Conducting while seated

I have been fending this off for nearly twenty years; but last Saturday and Sunday I finally had to sit while conducting concerts. I am likely to recover from this particular acute back event, and conduct on my feet again-- but this is definitely a harbinger of things to come. So how did it go? Far better than I expected. I have fallen, twice, while conducting during the past two seasons, so my singers are always somewhat on edge, warning me with their eyes when I approach the edge of the stage, gasping a little if I momentarily lose my footing. And I rehearse more and more while seated-- so they are both comfortable and relieved when I am not on my feet. But I have always felt that the group could happily lose itself in comfort and relief, and consequently needed all of my physical energy and involvement-- like a blood transfusion; pull out the tube, and they would wilt before me. I conflated that tube, with being on my feet-- as though the strength came up out of the ground, through my arms and hands, and just bodily picked them up. Facing the future, as well as acknowledging weaknesses in my conducting, I have known that I had to find a new and better way to get the results I was after-- but then, as soon as I sensed low energy or attentiveness from the group, I'd be back on my feet again, fanning their feeble flames.

My lesson this past weekend: the choir CAN respond on a higher level if they MUST do so-- I have to trust that, and be willing to force them to do so. I, in turn, freed from so much cheer leading, can do a better, more precise job of delineating line, and of creating a complex atmosphere.

Chorale is not out of the woods, on this one-- I will soon enough remember why it is, that I enter rehearsals as though they were boxing matches; and I will feel helpless to shake them up and galvanize them, short of attaching each singer to a pair of electrodes. But I think I learned, this past weekend, that this is the very site of our growth point,the sine qua non of our continued upward trajectory.

The real potato

I was a singer first, a voice teacher second, a choral conductor third.  With years of overlap.  This progression seems good and natural to me;  I have never regretted it.  All the choirs I have conducted reflect the amount of time I have spent on the upstage side of the podium, and the years I have spent trying to figure out how voices work. I studied with a number of teachers in Chicago, some of them excellent-- Elsa Charlston, Ron Combs, and Hermanus Baer come to mind.  But the one I was with longest, and connected with most personally, was Norman Gulbrandsen.  Perhaps it was our shared Norwegian heritage, our mutual love of choral singing, the fact that we were both tall, large men-- whatever it was,  he said things to me that I understood, that I remember, that have grown in meaning since I first heard them.

Norman was really hard on "over expressing"--  he wanted constantly good vocalism, line, beautiful production;  believed that a good portion of art and communication happened purely as a result of good sound.  He disliked distortion, affectation, preciousness of any kind.  He would say, "Just put one note in front of the other," or "It's just another note."  And one day, "Just give me the real potato, a good potato.  The older I get, the less gravy or butter I want on it.  Just the real potato."  And that said more to me than all the rest.  The lowly potato, growing underground-- lumpy, strangely-shaped, the color of dirt.  Peel it, make it neat and clean, and you lose most of the nutritional value.  Just the real potato.  I never forget this-- when I evaluate and select repertoire, listen to singers, work with my own choirs, hear other choirs-- I try to see and hear past the gravy, and be open to the real potato.

Interesting, as I think about it... potatoes, of many varieties, are one of the crops I most enjoy growing in my own garden.  They are a challenge, in this terrible urban ground-- I work hard building the soil with compost, leaves, grass clippings, horse manure from the police stables, anything at all that over time might settle into something resembling real dirt.  The reward comes when I dig into the hill, and there they are:  real potatoes.

Vespers at Monastery of the Holy Cross

Chorale has been singing at Monastery of the Holy Cross, in Bridgeport, almost since the group was founded.  Father Peter, the Monastery's Prior, spent his undergrad years at the University of Chicago, singing in the choral groups, stage-managing, assistant-conducting--  he even baby-sat my daughter on occasion (she really was a baby back then).  So it was natural to reconnect with him when Chorale was formed and had found its particular repertoire direction-- much of what we sing is appropriate to the Monastery's liturgies, it's acoustical properties, and it's visual ambiance. Most musical performance available for public consumption during the Advent and Christmas season is either light, entertaining, humorous;  or grand, heavily-produced, portentious.  Nothing wrong with either of these directions; I happily prepare and perform in both types of concert.  But many composers, historically, have responded to the season, especially the Advent part of it, with music that is introspective, self-examining, intimate-- music which seems appropriate in a shadowy, quiet, dimly-lit space, away from the crowds, the shopping, the holiday camaraderie; music reflective of the solstice, of the approaching wintery cold, of the darkness and yearning many of us feel within ourselves at this time of year.

The Monastery is ideally suited to this music, this mood.  A subset of Chorale's singers will present several works to enhance the monks' Vespers for the Second Sunday in Advent--  the "Evening Hymn" from Rautavara's Vigilia; "Scapulis Suis" (Under his wings) by Chicago composer Robert Kreuz;  a harmonized Kievan chant, "Behold, the Bridegroom Comes;"  Arvo Pärt's "Magnificat;"  Stravinsky's "Otche Nash (Our Father);  Randall Thompson's "Alleluia" (heard in these circumstances, it seems an entirely different and better piece than the one we all sang to death back in high school);  and Giuseppi Verdi's "Ave Maria," a gorgeous and under-presented setting of this text.  The choir, and the monks themselves, will also chant various psalms in the course of the liturgy.

