Last week’s 2024-25 Choral Season Fly-Over Preview, Part I is titled “With a Voice of Singing”. Did you wonder if the title is a reference to one of the greatest choral anthems ever written? It sure is. British composer Martin Shaw published With A Voice of Singing just over 100 years ago. The 3-minute work is energetic, accessible, purposeful and lets the human voice and message be the star. 

Yes, it is a hundred years old. In some choral circles you might, with affection, call it a “war horse.” That’s okay. It deserves that moniker because it really is a brilliant little gem of choral writing. 

Here’s another choral gem, this one written in the past decade by Portland composer Sydney Guillaume. It is also energetic, accessible – just watch these singers – and has a purposeful voice.

Both are pieces that move us forward. Just as blow-out choir anniversaries like those of last season – Resonance (15), Satori (30); Oregon Repertory Singers (50); and Vancouver Master Chorale (75) – aren’t just about “look what we did.” They also encourage us to keep going. As you read on you might notice a deepening commitment from our choirs to lean into their mission statements which contain words like educate, enrich, honor, confront, uplift – all with choral excellence. Look at some of the exciting concert programs this season that act upon these intents.

Voices found in scholarship

New old music is being discovered in our modern day. How cool is the 2021 discovery of voice parts from the 1600s that has made possible the upcoming In Mulieribus concert (“Maddalena Casulana”)? And in the opening concert of Cappella Romana’s season you will walk in the “Footsteps of St. Demetrius”, imagining the voices lifted in honor of the Holy-Great Martyr of 4th century Thessaloniki. 

Following the world premiere of these ancient chants in concerts in Seattle and Portland, Cappella Romana will immediately whiz off to University of California Los Angeles where they will engage in a breakthrough research project of sonic time travel. Similar to CR’s groundbreaking Hagia Sophia “Lost Voices” project, “Footsteps” will endeavor to enable the ancient music to be sung within a re-creation of the original acoustic for which it was so carefully written.

Unearthing centuries-old pages of choral music doesn’t usually involve temples of doom or spiders – well, there might be spiders – but notice the twinkle in the eye of Cappella Romana founder and Music Director Alexander Lingas as he hints at the newly researched “Footsteps” concert and the entire CR season ahead. 

Resonance Ensemble offers another artistic voice of support to ongoing discovery in our region. The Vanport Mosaic Festival scheduled for May 2025 honors the long-muted voices of Vanport City and other communities. Read, in ArtsWatch’s profile of last year’s Festival, the story of how the Vanport Mosaic uplifts the vanished city’s people and their history and brings its cultural significance into our present day. Resonance plans to participate in the finale of the Festival; keep an artful watch as details continue to unfold in the months ahead. 

Other voices finally “found”

In a recent email to OAW Artistic Director of Choral Arts Ensemble, David De Lyser, spoke of CAE’s season opening concert this October. “What excites me – finding those pieces that are new to audiences, yet connect with them so powerfully – hearing that audience feedback of, ‘why have I never heard this before?!?’”

Hmmm. Why is it that folks have never heard something before? Well, a simple answer could be because we hear and sing what we are offered in concerts. We hear and sing what we are offered in our schools. We consume the choral cuisine put before us. 

So let’s partake of some of these offerings this upcoming season, like the 1967 Credo of Margaret Allison Bonds. Resonance performs the work with orchestra next Spring. In October, Choral Arts Ensemble presents Bond’s work in its original piano score and surrounds that beautiful Credo text, written by W. E. B. Du Bois, with texts and music of other Black artists, including A Vision Unfolding by Derrick Skye.

De Lyser will sit down with KQAC’s Christa Wessel on October 7^th to preview this CAE opening concert. You can check out that day’s playlist schedule here.

Robert Ray’s Gospel Mass is on Corvallis Repertory Singers’ calendar this season. Ray had just begun his college teaching career in 1979 at University of Illinois in Urbana, teaching strings and organizing the University’s first Black Student Chorus. He was invited to write an African-American style mass – a nice experiment, he mused – and after the very successful premiere put it to the side, never expecting it to be performed again. But the powerful voice of his music had been heard and soon found its way to choirs around the US. If you’ve never heard it here’s your chance–it has now found its way to The PRAx in Corvallis this February where CRS will partner it with Robert Cohen’s Alzheimer’s Stories.

The works of Margaret Bonds and Robert Ray weren’t ever “lost”; they’ve been out there. But some of us have never heard them before. By programming these stirring yet long-underrepresented works, choirs are uplifting and supporting these artists; by attending these performances you support them – you help their voices be heard. Embrace the “NHBs” this year. They might become your new, heavenly, beautiful favorites. 

Finding Community

In 1980 Portland became one of the earliest US cities to organize an openly gay men’s chorus. This fall Braeden Ayers begins his third year as Artistic Director of Portland Gay Men’s Chorus, a thriving and celebrated choir of approximately 195 members which, wrote PGMC Executive Director Mark McCrary in a recent email to OAW, “creates a safe space for the queer community to come together and feel supported around their musical interests.” 

