Halifax, December Sixth, 1917

Halifax, December Sixth, 1917 was commissioned by Jeff Joudrey and the Halifax Camerata Singers to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion. The choir and the Rhapsody Quintet gave the first performance in O’Regan Hall, Halifax, Nova Scotia on the 25th of March, 2017, conducted by Joudrey. It was made possible through a grant from the City of Halifax. They performed it again, the same year, at the Edmonton International Choral Festival on June 2nd, and again in Halifax on December 3rd.

It is a setting of a poem by school principal D. M. Matheson, who witnessed for himself the carnage and trauma suffered by the children and teachers of his school. The piece begins with the first verse of a folksong: The Halifax Explosion, found in the Helen Creighton collection.