth: I Remember”
“The Bowhead Whale’s Song”
“Mammoth: Who Would Not Wish?”
“The Krill Song”
“The Wolf’s Song”
“Mammoth: Family”
“The Lemming’s Song”
“Mammoth: We Imagine Ourselves”
“The Moose Song”
“Mammoth: Eat or Be Eaten”
“Song of the Arctic Blue Butterfly”
“Mammoth: Final Monologue / Animal Medley”