Once in a very great while.....

Concert review of The Choral Project and the Canadian Brass: or, “How to make classical music sound amazing, beautiful, joyful, and FUN, all at the same time”

Once in a very great while, one attends a concert that immediately jumps to some imaginary, personal list of “Top Ten all-time best concert programs”, and for many audience members of the packed, sold-out house in downtown San Jose’s gorgeous Basilica of St Joseph on January 28, this was definitely one of those programs- and performances! The ever-popular Canadian Brass were absolutely amazing in terms of musicality, inventiveness, technical prowess, choreography, charisma, programming, tone quality, ensemble precision, dynamics, tone colors, personality, and complete command of their artistry and audience -    but another, equally amazing thing about Tuesday night’s concert was that in each of those categories, they in no way eclipsed or outshone their hosts and partner performers, The Choral Project of San Jose. (If you haven’t yet heard of this incredible group, check out their international tours and accolades at www.sjcp.org).

The Choral Project of San Jose was founded in 1996 by a multi-talented young musician and SJSU graduate, Daniel D. Hughes. They have gone from strength to strength, winning international choral competitions, numerous awards, grants, development funding, and constantly stellar reviews for their recordings, performances, and inventive programming – all completely deserved. At Tuesday night’s concert I happened to sit next to a retired SJSU music theory/composition professor who told me that already as a freshman and sophomore, young student Daniel (who began studying both piano and composition at age four) was naturally way ahead of his classmates, so the professor tried to keep him challenged with full orchestral-score sightreading tasks instead of the normal class assignments.

Daniel discovered his career aspiration under yet another SJSU professor-emeritus who became his mentor, the famed choral conductor Dr. Charlene Archibeque. Fittingly, one of the major works on Tuesday’s program was the world premiere of a piece composed by Daniel Hughes in her honor – called “Legacy”, it was a moving, hauntingly beautiful work combining The Choral Project with the Canadian Brass.

Mr Hughes composed both the text and music of “Legacy” after seeing a television documentary about the life cycle of stars and “super-novas” that burn their brightest just before disintegrating into particles which in turn produce future generations of matter and life. Mr Hughes likened this to great mentors, artists and inspirational figures who share, teach and give of their gifts intensely, using their life energy and work to inspire the next generations. The quiet choral opening was gorgeous and kind of “spooky”, seeming to evoke the birth of the cosmos in sound. The climax of the piece featured three sopranos singing in very high tones with full volume, depicting the burning intensity and explosion...followed by eerie floating "space" when all of the instrumental accompaniment suddenly dropped away and the perfectly balanced choral parts were left quietly suspended, floating upwards in mid-air like a glider over a mountain’s edge….. creating, for the listeners, the unmistakable sensation that we were soaring in space like a slow-motion Star Trek on a particle of sound. All done with actual voices and acoustic instruments - no digital dials, or synthesized sounds so commonly used today to create similar (but not as soul-touching) results - it was rather amazing! (As was the huge standing ovation that the piece received, in the middle of the concert program). Kudos to Daniel Hughes for creating an audience-accessible modern composition for brass and choral ensemble with inspiring lyrics and evocative harmonies.

But Mr Huges also employs many other remarkable gifts in the service of The Choral Project concerts, and two of those gifts, especially, come to mind each time I think of Tuesday’s program:      

1.  He has an ear for the sound quality and blend of singers that is truly exceptional. Before attending this concert I had read numerous reviews of Mr Hughes that all commented on his uncanny ability to draw a highly professional vocal production and gorgeous blend of tones from even the most amateur and untrained singers. Having now heard this performance, all I can do is add my complete agreement to those comments. I would love to sit in on a rehearsal when they are learning new repertoire, to see if I can figure out what his secret is for inspiring such love, dedicated work, and – most importantly, I suspect – habits of refined listening (to each other), amongst his large and constantly growing ‘family’ of singers in The Choral Project.

2.  It is also saying something that his musical inspiration and quality results do attract many professional musicians who want to come sing with the group as well, in their spare time. But for the most part the 50+ singers are amateurs, although you would never have known it when hearing this concert. The blend of sopranos and altos sounded gentle and effortless, and the men, particularly in their close-harmony singing in several pieces, could honestly rival the Chanticleers or other male groups in their tone quality, pitch and seamlessness. In particular, all four vocal sections of The Choral Project gave the most beautiful performance of Franz Biebl’s Ave Maria that one could ever imagine.   3.   In addition to the tonal blend, beauty and unity of attack that Mr Hughes obviously delights in producing from his singers, he must also enjoy using his highly creative mind to invent unique combinations of pieces that result in truly unusual and entertaining concert programs. Any concert producer should check out The Choral Project’s archive of past seasons and read the titles/themes of previous concerts over the years, or even just peruse the future ones for this current season, to get a feel for his creativity and insight – but also for his commitment to engaging and entertaining as diverse an audience as possible. 

