DETAILS
kanata – for large choir (SSAATTBB)
Composer: Jordan Nobles
Winner of the distinguished 2024 Azrieli Commission for Canadian Music!
Nominated for Composer of the Year at the 2026 Western Canadian Music Awards
Duration: 14 minutes
Download the Score

SPECIAL NOTE: Kanata is an Azrieli Music Prizes winning work, which makes it eligible for the Azrieli Music Prizes Performance Fund. Any professional Canadian choir that programs Kanata can apply for up to $35,000 CAD to help cover artist fees, promotion, rehearsals, touring, and related costs. The piece can be programmed in the 2026-27, 2027-28, or 2028-29 season. The current application deadline is Friday, July 24, 2026 — so there’s a tight window to apply this cycle.
The work is fully a cappella (no orchestra or soloists).
If you’re considering it, I’d love to help — please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Full fund guidelines and the application are here.

REVIEWS

“For Nobles, the sound of the words is more important than the words themselves. The final product is, simply, beautiful.” – Classical Music UK

“the shortest and most singular work on the Azrieli 2024 Prize program. Linear, horizontal and texturally wonderful, with subtle rhythmic shifts in the vocal motifs. This work is a ‘sonic meditation on notions of place, landscape and home’. A cross-Canada train journey is said to have inspired the composer to create this succinct and so original choral gem.” – PAN M 360

“atmospheric sparseness and intimacy of Nobles’ a cappella piece Kanata – musically plumbing the vastness of the Canadian landscape.” – The WholeNote

PROGRAM NOTE

kanata finds its inspiration in the majesty of Canada’s vast and diverse landscape: from the breezy shores of the composer’s home on the Pacific coast to the unforgiving ruggedness of Cape Spear, the most easterly point in North America. kanata, without the use of language, explores the universality of our emotional connection with the natural world and the sense of awe that fills us when experiencing its grandeur. In the piece’s final section, Epilogue: Home, the text to be sung is personal and will be different for each singer. In his note to the chorus, the composer’s instruction states: “You should sing the name of a place (or places) that you think of as ‘home.’ Whether it is where you live now, where you were born, where you grew up, somewhere else, or all the above. In whatever language makes sense to you.” 

---

OTHER AWARD WINNING CHORAL WORKS BY JORDAN NOBLES