Sending my condolences to you all at the passing of Walter.  His contribution to music in Halifax cannot be overstated.  My late husband, Angus Johnston saw him with awe and respect and counted him as a dear friend.  Fondly, Sandra Haycock

My great condolences as I hear of Walter’s passing. I had the privilege of attending several of the opera chats at the public library. I’ll never forget his wit, humor, and immense knowledge of music and history. Listening to him, I felt transported back to my days as an undergrad student, studying literature and history. He was so encouraging and supportive. He asked me about my interest in opera, and also checked if I had a chance to see the Met showings at Cineplex. He wanted to foster a love of music in the audience, and I’ll always cherish the knowledge that he passed along to us.

I was so sorry to learn of the passing of Dr. Walter Kemp. He was a wonderful man , father and husband. He will be missed alot. My Condolences to his family.

In 2000, Dr Kemp hired me to work for the Dal Music Dept. He retired soon after but we saw him regularly — photocopying, selling  poinsettias in support of his choir, scheduling Tattoo choir rehearsals,  promoting Dal shows on his CKDU radio show, and renting the Dunn Theatre for the annual Opera NS production. When I retired from Dal, he invited me to work for ONS. We spoke every week for the past 9 months and produced two major events, including the long-delayed  Cosi fan tutte. I am profoundly grateful to have known him. Thanks Dr K.

Valda, Carol, Walter and the Kemp Family, so sorry for your loss. My thoughts and prayers are with you all at this sad time. May Dr. Kemp rest in peace!
Sincerely Helen Jordan-a former member of Dal Chorale and the NSIT Adult Choir from 1987 to  2003 .

I have been a regular participant in the series of library opera talks given by Dr. Kemp. His knowledge of opera, music, art and related history and culture was vast and impressive. 
He strived to further the appreciation and understanding of music and opera to anyone that would listen.
He certainly added to my world and I am grateful for his knowledge, dedication and kindness. I will miss him.



Great scholar , wonderful educator , 
He will be missed by many friends and community .  But we have many happy memories . His name will last forever .  Rest in Peace .

How fortunate were those that got to spend time in the brilliance of Dr. Kemp?! I attended the Dal Music Program in the mid-late 90’s and, at his encouragement, was the first student to graduate with.m an integrated B.Mus.Ed/B.Ed. During my time at Dal, he showed incredible intelligence, skill, knowledge, wit (and a bit of a cheeky tease) and a dispenser of fatherly advice too. I was honoured when he asked me to sing in his small chamber choir, with Symphony NS and even Frank Mills(!), and amazed when I impressed him during a choral conducting class! Gaining any praise from him meant 10 fold to any others! I recall his office being in a shocking state of disarray, yet he knew exactly where everything was; I suspect that big, beautiful brain (and heart) of his worked the same way. I recall singing one of his compositions with Dal Chorale, showing his love for The Iliad which he said he read with his Mom, and feeling a deep connection with him and his loved experience. How abundant his gifts, which he gave and gave and gave, to those lucky enough to know him. “She is a rune”, Dr. Kemp. 

My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family, I certainly share in your sadness as you remember Dr. Kemp. May your happy memories give you peace and comfort.


I am so happy that Walter was able to organize Opera Valentine and put on Cosi fan Tutte before he died, although his death came as a big shock since I saw him at both events and also at the Oxford/Cambridge boat race dinner. 

My thoughts are with Valda, who was unable to be there, but it did mean that I met her daughter Carol, who took over her duties at Opera Valentine. 


