T’was two weeks after Christmas and all through the land,
Singers were resting, no new scores in hand.

Ha! Not in Oregon and Southwest Washington. For our wonderful choirs who gave us meaningful and heartwarming holiday performances it’s more like

Though dear “Hallelujahs” are put now to bed,
Scores of new concerts are mere weeks ahead.

Choral performances go ballistic in the weeks before Christmas so, sure–compared to December, January and early February concerts are sparse. But choral withdrawal will be brief; there are some truly awesome opportunities just ahead.

Before looking forward, however, let’s shine the spotlight on some choral celebrations from the past year and exciting news about our choirs and choral friends coming up in 2025. 

New choral works 

Our choral community commissioned and promoted numerous new choral works this past year. Reaching beyond our Oregon borders, Oregon Repertory Singers commissioned Matthew Leon Hazzard’s Finding Light; read an OAW review of that concert here. Alvin Trotman received a commission from Southern Oregon Repertory Singers (SORS) for his Tapestries; and Dave Ragland’s Seven Prayers: Hope for Everyone was commissioned and premiered this November by Resonance Ensemble. 

But Oregon’s own composer talent was also tapped, with commissioned works by Jodi French, composer-in-residence for SORS, who premiered Faces of Love last Spring; a new collaboration by Portlanders Darrell Grant (music) and A. Mimi Sei (text), From the Book of Sankofa: She Would Have Us Know, was unveiled in a Resonance Ensemble commission concert in March; a packed audience heard Judy A. Rose’s cantata Walk In Beauty, Walk In Light come to life in In Medio’s spring performance; and Portland Symphonic Choir debuted three new works by Oregon composers (Frances Bigelow, Jesse Preis and Dawn Sonntag) in their Summer Sing “Call for Scores” event. 

Indeed, many of our choirs are “shopping locally” – thank you Aubrey Patterson and Stacey Philipps for that catchy phrase – for pieces to include on their concerts. You’ll see more of that in the coming months. Bravo tutti. 

Going for Grammys 

Four creative folks among us have been nominated for Grammy recognition. Two, Coty Raven Morris and Ethan Chessin, are dedicated choral music educators who offer their students the riches of singing for personal fulfillment and purpose. Both teachers, already winners in the eyes and hearts of their students, have received honors that impacted their lives in 2024. Last year Portland State Professor Morris was one of 10 finalists for the Music Educator Grammy Award. 

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And now she’s on that short list again – you are a queen Coty – along with Chessin, choral music educator at Camas High School. Chessin, who received a Country Music Association Foundation award in 2023 used the monetary award to help his students travel to New York City in 2024 with Portland creative Alicia Jo Rabins. More on that here and here. Well done, Ethan. Bravo music educators.

Grammy Educator Honorees will be celebrated at the Special Merit Awards Ceremony on February 1, 2025–one day ahead of the Grammy Award celebration in which two more Oregon artists, Andy Akiho and Esperanza Spalding, will be honored nominees. Read more about these artists here. The choral community applauds our instrumental colleagues – woohoo! Tune in to the 67^th Grammys Awards Ceremony televised on CBS and streamed live on Sunday, February 2, at 5 pm PT.

Last spring Oregon ArtsWatch covered a wonderful educational fusion of Resonance Ensemble and students at Linfield University. The young composers were mentored by Department Chair and Director of Compositional Activities William Campbell and their creative works showcased in a Lacroute Composer Readings and Chamber Music Mentorship Program concert. Coming up this spring, Campbell will guide aspiring composers in the creation of media music. This genre–which covers video games, feature films, commercials and documentaries–is one that Campbell knows well, and one in which he has been recognized with several awards including two Academy Award nominations in 2021. But the Linfield Professor recently received notice that the documentary he scored for Portland filmmaker Skye Fitzgerald this summer, is shortlisted in the Documentary Short Film category Oscar nomination this year – wow! Chasing Roo will now be scrutinized by one more panel for possible Documentary Short Nomination. Final nominees will be announced on January 17. Stay tuned. 

Shout out to some award-winning Oregon choral artistry on tour this past year. University of Oregon earned the Gold Medal at the World Choral Games in Auckland, New Zealand. Congrats to Professor Sharon Paul and members of the University of Oregon Chamber Choir.

Music Prizes in America

Out of one thousand-ish submissions for the five choral divisions of the American Prize – professional, college/university (larger program and smaller program), community, youth choir and high school – five choirs in the Northwest received top honors. 

