Arts and Entertainment

Achill Choral Society conductor announces departure after nine years in the role

April 9, 2026   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

The Achill Choral Society (ACS) is currently on the hunt for a new conductor. After nearly nine years, Shawn Grenke is retiring from his position as artistic director and conductor. He has been offered to take on the role of conductor for the Peterborough Singers. 

Grenke talked to the Citizen while driving to Brock University, where he teaches choral conducting, late last week.

“I’m moving on to the Peterborough Singers – their founding conductor is retiring. I saw their ad and decided to apply just to see what would happen, and they got back to me,” he said. 

The Peterborough Singers are a choir of 130 members, “singing with full orchestras and doing bigger works,” Grenke added, expressing his enthusiasm for the challenges ahead.

He said it felt like a time for a change.

About ACS, he remarked, “I have grown the choir and now is a good time for someone else to come in and for me to grow as well. Achill is a very strong community.”

Officially, Grenke steps down at the end of June and takes up his new position with Peterborough on July 1.

The city of Peterborough has its own very active arts community. Living in Hamilton means that Grenke’s drive to Peterborough for rehearsals and concerts is about the same distance and time as it takes to attend the Orangeville-based ACS.

Before the changes in Grenke’s and the ACS’s lives is their upcoming Return to Spring concert on April 26 at Westminster Church. The program is an interesting collection of music, and Grenke was happy to discuss it.

“It begins with Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass,” he said. “Its nickname is Mass of Troubled Times and it is absolutely beautiful. The piece will be accompanied by piano and organ and features four soloists.”

He went on to promise selections from The Pirates of Penzance by the beloved Gilbert and Sullivan, David Brunner’s Earthsongs and selections from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music.

From his almost nine years with ACS, Grenke has learned how important a sense of community is; how it makes the music better, saying that originally he was with Achill for just one concert, filling in the need when the previous conductor stepped down in 2017. And then, he stayed on.

“We kept the choir together during Covid,” he said. “And that meant the choir stayed together. There were other choirs that never came back and we had a turnover of thirty percent, with many new singers after Covid.”

From childhood singing in a children’s church choir in Belleville, Ontario, Grenke’s life has been wrapped in choral music, and as his skills developed, he later toured with his choir to Germany and Holland, where his choir won prizes.

Within ACS, they are his friends, and the choir is like a second family.

“The decision to leave wasn’t easy,” was his comment. “Leaving is challenging.”

It was his grandfather who reminded Grenke that health, money and time are staples, and with each window of opportunity, you can get all three. If you have the opportunity to travel, you should take it, the sage opined.

For Family Day, Grenke took a week and went to Mexico. “But the city was being burnt by the Cartel – they were only targeting the government people, not other people – it was haunting to see…”

After the Return to Spring concert, Grenke has invited ACS to come to Toronto to join with the Eglinton-St. George Church choir in Toronto, which he also directs, in the performance of Haydn’s Third Mass, on May 3. They will sing with a full orchestra. Even a bus “to and from” for the chorus has been organized.

As Grenke said, “It will be very exciting, with well over a hundred singers.”

For tickets to the Return to Spring concert at Westminster United Church on April 26, go to www.achillchoralsociety.ca or in person at BookLore on First Street.

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