Virtual Choir recording of Rachmaninoff’s Bogoroditse Devo, recorded in April 2020
In any other year, Chorale would be a couple of weeks into rehearsals for a Christmas concert, adjusting to new singers, learning new repertoire, planning ahead for the rest of the concert season. Brochures would have been sent out, instrumentalists hired for special events, promotional pieces already in the works. We had a number of special events planned for the 2021 season, which ushers in Chicago Chorale’s twentieth anniversary.
This isn’t any other year. We are currently at the height of the Covid 19 pandemic, with no end in sight. Not only the United States, but the entire world, struggles to cope with a disease none of us expected, and with the enormous costs of this disease to our cultural life and economies. At the same time, global climate change is overtaking us at a rate for which we are not prepared, bringing with it severe weather, catastrophic fires and floods, droughts, and profound social upheaval. Political systems in our country, and in an alarming number of other countries, are under severe stress. Our sense of well-being, and hope for the future, are challenged as they have not been prior to this, in my lifetime.
Chicago Chorale isn't taking the situation lying down. Our last in-person rehearsal, before closing up shop and moving each to his/her own place of refuge, was March 11; we haven’t seen one another in person since. But we have been busy. The business of marketing ourselves, paying our bills, engaging our singers and audiences, continues unabated. Our managing director, Megan Balderston, continues with her never-ending grant-writing and fund-raising; and the singers and I have remained intact as a group, working one our own projects. We immediately went to work to produce our first ever virtual choir piece, an audio and visual recording of Rachmaninoff’s Bogoroditse Dyevo, sung by Chorale members from their own homes, mixed and produced by member Alex Luke, and released on Youtube and Facebook May 4. Since then we have released two more such projects: Pilgrims’ Hymn by Stephen Paulus, and O magnum mysterium by Javier Busto; we are currently working on another, and expect to release it about three weeks from now.
We are also producing a video series we call Bruce’s Brats: or, How the Sausage is made. I do a short, modified “program notes”-style presentation on each of the pieces we post, talking about whatever seems most interesting about the piece, its composer, its history— whatever comes to mind. I video these in my own home, then Alex refines them and produces the finished product. On August 27, the Ravinia Festival presented us in a broadcast concert on WFMT, heard by more than 6300 listeners, which featured selected recordings from the CDs which we have produced over the years.
The Sausage Being Made! Bruce’s kitchen, spring 2019.
I continue to write blog entries— not so frequently as when we are running at full speed, but every 2-3 weeks or so— on topics which seem pertinent to Chorale’s activities and history. I wrote a series in the spring and early summer about gardening as a metaphor for choral music, and later in the summer a series about the most noted and influential conductors for whom I have sung, and choral programs in which I have participated. This writing has been good for me; it has helped me to clear my head of the day to day pressures of running a choir, and focus instead on why I do it, and what it really means to me.
Three weeks ago, September 16, Chorale resumed weekly rehearsals— on line. We meet on Zoom, spend a few minutes greeting and reconnecting with one another, then warm up for half an hour (Kit Bridges, our accompanist, plays the warm ups on his piano, and each singer, muted, warms up in his/her own home). Then we talk about our current virtual project, go through announcements, and socialize a bit more, before returning to our private, pandemic-ordered worlds. It isn’t much; but I have been wonderfully stimulated, myself, to reconvene, to see familiar faces, to feel the eagerness and good will coming through the computer screen. We miss one another, and we miss our music making. Our relationships, and our music, remain alive, this way.
Music has so very important a role to play in the “sense of well-being and hope for the future” that I wrote about above. We need it now, more than ever.