The Choral Project has also developed many successful collaborations with other artists and organizations, and I suspect that Tuesday evening’s first concert with the Canadian Brass ensemble will not be their last together. Each of the two groups had a chance to shine in ‘solo’ sections of the program, alternating with an unexpected variety of pieces that they performed together, including the “Legacy” work that Mr Hughes composed for the occasion. 

The concert also opened in a surprise fashion, with the Canadian Brass members (Christopher Coletti, trumpet, Caleb Hudson, trumpet, Bernhard Scully, horn, Achilles Liarmakopoulos, trombone, and Chuck Daellenbach, the only remaining founder of the group, on tuba but also acting as a wonderfully hilarious MC) all playing in slow Gospel/Dixie style as they marched in, single file, from the back of the audience, wearing white sneakers and an immediate charisma. They performed, throughout the evening, in a range of pieces and styles that almost gave the audience a mini-history of brass quintet repertoire as it progressed from 1500s through 2014. Their combined technical skills, articulation, ensemble, excellent arrangements, and tone quality all brought out the absolute best in each piece, but even more than that, their charming personalities, interaction with the audience, and clever choreography, using every inch of their ‘stage’ space, made the concert incredibly FUN.

Throughout their combined works with The Choral Project, The Canadian Brass beautifully provided all of the harmony and instrumental accompaniment needed, and the program also featured locally-based professionals providing well-balanced, subtly nuanced percussion and piano...But shame on the venue organizers for providing a horribly out of tune grand piano for any concert, let alone one involving such international performers – this concert was scheduled months in advance and there is no excuse for not automatically having the piano tuned before such an important event – this should be an assumed step for all churches or venues that want to host concerts, especially when/if they are receiving some of the ticket revenue. 

As a venue itself, the Basilica of St Joseph in downtown San Jose is an architectural and acoustic marvel with a round dome area in the center that offers heaven-sent potential for singers or brass players, in particular. Each of the Canadian Brass members had spectacular solos, of course, but part of the added enjoyment for the audience was watching each performer "bathe", and revel in, the sound quality and luxurious “reverb time” that standing under this dome area could produce.

The performers (both The Choral Project and the Canadian Brass) all had a ball, and it showed. Six standing ovations at the concert, countless shouts of audience approval after each piece – but none of that even adequately reflects the fun and the sheer joy that they shared and created with classical music. I suddenly recalled a quote that one of my piano performance mentors had scribbled to me on a slip of paper before my first concerto performance: “Play for the joy of playing, and touch heaven with your gift”. I am sure that they did.

Reviewer Donna Stoering (donnastoering.com) is a Marshall Scholar, concert pianist, solo vocalist, composer, choral conductor, music-television producer and international music festival director who has been Artistic Ambassador for both the UK and USA, an Artist in Residence at Oxford University, and guest performance/pedagogy coach at numerous music conservatories worldwide. She is also the founder of the global Listen for Life movement (listenforlife.org) which is reviving the power of music worldwide through a growing international family of music listeners, performers, educators and producers.

To our LFL Blog followers: this blog entry and concert review was written in late January 2014 but it has recently come to our attention that due to technical problems, the post was never actually published for public viewing.  We apologize to The Choral Project, the Canadian Brass, and our readers, for this unintended delay. 

600,000 Swedes do WHAT?

Yesterday I was invited to attend a concert given by the San Francisco Symphony Chorus under the direction of their highly renowned Swedish conductor, Ragnar Bohlin.

Because of his background, they presented a very unusual and interesting program with the first half consisting of works by a variety of Swedish choral composers spanning different time periods. The two folksongs that concluded the first half were an especially wonderful glimpse into a part of Swedish culture, harmonies, dark humor and folkloric tales. I would have loved to hear more of them!

But the central point in the first half was a very contemporary account of the ascent out of hell from Dante's Divine Comedy, called "....a riveder le stelle" by Ingvar Lidholm (1973) and I believe that the final 2 minutes of this piece was one of the very few times in my music-listening life that a performance left my jaw "on the floor" - eyes wide and mouth hanging open, you get the picture - this was absolutely astounding in both the music composition itself and the exquisite, incredible performance given by the chorus and the soprano soloist for this piece, Pamela Sebastian. At this point in his piece, the composer was using the portion of Dante' text to portray "We climbed, he first, I following, till to sight Appeared those things of beauty that heaven wears, Glimpsed through a rounded opening, faintly bright; Thence issuing, we beheld again the stars"......by the time that the choir was singing about "a rounded opening" the composer had created the illusion of this vast cavernous sound space, through the juxtaposition of two different chordal tonalities alternating at different dynamics and timbres in the choir sections, and all of a sudden it just simply "opened up" and the lone voice of the soprano positively soared upwards in ecstatic arching phrases, like a soul released heavenwards in repeated but gentle bursts of energy - and one's ears could honestly "see" the stars twinkling. Even now in remembering that moment the sense of the musical and spiritual power of that composition and performance is renewed within me. The piece was fairly long (14 minutes) and the first 12 minutes or so did not leave any particular impression, other than a lot of polytonal and poly-rhythmic angst, but in retrospect it was necessary to portray the struggle on Dante's "secret road" to get upwards out of hell, and most definitely needed in order to set up the powerfully unmistakable sensation of reaching the light - and most definitely worth listening to, in order to arrive at the experience of those last two most incredible minutes of music making. If you can find an online recording of this piece, do give it a listen although I suspect that the live experience is necessary for the complete 3D effect of the sound caves and the soprano floating upwards through the "hole" they create. It also goes without saying that the choral conductor's technical/musical expertise and confident leadership is absolutely paramount to "pull this off" to such rare effect and Ragnar Bohlin is the leading interpreter of Swedish choral works so we were fortunate to hear it in San Francisco.