In recent phone interview with OAW, Portland Lesbian Choir director Mary McCarty couldn’t recall the exact name of the now closed women’s bookstore in 1986 in which a note was posted calling for choral singers. She later checked with her 160 singers, a couple of whom are original members, who remembered that it was “A Woman’s Place” in Portland where their community of singing began. McCarty enters her tenth year with PLC, whose current membership numbers three times that of when she took the PLC podium in 2015. But you may have also seen her in her role (for 20 years) as the PGMC’s Associate Conductor and occasional Interim Artistic Director. 

Both choirs kick off their seasons with concerts in December, PGMC with “Merry Everything” and PLC with “Coming Out of the Darkness.” McCarty and McCrary both expressed excitement and joy about their upcoming joint venture including their choirs, Bridging Voices Youth Choir and Rose City Pride Band. With choirs performing alone and in a mass ensemble of about 400 musicians, this March event “Our New World” is about solidarity, uplifting each other and, of course, beautiful choral art. You are, wrote McCrary, invited to “celebrate community through music” with them all.

Aurora Chorus Artistic Director Rebecca Parsons will open their season at the Portland Grotto in early December, followed by a home concert. “Giving voice to women’s perspective and empowerment” (choir website), Aurora models another place to find community through singing. You can also hear them – with the Portland Symphonic Girlchoir – in their annual International Women’s Day concert in March. Often on that concert Aurora returns to the music of their former Director, Oregon composer Joan Szymko. Listen to Szymko’s It Takes a Village here.

Radix Vocal Ensemble, also a treble-voice choir, has announced its 24-25 season which begins in December with “To Sit and Dream: The Power of Possibilities.” Radix, a rising new voice in Portland, was founded in 2019 with a mission statement that speaks of community and programs that are compelling, meaningful and joyous. 

Choirs and Orchestras

You might have read in Part 1 how many choirs are contracting with professional orchestral artists to offer us choral/orchestral works (Verdi and Mozart Requiems, Szymko’s Shadow and Light, Robert Cohen’s Alzheimer’s Stories). Of course, Portland Choir and Orchestra is its own full-service organization, this year again offering extended and smaller works. Some choirs, like Willamette Master Chorus are balancing some of the older choral/orchestral literature (Beethoven Choral Fantasia) with the newer (Jake Runestad’s Beethoven-inspired A Silence Haunts Me).

Choral and orchestra organizations are also teaming up to bring us even more. Metropolitan Youth Symphony will partner with Pacific Youth Choir to perform Waloyo Yamoni (“We Overcome the Wind”), by Christopher Tin. Listen here:

Orchestra Nova Northwest (formerly Portland Columbia Symphony Orchestra) will present the first performance in their “new collaboration with the brilliant and dynamic Resonance Ensemble…who is committed to creating and presenting powerful programs promoting meaningful social change” (ONO website). The concert pairs two 20^th century extended works – Margaret Bond’s Credo and Ralph Vaughn-Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem. Listen here to Bond’s orchestral setting of Credo, Movement 3, “I believe in Pride of Race”:

The Oregon Symphony Orchestra has a few of choral/orchestral works for you as well. Felix Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang (Hymn of Praise) of 1840, also known as Symphony No. 2, is a “symphonic cantata” according to the then 31-year-old composer himself. Yeah, a bit of a hybrid label, that, and the work’s naming and numbering have been debated for years. But you’ll understand that moniker when you hear three short opening symphonic movements that suddenly shift into a full chorus, three soloists and biblical texts that sing praises and offer blessings. To what? To the Gutenberg moveable type printing press invented 400 years earlier.* Some of the choral movements sung by Oregon Repertory Singers (partners with OSO for this performance) might remind you of Mendelssohn’s Elijah written in 1846. 

Later in the OSO season is Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 in which treble voices from Portland State University, Oregon Repertory Singers and Pacific Youth Choir chime in to propel the 90-ish minute work toward its powerful conclusion. 

In the December OSO lineup is the “Gospel Christmas” with the NW Community Gospel Chorus celebrating 25 years of holiday spirit. And the Oregon Chorale and OSO once again provide “Comfort and Joy.”

You and the Portland Symphonic Choir singers are in for a treat when PSC joins OSO to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of the blockbuster movie Amadeus. Many of these singers have performed Mozart’s Requiem but never like this. Did you know – trivia alert – the movie score is practically 100% Mozart (there’s a snippet of Salieri in one scene)? Enjoy Amadeus once again, with F. Murray Abraham as Salieri and Tom Hulce’s magnificent “wolfie” laugh.

Can’t Help Lovin’ that man of mine

We Oregon music lovers have several favorite “one man shows” going on don’t we? Although the repertoire is not exclusively composed by Bach, we have our two yearly Festivals (Oregon Bach Festival and Mount Angel Bach Festival) dedicated to the musical legacy of the great Baroque master. And then there’s Cantores in Ecclesia’s William Byrd Festival each summer. 

