Some seasonal singing

Coming right up on March 23 is Bach Cantata Choir’s kinda-sorta Lenten concert. Well, to be sure, it’s a concert almost smack in the middle of the Christian season of Lent yet it includes J. S. Bach’s Brandenburg #6, a delightful secular piece. And J. S. Bach’s Cantata BVW 23 Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn (“You true God and Son of David”) – lovely oboe and voice double duet – composed for the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, kinda heralds the Lenten season. But Cantata BVW 161 Komm, du süße Todesstunde (Come sweet hour of departure) – gorgeous aria with soloist and two recorders or flutes with the chorale theme overlaid – was composed for the 16^th Sunday after Trinity, not Lent.

Calendars aside, Portland’s own BCC and their free choral concerts with orchestra always delight audiences; most of us would have to look up 16^th Sunday after Trinity to even make the Lenten argument (it’s around September). So go and partake. And if it is the contemplative spirit of the Holy Season you seek, it will be there for you, perhaps in a precious work by Johann Michael Bach – distant cousin and father-in-law to JS (by first wife Maria) – Unser Leben währet siebenzig Jahr (Our life endures for seventy years). BCC’s “Discovery Series” composer is Francesca Caccini. Singers Isabella Hanreiter, Sheryl Woods and Elizabeth Madsen perform two works from Caccini’s “Il Primo Libro delle Musiche” of 1618. Love that discovery series!

The Bach Cantata Choir performs on Sunday, March 23 at 2pm at Rose City Park Presbyterian Church. More information is here. 

Lessons of the Season

The Christian Holy Week is in the forefront in an upcoming In Mulieribus concert. On April 5 and 6 IM concludes their season, a yearlong exploration of “Luminous Horizons” – music to draw us to encounter our inner selves and illuminate the human experience. The music in the concert certainly can do that. 

Perhaps the last time we were able to hear François Couperin’s Trois Leçons de Ténèbrae (Three Lessons of Darkness, c. 1715) was nine years ago in a recital by Catherine van der Salm and Arwen Myers and Musica Maestrale. The work will frame other pieces highlighting the concert theme of light and darkness. Here are notes about the Ténèbrae excerpted from an Oregon Arts Watch review of that 2016 concert.

“Couperin’s musical reign was nearly contemporaneous with that of King Louis XIV, the “Sun-king” — the absolute monarch whose royal tenure was the longest in European history. The concomitant flourishing of the Court at Versailles may have facilitated the arts (and in particular the court composers) in being more acquainted with international styles, but also having the wherewithal and stimulus for more opportunity to compose. This was Couperin’s last great vocal work.

“Based on the piteous texts of Lamentations of Jeremiah, the tenebres are usually sung on the last three days of Holy week. The three lessons are each divided into vignettes (5, 4, 5), each vignette beginning with a melisma intoned on one letter of the Hebrew alphabet (14 out of the 22, Alef through Nun). These melismas are daunting, due to the high vocal range and necessity for extreme breath management. Couperin composed highly ornamented melodies, with playful dialogue between upper and lower register.”

Now 9 years later van der Salm will have the pleasure of singing the Leçon (lesson) 1 for solo voice and Leçon 3 duet with Amanda Jane Kelley. Maddy Ross performs Leçon 2. In recent email to OAW van de Salm wrote: “Each phrase, sentence and section requires consistency and nuance, solidity and lightness, strength and suppleness; these exquisite works of Couperin are a meditation on finding beauty in darkness.” 

IM’s soprano voices and special guests Hannah Brewer (organ) and Adaiha MacAdam-Somer (gamba) perform in this concert as In Mulieribus sets the stage for the season, inviting us to sit with this beautiful music in an acoustic illuminated by candlelight alone.

In Mulieribus sings as you are “Surrounded in Darkness/Enfolded in Light” on Saturday, April 5, 7:30 and Sunday, April 6 at 4 pm at Old Madeleine Church. Tickets and more information are here.

Southern Charm

Ashland’s Southern Oregon Repertory Singers are performing the Gabriel Fauré Requiem. Their media post reads “Hear this iconic work the way the composer first imagined it—unpublished during Gabriel Fauré’s lifetime and rarely performed in its original form. Experience the grace and optimism woven into this jewel-like masterpiece, featuring our 65-voice choir and chamber orchestra” and soloists Taylor Pulsipher, soprano and Dan Gibbs, baritone.

When there is scholarship implied behind a programming decision some of us dig for more. And what fun to find out something new about a piece that we have heard so often, that we cherish so much. You might enjoy this interesting mini-lecture about what SORS might be offering on March 22 and 23. 

Other works will also be performed included “a playful Franz Schubert serenade for men’s voices and Shelly Cox-Thornhill, mezzo; rousing spirituals by Adolphus Hailstork; and an exotic set of French songs by Dutch composer Henk Badings” (SORS media post).

Southern Oregon Repertory Singers presents “Charm Me Asleep” on Saturday, March 22, 7:30 and Sunday, March 23, 2 pm at Southern Oregon University Recital Hall, Ashland. Information and tickets are here.