In the community choir division, Vancouver’s own Chor Anno – yippee – tied Pasadena Chorale for first place but second place was also a tie; our choral friends in Opus 7 from Kenmore, WA – whoop – tied with Blacksburg Master Chorale from Virginia. Portland’s young singers also placed well in the youth choir division. Congrats to Third Place finalist Portland Symphonic Girlchoir. Kudos to these Northwest conductors and singers.

But wait, two more Northwest choirs won their divisions – Chorosynthesis Singers of Seattle in the professional choir and Whitman Choir in the small college division. Applause!

Read more here about The American Prize, a comprehensive music competition now in its fourteenth year. 

Expanding choral opportunities

Satori Men’s Chorus is pleased to open their doors (and scores) to new singers in the New Year. These men have been “singing for peace” for over thirty years. They want to help you “make time to exercise”–your vocal chords. Join up by coming to one of their first three Wednesday rehearsals of the new year (7pm on January 8, 15 or 22) at Unity of Portland as they begin preparing for their March 29 concert. Read their “call for singers” announcement here and visit their website for more information on how to join a community of men who exercise their voices for peace. 

There is profound wisdom in singing at any age–or so implies the “launch” notice of Portland Sage Singers. Q+ Elders and Allies are invited to be “founding singers” in a mixed choir that has brought the founding conductor Tim Seelig, Conductor Laureate of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, out of retirement. Seelig, quoted in the PSS launch announcement, said members will be “singers from my own age demographic. With Portland Sage Singers we won’t just be singing for our lives, but the rest of our lives.” 

Seelig is well known in the choral world. His eight books on choral technique have been helping to nurture new choral directors for decades and he is a sought-after speaker and guest conductor. When PSS gives their first Portland performance later this year, you will have a chance to meet Seelig, but first get to know the master music motivator in this 2023 TEDx talk:

Michael McDonald, Board President of PSS, is also a board member of GALA Choruses. He and several other Portland singers were inspired to form PSS when they heard Sage Singers of Denver at the GALA Festival 2024 event this past summer. GALA Choruses has been a leading organization in the North American LGBTQ+ choral movement since 1975 and Portland Sage Singers will be a GALA member chorus.

For more information or to indicate your desire to sing for the rest of your life go to Portland Sage Singers’ website here. 

Finally, the year 2024 gifted Portland with a new choir, Northwest Vocal Arts, who had their inaugural concert just last month. The high school intern singers, standing alongside their adult choral mentors, couldn’t wait to tell the stories of this new choral concept and the packed and enthusiastic audience responded enthusiastically. Conductor Sam Barbara and NVA invite you to read more about their mission. They’ll be back in March for another concert.

Shared missions on tour

Of course, it’s a pleasure to let the beauty of human voices in choral communion stand alone, land on us, stir our emotions. But we have something else going for us in Oregon, don’t we? We are students of the choral arts. Oh, we hear you out there. “I don’t know much about it I just like it.” Nope, not buying it. You might not be able to write a thesis on good choral production but you know it when you hear it because you have heard it. You may not remember Bach’s dates (1685-1750, yes, I looked them up) but you wouldn’t get his sound confused with Byrd because we know these guys. Choral literacy is just value added in our performances; we add it to our concerts like we add kale to our blueberry smoothies. 

We have Festivals – like the Bach and the Byrd – which have from their founding have been a balance of performing and pedagogy. Our Oregon and Southwest Washington choral conductors over the decades have been choral researchers as well, seeking out never before heard works, bringing world renown lecturers to our stages. We support this high standard of musicianship and programming and are especially welcoming when some of the world’s finest choirs, like Boston Camerata and Marian Consort, come through town. Choirs like these promise to bring not only vocal excellence but to expand our musical and cultural worlds, filling in some gaps, which only makes us more whole. 

On Sunday, February 2, the Boston Camerata performs in Salem in the St. Paul Episcopal Music Guild Series. “We provide an experience with a context,” said BC Artistic Director Anne Azéma in a recent phone conversation with OAW. And that context in this program is “American Spirituals 1800-1900.” The ensemble, which specializes in Early-American music, has researched and developed a meaningful experience that goes far beyond the erstwhile “spiritual” arrangements of the 1900s.

Azéma, whose teaching activities include master classes and residencies at universities abroad and in the US, among them University of Oregon, said the program speaks to the roots of “American” songs and music heritage that unites us. Texts from a fifth century bishop of Numidian North Africa are set to tunes from twelfth century Spain and Provence. Music from the African-American oral tradition is woven into a program alongside shape-note tunes from 1855. “Among the various communities participating in this rich American mosaic we encounter the Puritans of New England, the Shakers and their visionary monodies, Amish and Mennonites of Pennsylvania, and the newly-freed African-American religious communities” (program notes).