The Chorus itself, as a nearby colleague remarked, is very clearly "American" in its bright-edged sound and range of timbres. The singers have amazing technique, particularly for singing contemporary or dissonant works, and entire sections of the chorus came in confidently on obtuse pitches from seemingly "out of nowhere" during difficult unaccompanied works. The blend within sections was usually excellent, particularly amongst the tenor and bass sections - very occasionally individual women's voices would "pop out" of the whole in soprano or alto section solos.

The second half of the program featured two very beloved choral works - segments from Rachmaninov's "Vespers", and Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms. I personally thought they did a wonderful job with the Bernstein and it was, afterall, written for American choral groups and audiences. I thought the organ solo seemed too unwaveringly metronomic but maybe that is the way Bernstein's markings request it to be played or conducted. The entire work is brilliantly composed and I love the piece, but in listening to the opening two sections I suddenly wondered why the Bernstein estate has not tried to sue Andrew Lloyd Webber for completely "stealing" entire fragments from this piece for use in his Requiem and some of the musicals.....?

The Rachmaninov "Vespers" left a different impression altogether.......absolutely gorgeous sound, radiant non-screechy (as they can often get in this work) sopranos, a tenor solo (Vesper No 4) like velvet, Vesper No2 having the chorus parts floating in heaven with the wonderful alto soloist providing a contrast down in earth, lovely dynamic shading of the phrases and great ensemble singing in Vesper No3, radiant light in No6.......all in all, amazing choral technique and lovely sound that let in much "light" - BUT, as colleagues around me also felt, the entire performance did not feel as if one had heard Rachmaninov nor "Russian" prayer music.....nor experienced any of the culture that Rachmaninov was sharing through this intentionally spiritual piece. While we were admittedly not in a Russian Orthodox cathedral or monastery or even a San Francisco church, for the piece itself to have its true power to reach the souls of its listeners I believe we would have liked it to be slower, more personally expressive and a touch darker/richer in vocal colors - or in effect, more "prayerful" rather than fascile, light and rather faster than we are used to hearing/performing it. One audience member (who said he has sung this work many times in a variety of settings/cultures) commented that it was perhaps the placement of the Vespers in the program that bothered him - with the "brash American" sounds of the Bernstein coming immediately afterwards, the Vespers came across as simply a "Russian choral piece" being demonstrated on the program for a demonstration of choral repertoire because all potential meaning or experience was forgotten once the opening of the Chichester Psalms began. He saw this programming more as a sad commentary on our tendency to always have "loud, fast, or showy" works trump the "soft, slow or spiritual" ones. I would love to know others' thoughts on this......so please, send in your comments!

Personally I wondered if the conductor's pre-performance research on the Vespers had perhaps unfortunately colored his impression/understanding of the piece regarding Rachmaninov's purposes in composing it. I know that some of Rachmaninov's biographers had given information stating his supposed lack of religious activity/beliefs and also his dates of leaving Russia, or reasons for composing specific works, that now clash with current research and information. This matters to me only because I have spent much of my life researching Rachmaninov in preparation for performing some of his known and lesser-known works, such as singing the alto solo in the Vespers many times, or giving the first live public performance of his 1st Piano Sonata in d minor, in many halls around the world, and while presenting television programs about many different composers on international networks. During my research I was intrigued to learn that many of the older "assumptions" about Rachmaninov's religious beliefs/feelings were indeed erroneous. His deeply held spiritual beliefs actually had strong impact on his methods and his reasons for composing many of his works, including the Vespers.

In general it was very interesting to listen to audience members around me during the intermission or while exiting Davies Hall at the conclusion of the concert. The large hall was filled and I suspect, judging from the overheard comments, that many of the listeners were choral singers and/or conductors in other Bay Area vocal ensembles or churches. Which brings up a second topic that I would love to hear other's comments on - according to the Program Notes explaining the profusion of Swedish composers that write choral music, "an estimated 600,000 Swedes- nearly 7% of the county's total population of 9 Million - sing in choirs ranging from amateur to world class"......

Seven percent of the country's population! Does anyone know the statistics of other countries - or even individual cities - that can rival this number of choirs or choral singers? I know I read a few years back that the San Francisco Bay Area has over 500 registered choral groups, not counting the choirs in houses of worship. What can we learn from this and how can we apply it in ways that help music to be a conscious form of unity and peace-building in our cultures, societies and communities?