Always More to give

In front of a poster from a Bangkok performance, Bruce More displays some of the mementoes from this year's Asian tour by members of the Prima Choir and the UVic Chamber Singers.
Photograph by: Adrian Lam, Times Colonist, Times Colonist

Retiring conductor worked tirelessly to take students and song around the world

By Grania Litwin, Times Colonist
http://www.timescolonist.com

June 15, 2009

For more than 35 years, Bruce More taught conducting and music theory at the University of Victoria, but in his spare time he took thousands of students -- members of UVic's Chamber Singers and the Prima Choir he founded -- on musical adventures around the world.

When the choral conductor decided to retire recently, his swan song was one more trip, this time to South Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong and Cambodia where his 45 students sang 15 concerts in 16 days.

"I got bitten by the travel bug in graduate school in Yale," he confessed. "So when I started teaching in 1970 I got the tour thing going, first off the Island, then to Europe, South America, Africa, Asia, Australia. Since 1987, I've taken the choirs to 145 cities in 42 countries."

And the moss didn't grow under his feet at home, either.

After taking his doctorate in voice performance and conducting at Yale, where he conducted the first Yale University Women's Chorus as well as four ensembles, the Ocean Falls native returned to B.C. and founded the Music Department of Malaspina College. He taught theory, history and private voice, conducted three ensembles and set up a summer choral program for the Courtenay Youth Music Camp.

After joining UVic's faculty in 1973, he became founding president of the Vancouver Island Opera Society (now Pacific Opera Victoria), conducted the Victoria Choral Society and was president of the UVic Faculty Association. In 1994 he founded the 80-voice Prima Choir, a UVic ensemble, and since 1973 has also conducted the 36-voice UVic Chamber Singers, whose members sing as part of their degree requirements.

In 2006, he took time out to accept the Herbert Drost award for his lifetime service to choral music in B.C.

The recent trip to southeast Asia was his third with students -- the first to Cambodia -- and organized on a shoestring with "immense help from two former students who went back to Korea to teach ESL, and married local women."

Fundraising concerts and grants from the university meant each student paid only $1,800 for 21 days, including travel, room and board. And at the end there was a little left over and each student gave $50 to a women's centre in Cambodia, said More.

"Any singer will tell you, travelling to exotic places and performing for large appreciative audiences is very special and memorable, but the cultural exchange is deeply fulfilling and expanding too."

Arne Sahlen, president of Canada's Cambodia Support Group who helped plan the Cambodia tour, said More's last name is appropriate. "More and more. Between him and his wife Connie (who founded VIVA Choir) the care and commitment they have is awesome.

"It's pretty challenging working in a trust-shattered country like Cambodia, but Bruce is so flexible, he believes in balance, partnerships. Just watching him is inspiring."

More added meaning to the trip by having students (average age 20) not only tour famous sites but stay overnight at a Buddhist temple where they rose at 3 a.m. to meditate. They visited a women's shelter, a Pol-Pot genocide centre, and the largest dump in Cambodia, home to hundreds of wretched families.

"We saw a Third World country struggling to bring itself out of many horrors, but we also saw rural parts that were absolute eye candy, gorgeous," More said.

Sometimes students sang alone, sometimes with locals, and mostly they performed classical music.

"We didn't really know what to expect, but everywhere we were greeted like royalty, with standing ovations. Sometimes people went nuts, yelling and screaming. Music really is the universal language."

UVic associate professor Christopher Butterfield said Bruce More has left "very, very big boots to fill."

"I'm not quite sure people really understand what he has accomplished over 35 years. He has done more for the University of Victoria globally than any other person. You hear about choirs making little tours of English cathedrals in the off months, but this man has taken students to every continent except Antarctica.

"You'd think it was the greatest choir in the world."

Former student Graham Specht, 31, concurs. "I went on three tours through Asia and two to Central America with Bruce, and married a Korean woman who's now at UVic. She and I went along on this trip to help out, and I sang as well.

"Bruce has been very influential in my life and the lives of a lot of people."

What does More plan to do in retirement? "Anything I want," he joked, adding he will likely spend more time volunteering at the new Our Place shelter, where he produces the monthly volunteer newsletter and also has installed and maintains a 1,500-volume paperback library.

glitwin@tc.canwest.com