This program, says Azéma, focuses on the authentic (in as much as we have currently discovered) African-American presence in Early American music. “What make our enterprise possible are a few precious written songbooks, as well as the collaborative memory and ongoing oral tradition of the Black community, a source, then as now, of some of the deepest regenerative forces in American musical life” (from BC program notes). Here’s a sample of the beautiful Boston Camerata sounds you will hear.

“Oh, please don’t call it choral music,” admonished Azéma gently. She doesn’t want that “category” in our minds as we settle in to hear the program. “This is communal singing, some of it is very hard to sing. Our program looks back in a way to see how various elements got integrated. This is an important art form. And there is still so much in front of us that we don’t know.” 

Get to know more by attending “We’ll Be There: American Spirituals Black and White” on Sunday, February 2, 4 pm at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Salem. The concert is FREE but you must request your reserved tickets at this email: stpauls.music.guild@gmail.com

Lusitano Lives

Vicente Lusitano comes to Portland on February 8. We could just say we’re going to hear the music of Lusitano when Cappella Romana brings the Marian Consort to our region. But that doesn’t elevate the 16^th-century Black composer enough. Not just his music but the brilliant composer and theorist himself was stifled and ignored for centuries. We uplift the man. 

Musician and educator Joseph McHardy began a 2022 Guardian article with these words which might echo some of our own music history and literature experiences:

“I didn’t learn about Vicente Lusitano at school. On Saturdays, hanging out with my pals in HMV [UK music store], I didn’t find his music when I slipped quietly into the classical section. Nor did I encounter him when I studied for a music degree, or during a career dedicated to early music”(read the entire article here). Today McHardy is deeply dedicated to Lusitano’s legacy.

Listen to a comprehensive Lusitano lecture/interview with McHardy here. 

Now, you can take in an entire concert of Lusitano’s music. The Marian Consort and Artistic Director Rory McCleery have been getting to know Lusitano – a region-based nickname as his birth name is unknown – intimately since around 2021. They have amassed and studied the limited scores of the Afro-Portuguese man and now tour the world with his beautiful music. You may have recently heard one of Lusitano’s works on a recent In Mulieribus concert; great amuse-bouche for the entire Lusitano concert treat to come.

Listen to the Marian Consort singing Lusitano’s Regina Caeli here.

And you might have seen articles, including one in the New York Times in 2023, on the “recently discovered” composer. We would be remiss in not recognizing that one of the first researchers to bring Lusitano’s works to light, in 1977, was Portuguese musicologist Maria Augusta Barbosa, the first Portuguese national to receive a PhD in Musicology. As her name is often omitted in current information, we uplift her as well. Read more about Barbosa here. 

Hear the Marian Consort perform the works of Vincente Lusitano on Friday, February 7:30 pm in Seattle at St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church and Saturday, February 8, 7:30 pm at St. Mary’s Cathedral, Portland. Tickets and information are here.

Wouldn’t it be terrific to see young faces – high school and college music students, the future of the choral arts – in these audiences? Spread the word; choral literacy, cultural awareness and beautiful music from the world around is on its way, next month and the whole year ahead.

There are more choral concerts ahead in February and we’ll cover them all (hints: Bach-bowl, roosters, and whooshing black holes). Check out Tom Hard’s PDX Choral Calendar. But you have quite a mouthful of choral music to get you started for now. Back soon.

CONNECTIONS

Our Oregon audiences have enjoyed the artistry of countertenor Reginald Mobley numerous times over the years. Mobley and acclaimed string ensemble AGAVE now bring a “program of composers of color from four centuries” (website) to Ashland, seventh program on Chamber Music Concerts 24-25 series. Hear the works of Florence Price, Justin Holland and Esteban Salas and more at 3 pm on Sunday, February 9 at Southern Oregon University Music Building. Tickets and full program here.

Thanks and farewell to a learned gentleman

Dr. William Mahrt, scholar and teacher, died on January 1. Those who attended Dr. Mahrt’s lectures at the William Byrd Festival since its founding in 1983 appreciated his knowledge and his joy in passing that knowledge on. He will be remembered as having played a significant role in our local musical knowledge, and the world’s. A detailed account of his extraordinary life may be found at this link.