The news of  Dr Kemp's passing was so sad to hear.  I have held the utmost respect for him, since our first meeting in the late summer of 1978 at Dalhousie for my audition for Voice studies. It was clear to me from that moment that this man was highly knowledgeable, and he certainly proved me right through the years.  He was such a great teacher, choir director, composer, and musicologist.
He shared his wisdom and knowledge with me, providing me with skills and countless little bits of encouragement, over and over.
It was an honour to have been a vocalist in his choirs through the years, under his precise and professional guidance.  (Dalhousie Chorale, Saint Paul's Church Choir, Saint Paul's Singers, Walter Kemp Singers, the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo Choir...)  He also  had such a great sense of humour. 
I am so grateful also for his belief in me, and recommending me for various paid solo gigs through the years.  We shared many conversations around our love and passion for music, and he also was always interested in things going on in my life.  He and his kind wife Valda even travelled to attend our wedding.  
I always smile when I think of him, and I am very grateful for his mentorship and belief in me that I could sing!
So many memories are flooding through my mind; cherished and so appreciated.
"Thank You" doesn't even seem valid... 

I send my sincere sympathies to Valda, Carol, Walter (and you too, Dora, from up above) and families at this time, and hold you in my heart.  His life mattered; he made a difference.
Sincerely,  William (Bill) MacLellan

My memories of Dr. Kemp are those of a superb musician, laughter, and appreciation. Years ago, I sang in Dal Chorale, the Tattoo choir, and at least one Messiah from Scratch with him at the helm. I thoroughly enjoyed his leadership and his humour.  He was a genius in the musical field, and his kind personality and humour endeared him to people.  His passing is indeed a great loss, and I extend my sympathy to his family. The choir of angels in heaven has a new director. 

Dear Valda & Family,
I was so saddened to hear of Walter’s passing. He was a wonderful musician and taught me so much about choral singing in the 16 years I sang in his choirs. I will never forget his great interpretation of the music and of course his clever sense of wit. My condolences to his loved ones.
Gloria Trecartin

Dear Valda and family, I am so very sorry to hear of Dr. Kemp's passing. Dr. Kemp was very near and dear to me and I know how much he will be missed. Keeping you  and your family in prayer at this difficult time A friend always Donna Ruggles

I was very saddened to hear about the death of your husband and father.  He was a very special person indeed. I was fortunate enough to join the RNSIT choir in 1990 and receive the benefit of his musical teachings and so enjoyed all of the times we got to share life with 
him. He had a special place in my heart, especially after telling the choir that he was going to retire. He taught us so much and there were many times during rehearsals, especially when he "played the bagpipes"on the piano that made us all laugh. It was hard work, but he made it enjoyable too. I will  always think of him fondly, and with a smile on my face.    Cheryl Weldon (Misner - Trembley) 

Dr. Kemp was well respected man within his community and beyond over the years. 
My most fond memory was when I met him through his daughter and my good friend Carol. 
When Dr. Kemp and I last spoke it was about his fondness of the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo and the choir along with his devotion to his family.
I enjoyed the pleasant conversation and hearing the passion he had with music over the years. We had a bit in common when it came to music because of my involvement with the Tattoo but also from my mother's involvement with music.
As much as many will remember him for his music, I will remember him as Carol's dad and his love for his family. 
Rest in peace ♥️🎶

Please express my sincere condolences to Valda and family. I consider Walter my Mentor - he encouraged me to colour outside the dots when it came to my compositions. I will forever be grateful to him for accepting my admission to WLU when all others rejected me. The result has been a lifetime career in entertainment. Thank you Walter.

My most heartfelt condolences.  
Dr. Kemp gave me my first professional singing opportunity.  I had the pleasure and privilege of working for him on several productions. He provided me with support and guidance throughout my career.  He was a source of wisdom, humour, and knowledge as I learned to be a professional artist.  I am so grateful to have worked with him and benefited from his experience. If it weren't for him I would not have pursued music past my undergraduate degree. While his impact on my life professionally, is profound, personally, the moments I will miss most are when he would wave me in close to share a joke or a word of encouragement. My heart goes out to Mrs. Kemp and her family.