A time for peace

Satori Men’s Chorus is embracing the words of Maya Angelou in three pieces on their March 29 concert. You will hear Angelou’s words as Satori sings two songs from the cycle Like Dust I Rise by Mark Hayes, “Still I Rise” and “On the Pulse of Morning.”

Rollo Dilworth, composer/educator at Temple University composed United In Purpose, set a passage of text from the collection of Angelou’s words “Rainbow in the Cloud.” Satori’s program notes read: “More than ever, now is time for her message of social justice and personal fortitude.” Satori, which has been “singing for peace” for 31 years, has recently updated its mission statement. It is now:

“We are a community of musicians expressing our commitment to peace and inclusivity through song.“

This concert also marks a turning point in the Satori’s choral leadership. This is the final concert of Artistic Director Susan Dorn who assumed the Satori directorship 20 years ago and has guided the choir through some exciting seasons of significant music making. Cheers and thank you.

Satori Men’s Chorus sings for peace on Saturday, March 29, at 7:30 at Unity of Portland. More information is here.

“Music in the Making”

Portland Symphonic Girlchoir’s annual event, “Music in the Making” returns with composer Tom Shelton offering insight into his compositions as he works with the Girlchoir and Portland school choirs. Shelton is Series Director for the Music for Young Voices Series with GIA Publications and has over 50 published compositions. The educational event will culminate in an afternoon public concert. Listen to young voices singing Shelton’s STARS here:

You can also hear the Girlchoir on April 3 on KQAC (89.9.FM) “Thursdays @ Three”, another Roger O. Doyle Choral Series performance. 

“Music in the Making” composer Tom Shelton, Portland Symphonic Girlchoir and area school choirs offer a public concert on Sunday, April 6 at 2 pm at Trinity Episcopal. Tickets are available here.

For prayer, in performance

Two choirs will be on “display” at Cappella Romana’s upcoming concert series on March 28 (in Seattle), and March 29 and 30 (in Portland). The first choir, The Benedict Sixteen, is on a CD released by Cappella Records in 2024 – the world premiere recording of Frank La Rocca’s Requiem Mass for the Forgotten and Messe des Malades. The second choir, Cappella Romana itself, will present the live performance of Requiem Mass for the Forgotten. Joining Cappella Romana in this performance are the instrumental artists of 45th Parallel Universe. But the conductor of the B16 CD and on the podium for this concert is the same – internationally known, highly respected and Seattle-raised conductor Richard Sparks.

When Sparks conducts the CR concert in Seattle the audience is likely to include many former students, professional singers, friends and colleagues. From 1983 to 2001 Sparks was on the music faculty at Pacific Lutheran University and also founded two Seattle choral organizations still going strong today: Seattle Pro Music (in 1973) and Choral Arts Northwest (in 1993). He was Chair for Conducting & Ensembles at the University of North Texas (Denton). He is now principal conductor of The Benedict Sixteen. And it was in that capacity that he conducted the premiere recording of La Rocca’s Masses.

An article in the National Catholic Register, April 1, 2024 reads “The Requiem Mass for the Forgotten, like all the Masses commissioned by Archbishop Cordileone through the Benedict XVI Institute, is for prayer, not performance. And yet, the quality of the performance and the composition piques the interest of the secular classical music world, too. Landing so high on the Billboard chart is an acknowledgment that many people hunger for beauty, and to experience the healing power of God in the classically Catholic sacred music tradition.” (Read the entire article by Maggie Gallagher here.)

Perhaps those are the reasons that The Benedict Sixteen/La Rocca album landed #2 on the Billboard Charts in Holy Week 2024. Or maybe folks just love the rich yet accessible sound. La Rocca’s orchestration is similar to that of Fauré’s (original) Requiem we so dearly love – divided violas and cellos, bass, harp and organ – which connects us to the earth as we look to the heavens. Another reason it was so popular could be the quality of the recording which is excellent as are most recordings conducted by Richard Sparks.

The making of Requiem Mass for the Forgotten has been nicely documented and in watching this video you will learn more about the composer, the story of the work and the performance. The story of Messe des Malades, is similarly documented here.

Many folks in the Portland audience know Sparks and will turn out to welcome him, to experience the La Rocca live for the first time and enjoy hearing one of Sparks’s favorite choral works, Joseph Rheinberger’s lovely a cappella Cantus Missae in Eb, which opens the concert.

It is Rheinberger’s only mass for double choir, hence the Mass for Double Choir title pinned to it. Rheinberger, born in Liechtenstein, was a prolific court composer of sacred music for most of his life (in Bavaria, under King Ludwig II) and wrote 14 such liturgical masses and many more choral works in a lush but never cloying choral voice. You know the Abendlied, right?

Here is Sparks conducting his 2015 UNT A Cappella Choir in the ”Gloria” from Mass for Double Voices.

Music for prayer in performance. This is the essence of Cappella Romana, isn’t it? Music that invites prayer, in its many forms, to all.