But one of your favorite season-long choral celebrations of Bach beckons once again. Founding Director Ralph Nelson’s Bach Cantata Choir offers four cantatas this year and much, much more. Take a look at their entire season schedule here. 

Here are two more composer-focused concerts this season. In Mulieribus’s April offering is a candlelight concert of the poignant music of a French Baroque master, François Couperin – the Trois Leçons de Ténèbres (Three Lessons of Darkness). And join Multnomah Women’s Chorus for their all-Holst concert in November.

Voices in the here and now

Our choirs offer such an abundance of regional, US and world choral premieres. Several each year are commissions by our choirs. Just last year we had world premiere commissions by local composers (Darrell Grant, Jodi French and Judy A. Rose) and composers from afar (Matthew Lyon Hazzard). Some pieces were still dripping ink as they slipped into your black folders, right singers? 

This year we will be treated to a few more new works. In November, Resonance Ensemble offers a NW premiere work by Damien Geter and a commission world premiere by Dave Ragland. And local composer and Resonance singer Cecille Elliott will premiere a new work in Resonance’s “Choir Grrrl” concert coming up in February. 

Cappella Romana presents the Canon for Racial Reconciliation for choir and gospel instrumental ensemble. Gospel composer Isaac Cates and Orthodox music composer Nicholas Reeves have fused the ancient Byzantine canon form and gospel music and set it to the poetry of Carla Thomas. Cates will be on hand to co-conduct, with Anthony Maglione, the newly completed premiere of this “reflection on race relations combining the traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy and the Black Church” (Reeves website). 

Southern Oregon Repertory Singers’ James M. Collier First Light Festival of New Choral Music, an annual spring choral event in Ashland, is where you can find the beautiful music of SORS Composer-In-Residence Jodi French. The New Music series also features new works of rising and well-known composers from afar, often through commissions by SORS. Keep watch on SORS website for further information on their 2024-25 concert series.

Young Voices

OAW will keep in touch with our youth community choirs as their seasons unfold. Look forward to more information about Bridging Voices, Oregon Children’s Choir, Oregon Repertory Singers Youth Choir, Pacific Youth Choir, Portland Symphonic Girlchoir and more. These community choirs are providing choral experience and musical skill-building to our young singers. Their story is the art of learning – choral music style. 

In a Pacific Youth Choir concert this year you will probably hear the choral compositions of Artistic Director Chris Maunu. But one of our youth choirs – Oregon Repertory Singers Youth Choir – enjoys the talents of their own Composer-In-Residence, Stacey Philipps. Listen to one of her works, Sudden Light, here.

Stacey Philipps and two other composers whose music you have enjoyed in the video clips above are being given the full stage in October. Terrific idea. Read on.

Homegrown voices

Oregon Repertory Singers is embracing Portland’s local composers in “Homegrown: Think Choral, Shop Local.” Enjoy a full representation of the choral compositional talents of Sydney Guillaume, Stacey Philipps, and Joan Szymko in this community-spirited ORS concert in October. You will also hear the music of composer and ORS accompanist Naomi LaViolette.

All four creatives are having successes this year. Just weeks before this ORS concert, Guillaume’s orchestral work Lavil Okap will be featured on the 100^th Anniversary Gala concert of the Portland (Maine) Symphony Orchestra. Philipps has already had great interest (sold out, printing more!) in her Gathering Rounds 2 released this spring, Naomi LaViolette just released a new album of her piano meditations “Discovering Peace” (see CONNECTIONS below) and Szymko’s Shadow and Light receives a repeat performance in Eugene in April. Voices and music you’ve never heard before? Attend. Your support might even precipitate a “Homegrown, Too” to celebrate several more exceptional local composers. 

In June, Portland Symphonic Choir presents “I Rise : We Rise” “a concert event uplifting the works of historically marginalized composers and “highlighting a rich trove of compositions by Portland’s own Judy A. Rose.” (PSC website). The Choir will also include works by its “Summer Sings New Works” submissions finalists.

There it is. We’ll be giving more attention to these concerts throughout the year because – zounds – this is some terrific music. Our choirs are opening their folders, their minds and their concert doors to us. Step in and enjoy.

CONNECTIONS

Homegrown and Locally Sourced

The voices of singing give a shout out to Portland’s Fear No Music for also elevating local composers this entire season. Wow, what a line up! Choral folks might recognize some of the featured composers as choral composers as well. Applause.

Naomi LaViolette and Sydney Guillaume will both appear on an upcoming recital event, “Luigi Sings Bittersweet.” LaViolette accompanies Luigi Boccia in songs inspired by Susan Cain’s book, and live-premieres Bittersweet from her new album. Guillaume and the a cappella group Boyfriends (in which he sings), will join Boccia and LaViolette in the concert at the Old Church, Sunday, October 20th, 7:30 PM. Tickets and more info here.

A Moveable Type

Wondering about that * placed at the end of the sentence stating that the Mendelssohn Lobgesang was written to honor the Gutenberg moveable type printing press? Do any of you know of another musical work that honors a mechanical invention or a machine? Write in the comments below. No, “The Wheels on the Bus” does not count.