Dear Valda and family:   I'm so saddened by Walter's death, I send my deepest condolences.  
My first memories of Walter are actually from my childhood in Kitchener Ontario.  My Dad sang in a choir Walter conducted and my parents would have these wonderful post-concert parties at the house which Walter always attended.  I remember him having the most interesting conversations with my Dad about music, and what struck me most about Walter then was his incredible sense of humour.  
When I got the orchestral job here in Halifax in 1984, who should be here at Dalhousie's music department, but Walter!  He was an amazing Chair of the department and he infected countless students, profs and the general public with his love of music.  His incredible intellect and memory were constantly evident.  He was also a great peace-maker.  
Playing under his baton for Opera Nova Scotia productions and Dal productions was a joy;  his interpretive ideas always made sense to me, and it was a joy to play flute for him;  often, I'd try and turn a phrase in order to get a reaction out of Walter, usually him looking over the top of his glasses with a little smile on his face if he liked what I was doing.  It was an honour and privilege to have known him and worked under him in a life full of glorious music.  You will be sorely missed, Walter, and may you be making great music up in the celestial realms with all of your great composer heroes and with the angels!  

Valda, you are in my thoughts and prayers and I hope for grace for you during this very hard time. Cling to your wonderful memories of him, they will be balm in the coming hard times.   Patty  Creighton

I was so sad to hear of Dr.Kemps Passing. His influence on my musical life and career as a performer and teacher is immeasurable. He encouraged me as a young singer at Dal and supported me as I moved on . Dr. Kemp introduced me to Bach,.. Baroque
 ... the glorious technique and musicality within the banter between Voice  and Orchestra. All the while encouraging my love of MUSIC . My deepest sympathies to his family. I know he is making glorious glorious music with the Angels.

My condolences to Valda and and the rest of the Kemp family.  

Lots of memories have been going through my mind since hearing this news last week.  I've been blessed with some wonderful musical mentors in my life but it's safe to say that none had a bigger influence on me than Dr. Kemp: a brilliant, highly educated man with a voracious curiosity and a gift for teaching.  As an undergrad at Dalhousie, I soaked up his music history lectures - given without notes and touching on literature, art, politics, religion, anthropology, architecture, etc. - and wondered how it was possible for anyone to know so much.  We bonded over shared interests and he gave me many musical opportunities that I had not earned, but that he saw potential for me to grow into.  I'll always remember him asking me at the end of my second year if I was interested in becoming the organ scholar at King's the following year.  I thanked him for considering me but reminded him that I had never played the organ before and was barely staying afloat with my piano studies, so I probably wasn't the right person.  He simply gave me the phone number of an organ teacher who he said was expecting my call and told me he'd see me at the first rehearsal in September. That's how things happened with Dr. Kemp.  

It was always a delight to reconnect with him on trips back to Halifax over the years, and I am sad that we won't be chatting at The Coburg Coffee House again.    Dr. Kemp had a lot of impressive titles and letters after his name, but I will remember him most as a good man whose kindness and encouragement had a profound influence on the direction of my life.

Sending love and condolences at this sad time.  My late husband was a dear friend of walter’s and thought the world of him.  He was such an important contributor to Halifax music! He will be missed by many…

Sandra Haycock

Dear Velda, Carol, Walter and families

My soul was saddened to learn of Walter’s passing this week.  A great light has been extinguished.   I had met him at Waterloo in the early 1970’s, and when Irene and I moved to Halifax and joined St. Paul’s Church,  we both joined his Mattins Choir for the weekly services. (Irene has written of that in her tribute).  A short while later, I was also in the St. Paul’s Singers and the Dal Chorale and the Tattoo Choir.    Those were amazing years filled with music and learning and lots of fun.  Who else could have bridged the musical distance between the English Renaissance, the glories of Handel and the songs of two World Wars except Walter?

I’m sure the heavenly choirs will welcome him with great excitement.

With much sympathy
Barry Walker

I was so sorry to learn of Dr. Kemp's passing, and share my sincere condolences with the Kemp family at this time.  Dr. Kemp was Chair of the Music Department at Dalhousie University while I completed my music degree.  Dr. Kemp was incredibly knowledgeable,  supportive and inspirational to growing musicians.  His passing is a significant loss.