Cappella Romana, with 45th Parallel Universe, performs music of La Rocca and Rheinberger in Seattle on Friday, March 28, 7:30 pm at St. James Cathedral and in Portland on Saturday, March 29, 2 pm (NOTE THE TIME) at St. Mary’s Cathedral and in Lake Oswego on Sunday, March 30 at 3 at Our Lady of the Lake Parish. Tickets and information are here.

Portland’s fertile choral ground

There is another premiere in Portland. Not a composition but a choir. Portland’s new SATB choir A Notion, A Scream performs their inaugural concert on April 5 and Artistic Director DeReau K. Farrar is pleased to report that 70 singers “showed up to work.” That’s a good thing because Farrar has programmed a full-bodied concert of modern and meaningful music including a world premiere by Washington composer Andrew Jacobson. But perhaps before we talk about Jacobson’s newest work we should find out what’s on the rest of the program. ‘Cause that’s what Jacobson did.

In recent conversation with OAW, director Farrar described the interesting genesis of Jacobson’s new work A Light We Scarce Behold. When the two friends discussed the composition, said Farrar, “Andrew was really interested in understanding what the rest of the pieces on the program were about.” How fascinating is that?

Jacobson, Director of the four-choir Choral Program at Bellevue (WA) High School admits to never taking this approach before. “Generally,” said the composer in recent conversation with OAW, “commissioning choirs say they are looking for this or that kind of piece or this specific theme” as was the case when he was commissioned to write Just Listen for the Oregon Chorale’s “In Sound Mind” concert focused on mental health awareness. Just Listen is included on a recently released collection of works by Washington State composers, “Washington Sings!”. 

When Jacobson talked to Farrar about the other works on the concert–all by living composers–he learned the singers were performing works by Mari Esabel Valverdi, Joel Thompson and Zenaida Robles, whose work Can You See is a deconstruction of Frances Scott Key’s Star-Spangled Banner text interspersed with well-known protest statements. 

Also programmed is composer/educator Brandon Boyd’s Until I Reach My Home which was composed in honor of his Florida State professor, André Thomas, whose music is also on this concert. Listen to Boyd’s rousing arrangement of traditional spirituals here.

Jacobson also noted that audiences will hear Jake Runestad’s The Lighthouse Keeper, a five-movement choral setting of words by the composer and of poets Witter Bynner and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (adapted by Runestad) and quotations from Kahlil Gibran and Edna St. Vincent Milay. 

Listen here to the 2023 premiere of Lighthouse Keeper for SATB choir and nine instrumental ensemble. 

It was a look at this repertoire and conversations with Farrar that set Jacobson on his composing task. And prompted his decision to write, for the first time, his own text, the first stanza of which is:

We strive toward a light we scarce behold,
Through weary steps, the dawn will rise.
The soul, though frail, takes heart and ventures bold,
To greet the morn with ever-seeking eyes.
Though shadows stretch from what we’ve left behind,
We rise with hope.

Perhaps it is because of that lovely text that the “the choir seems to love the piece,” said Farrar. But Farrar thinks the piece fits the choir’s musical level just right. “The music can be challenging but accessible.” Sounds like one perfect way to build a new choir. 

Neither Farrar nor Jacobson knew in early conversations, however, that they would be able to have the nine-instrument ensemble which is called for in Runestad’s Lighthouse. “I wrote to Andrew,” recalled Farrar, “and told him the Board approved and wants to know if you could add instrumentation to your piece.” Jacobson laughed as he recalled that request and said, “I just sent off the finished parts for string quintet.”

A Notion, A Scream is getting ready. Other pieces on the program are being adapted to include instruments; the venue – Reedwood Friends Church (which has lots of parking) – is being prepped for the generous performing forces; and you are being invited to hear some exciting new music and to welcome a new choir to the Portland choral community. 

A Notion, A Scream performs its inaugural concert on Saturday, April 5 at 7:30 pm at Reedwood Friends Church, SE Portland. Reserve your concert seats here. Donations are appreciated.

Our New World

There is another concert coming up on March 30 and it’s just about sold out. Portland Gay Men’s Chorus will perform in collaboration with Portland Lesbian Choir, Rose City Pride Bands with special guests Bridging Voices. It’s “a birthday bash of legendary proportions” (website) to celebrate PGMC’s 45 years of music community. Watch for a special feature on this event and these organizations next week. 

PGMC’s “Our New World” birthday bash will take place on Sunday, March 30 at 4 pm at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Tickets (very few remaining) and information are here. 

Connections

Relive a premiere

In June of 2024 Oregon Arts Watch reviewed the wonderful In Medio premiere of Portland composer Judy A. Rose’s Walk In Beauty, Walk In Light. We promised to let you know when In Medio’s recording of that work would be on-line. Here it is! The well-engineered and videoed In Medio recording of Rose’s nine-movement concert companion to Randall Thompson’s Peaceable Kingdom was recorded in St. Philip Neri just after that June premiere concert. Listen, send it around, shout it out. Well done all! 

More Choirs on KQAC

Coming up in another Roger O Doyle Choral Series broadcast on KQAC’s “Thursdays @ Three” is Northwest Vocal Arts on March 27. The choir, in its founding year, will offer a look back at their recent concert “Cordillera: Range of the Americas.”