Children's choir set to sing alongside recording of late Gordon Lightfoot

The City of Orillia is getting set to honour its most famous son with a special festival this coming weekend.

Rehearsals are well underway for the 2024 Lightfoot Days Festival, honouring iconic Canadian singer and Orillia-born Gordon Lightfoot. While Lightfoot may no longer be with us, some up and coming performers will get their chance to sing alongside him.

"We're going to be singing with him in a way with a recording of him when he was 12 years old," said Julia Johnston, the director of the Orillia Community Children's Choir.

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The choir will be performing with that recording, which came from a contest Lightfoot participated in with a Soprano voice before it dropped as a teenager. Discovered in 2023, the recording was digitally restored using new artificial intelligence technology.

"So I took it to a friend, Rob Currie, and he used his latest techniques where they were able to separate[it]," said Dan McCoy, the music director at St. Paul's United Church, the same church where Lightfoot attended and performed growing up. "Lightfoot's mother was playing the piano in the background and they separated that out and we were left with just Lightfoot's voice."

McCoy said there were a total of three recording discovered on the digital file, dating back to 1951. After already using the other two in various ways, he wanted to do something special with the third and final performance.

Now Johnston is leading the effort to bring the talents of Lightfoot to a new generation of young singers at the same church he grew up in. She's developed an arrangement that will both allow the choir to shine while not overpowering the unique recording of Lightfoot himself.

"Sometimes it's a real shame to sing over him because it's just so pretty," she said. "So on occasion they will join in, but for the most part they just complement the voice that they hear."

While the talents of Lightfoot aren't lost on Johnston or McCoy, his legacy is less familiar to the member of the choir themselves. But it is giving them hope that they can reach for the stars.

"Knowing that he was born in the same place as me, thinking that, like, I could do the same stuff that he did and become an idol like he was," said Ali Goerk.

While he may no longer be around, Johnson said that he sure is felt in the hallways of the church he grew up in.

"I can feel him every time we bring up his music," she said. "It's certainly felt throughout and really also introducing these kids to him in that way and through his music is kind of how we keep him here."

The Lightfoot Days Festival starts on Oct. 31, with this performance taking place on Sun. Nov. 3.