Dear Valda and family,
Thinking of you, as you reflect on your many wonderful memories of Walter. 
    I am grateful to gave seen him conducting the Walter Kemp Singers during the SS Atlantic Memorial Service at St. Paul’s Church in Terence Bay on March  31. 
He was a remarkable man.

Shalom Valda!  We just heard tonight about Walter's passing.   We treasure the happy times we spent with him, both musically, and in interesting conversations. He will be vey much missed!  May our Lord comfort you as you and your family remember your lives with him .
Merv & Merla Watson

So many memories stand out - the most intriguing for me was Xmas '95 or '96. We (the Georgian/Walter Kemp Singers) had just performed a wonderful concert at All Nations Church the month before in November - the Faure Requiem. Now, just weeks later, we were preparing for (and this juxtaposition really sums up WHK for me) "A Frank Mills Christmas". Dr. Kemp let a few jokes go by - but when things started to go off the rails, he reminded us that what we were about to perform meant just as much for the for 1100 people in the Cohn (Music Box Dancer and a slew of holiday favourites) as for those who heard the Requiem a month earlier. I've never met anyone who bridged those worlds in quite the same way. 

Mrs Kemp & Family
I so miss my visits to your home and enjoying the beautiful view that you have enjoyed throughout the seasons. The conversations with Walter were always so interesting and I looked forward to each and every visit wondering the topic which we would land on during my visits.
I have many fond memories that I will always cherish. 
My sincere sympathy to you and your family.


PART TWO 

It was a Presbyterian church, and its repertoire leaned towards pleasant and popular anthems that were easily performed and easily digested.  We thought singing in our new church would be a fun way to get involved in our new community.  So, after church one Sunday, we asked Dr. Kemp about joining the Matins choir, and he invited us to come for an audition the following Thursday, the traditional evening for choir practice across the nation.

Audition?  Gulp.  I had never auditioned before.  Barry was fine with it – he had been singing ever since he was a paid child chorister in the cathedral of St. Anne’s, Belfast, and had once aspired to make music his career.  On top of that, he was that rarest of musical beasts, a tenor. Tenors have to be actively engaged in recent criminal activity, like money laundering or white slavery, before they are unwelcome in a choir.  

Female singers, however, are as common as flies at a picnic, and just as welcome.  And although I could read music because of my clarinet and piano background, I wasn’t much of a singer.  Don’t get me wrong – I loved to sing; it’s just that nobody ever asked me to.  Not that they made me stop either – or at least, not often.   

Audition.  Okay.  I assumed I would need an audition piece, and I settled on “Que Sera Sera,” the Doris Day version, because it was in my range, didn’t have any long phrases where I would get out of breath, and I knew all the words.  That week I woke up each day warbling, “Whatever will be will be,” and went to bed trilling “The future’s not ours to see.”  

Thursday evening found me at the church beside the piano as the choir assembled in the choir stalls, clutching my sheet music, and trying to be calm, knowing that any emotion shows in the voice.  Dr. Kemp sat down at the piano bench and played the opening notes of “O Canada.”  O Canada?  I could sing that!  And I did.  

PART FOUR (FINAL)

I learned to appreciate the boring parts of being an alto, because they form the “insides” of the choir, to luxuriate in the delicious dissonant harmonies, and to rejoice when we snatched a little bit of the tune away from the sopranos.  

I learned so much that one Christmas he asked if I would be willing to sing a solo for the biggest service of the year, Christmas Eve.  It was a small solo, sure, one verse in a Christmas carol, but I was thrilled.  

I never got to have my moment in the sun.  That was the year that our son Brendan arrived unannounced from the Home of the Guardian Angel on December 23rd, upsetting all our plans for Christmas and beyond.  Barry relayed a message to Dr. Kemp asking if he could find another soloist – I wouldn’t be coming to the Christmas Eve service.  I’d be staying at home with our newborn child.  

“A baby?!” he said, dumbfounded, in my favourite expression of astonishment at our sudden parenthood. “I didn’t even know she was pregnant!”  Of course, he didn’t know because he lived and breathed nothing but music.  Music was his element, and all he ever noticed.  

