Keeping Faith

To mark the 100th anniversary of Canada’s entry into the First World War in 1914, the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra embarked on a journey of remembrance through music and reflection.

Keeping Faith is the theme for this commemoration tour, with special 2014-2015 performances in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, throughout New Brunswick and in our nation’s capital, for the official opening of the Canadian War Museum’s new permanent exhibition, The Home Front, 1917.

Our “Keeping Faith” visual wordmark, presented in English, French, German and Czech, was commissioned by the NBYO to honour and respect the countries and cultures visited on the commemoration tour.

As the centerpiece of the Commemoration Tour, the NBYO commissioned an orchestral work, “A Dream of Dawn,” by Canadian composer Kevin Lau. One of Canada’s forefront emerging composers, Kevin Lau, whose music has been commissioned by numerous orchestras across Canada, including an original full-length score for the National Ballet of Canada, currently serves as Affiliate Composer of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

Lau describes the commission as a grateful commemoration of a generation who served and sacrificed. “My intention”, said Lau, “is to compliment the reflections of those pondering war in all its paradoxical facets, to recognize the horrors of human conflict while affirming our profound search for harmony in ourselves and abroad”.

What better path than by harnessing the genius, hope and promise of our youth, to build the world of which their century-old counterparts could only dream – a dream of dawn.