Heidi McCurdy is serious about song as a way of life.
Long celebrated locally, on the Vancouver scene and even further afield as a singer-songwriter with a beautiful vocal sound and uniquely soulful touch, McCurdy has also established strong credits as a teacher and arts therapist through her Harmony Expressive Arts enterprise and her Music Together family program.
Latterly, she's added a further credit – the role of choral director with her own locally-based Soul of the World Multicultural Choir.
A celebration of the spring equinox by the choir, Sacred Sounds (March 20, 7 p.m. at the Semiahmoo Arts Studio, Centennial, Arena Mel Edwards Building, 14600 North Bluff Rd.), is just one of the flowerings of McCurdy's musical talent that will be on view this year.
Fresh on the heels of participating in internationally-acclaimed vocal improviser and teacher Rhiannon's latest book and DVD project, Vocal River, McCurdy was also selected to create a jazz version of a song for a huge Vancouver-based musical project, O World, which will be released to coincide with Earth Day (April 22).
Sacred Sounds is a one-hour, by donation, concert that will showcase Soul of the World's developing skills and repertoire with chants, blessing songs and universal prayers from around the world.
Formed as the result of a grant project last year, the choir has already impressed many with its passion and musicality, under McCurdy's careful but creative tutelage. Its most recent public performance, Jan. 29 at the White Rock Elks Hall, was honoured with a standing ovation.
"It was the longest show so far – a full two sets," said McCurdy.
Even though choirs are subject by nature to some fluctuation in membership during their evolution, Soul of the World has developed a core team through its increasing number of public appearances.
"We have about 15 to 20 people who come out regularly, and the choir had a lot of performances through last fall, including seniors' residences and the White Rock Farmers Market," she said.
"We've been really busy, but we're at the point where we're doing some actual fundraising to cover the costs of performing. We like to go to appear at events, having fun singing, and it's great to develop all these songs, but we have to be creative to find ways that we can continue doing what we like to do."
As much as McCurdy challenges the members of her choir to master ambitious music drawn from multiple ethnic and cultural sources, she's not averse to challenging her own abilities, as in the O World Project.
Socially-conscious videographer, Randall Melnyk of RPM Infinity Productions, took a previously unpublished song, O World, and invited musicians to reimagine and record it in a variety of different idioms – to, as McCurdy put it "build community and celebrate the diversity of of human creativity."
"I jumped at the chance," she said.
While others created classic rock, acoustic folk-rock and classical pop versions, in McCurdy's hands the alt-rock song became a jazz vehicle for her own voice, enhanced by a hand-picked group of stellar Vancouver-area jazz instrumentalists: Jodi Proznick (bass), Tilden Webb (piano), Mike Allen (tenor sax) and Nino Di Pasquale (drums).
Although she has frequently arranged songs before for her own jazz and funk-oriented groups, McCurdy admits the O World Project pushed her out of a comfort zone rooted in her natural musical abilities.
"I don't have a lot of theory," she said. "I do a lot by ear. I'm not a pianist or a bass player. I had to dig in and do some research, learn a lot of new jazz chords.
"I'd come up with chords that sounded really great, but I had to figure out what they were. And as I learned different chords, they triggered a whole bunch of new writing ideas for me. I changed the chords and adapted the phrases. It was like a puzzle – I had to make it original."
McCurdy gives full credit to the Proznick, Webb, Allen and Di Pasquale, who were dedicated to making the track work and were generous with their expertise during the December recording sessions at White Rock's Turtle Studios.
"It was an amazing experience," McCurdy said. "It was great listening to Tilden bring my ideas to life, and I gave Mike lots of room for a saxophone solo. He did a few different approaches to the solo as he was getting to know the song. We ended up recording about three different solos and I had to come in the next day and choose one.
"I listened to them all with my jaw dropping. There came a point where I felt, this is too hard. I felt terrible about choosing one and cutting the others."
To see a video about the making of McCurdy's version of O World, click here.
For more information on upcoming concerts, visit www.heidimccurdy.com