Yes, he terrified me, but he also awed me, and filled me with gratitude for all the music he taught and shared all those years ago.  


PART THREE 
He cut me off immediately after “home and native land” and played the intro again in a different key.  I sang the first line again.  “You’re an alto,” he announced, and got up.  And that was the first, last and only audition of my life.  Poor Doris never even got her moment.  

The following years were packed with the best musical education you could ever want.  While standing in the choir stalls every Thursday and Sunday, this brilliant man taught me all about musical phrasing, diction, breath control, pitch, how to sing ensemble and how to lose myself in the music.  He taught the repertoire of centuries of choral music all the way from the renaissance to the modern pieces he composed himself, as well as the ancient art of Anglican Chant.  All the choir members were amateurs except for four professional section leaders brought in from the university, but under Walter’s leadership we punched well above our weight.  

His ears had the uncanny ability to swivel at any miscue, and when they did, his eyes immediately shot to the offender’s corner in the choir stall.  He taught us to always remember our pencils and lift our heads to watch him.  He held the baton like a weapon about to be launched, and waged war on the accent from the Annapolis Valley that strangulated all the “rrrrrrrs.”  Lorrrrrrd must always be sung as “Lawd.”  The final consonants had to come together at the precise same moment, diphthongs and swooping from one note to the next was forbidden, and the letter “s” needed to be tamed so that the choir did not sound like a hissing snakepit.  
He taught me never to miss an entrance, even if I wasn't sure of the note – although heaven help me if I had the wrong one!  And he did it by growling, striking fear deep into my soul, and being the wittiest, funniest, most musical, person I ever met.  A faint compliment from him was worth an encyclopedia of praise from anyone else. 



So many memories over so many years. Thank you for the music, Walter.  Rest in Peace.  My thoughts are with the family in this time of sadness.   

Thank you, Dr. Kemp
Irene Templeman Walker

You would not have said at first glance that Dr. Walter Kemp was terrifying.  Certainly, his rumpled suit did not instill fear.  Neither did his haircut, which never dared to tackle that one curl of hair that constantly fell over his forehead.  Or his slightly stooped posture from years of bending over keyboards and desks.  

But when those eyes, as bright and intelligent as a raven’s, focused on you from behind his thick Clark Kent eyeglasses and heavy eyebrows, it was enough to make you shuffle and drop any music books you were holding.  

He was the head of the music department at Dalhousie University, Halifax in the 1980s, still at the beginning curve of the arc of a long career.   He held degrees from the Universities of Toronto, Harvard, and Oxford, and founded the music programme at Wilfred Laurier University.  How this immensely talented man landed in little old Halifax is a mystery to me, but once there, he started work on making it into a premiere musical centre for all of Canada.  

No project was too big – not the community choir of over 150 people he put together for the Nova Scotia International Tattoo year after year, or the equally gargantuan Dalhousie Chorale, which performed Handel’s little-known oratorio “Israel in Egypt” in St. Paul’s Anglican Church.  

He had a “town and gown” vision for St. Paul’s (oldest church of royal foundation in Canada!), seeing it as the Canadian version of London’s St. Martin’s in the Fields.  That’s where he brought Canada’s operatic stars Ben Heppner and Maureen Forrester to perform with his chamber choirs, along with countless chamber choir concerts. 

I didn’t know any of this when I first met him as the organist and choir director of St. Paul’s, which we joined shortly after our move to Halifax in 1982.  Barry and I had sung in the choir of the church where we were married.  It was a Presbyterian church, and its repertoire leaned towards pleasant and popular anthems that

As an early CKDU programmer, Dr. Kemp was the standard by which all other show hosts shall be measured.  We will really miss him. I wish him good journey. 

OBITUARY

Walter Herbert Kemp

November 16, 1938 – June 9, 2023

JA Snow Funeral Home

Show your support

Add a Memory

Share Obituary

Get Reminders

Past Services

Funeral Service