My personal feeling, each time we sing for a liturgy there--  I feel so fortunate for this island of silence (strange comment from a musician!), this time and space in which my mind can slow down, sort itself out, focus on the season and on the beauty of the music we are presenting.  We are a concert-oriented culture;  but almost none 0f the music we perform was actually intended by its composers to be presented in concert settings.  In singing these Advent Vespers, I feel closer to the music's original intent, and oddly stimulated, reinforced, in my vocation.

Toward our December concerts

Building our a cappella Marian program was perhaps the most difficult repertoire planning I have ever done-- took several weeks last summer, with stacks of music sitting all over my piano and office, borrowed recordings, frequent visits to the Internet, frequent emails (cries for help) to my colleagues.

Planning a concert is rather like planning a major oratorio-- in this case, a major work with texts and themes determined by a very narrow focus. I was privy to an "Ave Maria concert" several years ago which ended up, despite its entirely unobjectionable repertoire, bothering both singers and audience; the more deeply I dove into my own project, the more I empathized with that conductor and his nearly impossible task. A series of beautiful motets, one after the other, just won't cut it. One needs to discover a structure-- a wave or a mountain or some such image of forward-moving energy, which has the power to get from here to there, without dissipating before accomplishing a full-length concert. This is always difficult with unaccompanied singing, which has so narrow and subtle a range of color and dynamics; and certainly a challenge when every single text deals with the rather limited list of Mary's attributes! I didn't want to settle on a chronological arrangement, nor on a national one-- I was more interested in mixing these particular elements, not randomly, but intuitively, much as I mix voices when placing them within a section-- not by formula, but by ear, finding the best combination of the materials at hand to build a unified section sound.

I ended up with a program built on five pillars-- five slightly varied iterations of the Ave Maria text, set in widely divergent styles (Josquin, Biebl, Bruckner, Poulenc, Rachmaninoff),for SATB, TTBB, and SSA voicings. I then worked in two chants-- a Magnificat for women's voices, Alma Redemptoris Mater for men's voices-- and two settings by scandinavian composers (Olsson and Kverno) of Ave Maris Stella. At this point I felt I needed something big, a resting place between numerous small pieces-- so I added the Gorecky Totus tuus. I chose the remaining motets and texts-- Britten, Byrd, Sandström, another Rachmaninoff-- to complement what I had.

And, with regret, I discarded just about as many pieces as I chose, each of them wonderful, because I could not justify adding them to what had come to be a unified work with a rhythm and inevitability all its own. A couple that I particularly liked and hated to lose-- Pärt Magnificat and Verdi Ave Maria-- will appear in their appropriate places at our December 6 Advent Vespers at the Monastery. A good reason to attend both events!

Bruce Tammen

All Saints concerts

Yesterday Chorale completed it's All Saints series, with a concert at Lake Forest College, as a part of the college's Lyrica series. Our other performance was the previous Sunday, November 1, at Monastery of the Holy Cross, in Bridgeport. The music was identical, but the concerts differed greatly one from the other, primarily because of differences in the venues.

Holy Cross inspires whispering, introspection, awe, and very slow tempos-- the reverberant acoustic causes harmonies to become confused and trip over themselves, if they succeed one another too quickly. Spoken communication with the audience is nearly impossible; one depends on the music itself, and the program notes, to communicate with the listeners. The vaulted ceiling, the altar, the stained glass (which shone beautifully in the natural light of a Sunday afternoon), and the monks themselves, present in their brown robes, all lent a powerful and unalterable character to our performance.

Lake Forest's chapel, on the other hand, is a warm, cozy space with comfortable chairs, lots of wood, and a clear, bright acoustic-- speaking is easy, and talking about the music with the audience feels as natural as sitting in a living room, chatting. The clarity of the acousitc made communication amongst the choir members easier, than in the Monastery-- they really had no problems hearing one another across and through the group. This sort of acoustic emboldens the singers-- but also sets a higher bar for them: the audience misses nothing. A consonant out of place, a scooped pitch, a mispronounced word-- the space is merciless. So the singers are somewhat more careful, somewhat more on edge, about the details, and less blown away by the total effect of what they are doing.

Both are wonderful venues; both were important partners in producing good concerts. I fear that we choral musicians sometimes fail to understand the importance of venue-- especially of the acoustics, but also of the overall ambiance of the space. In addition to giving the listeners' eyes something to rest on, creating a mood even before the music begins, venue is our amplifier, it shapes and directs our sound, is in many respects our voice.

Our Christmas concerts will be in two other venues-- Hyde Park Union Church, rich in wooden surfaces and museum-quality stained glass; and Church of the Holy Family, a historical and architectural monument which has graced Chicago's South Side since from before THE FIRE. Preparing for these many venues keeps us on our musical toes; it also greatly enriches our musical experience.

Bruce Tammen

Donor reception with a special treat

Last night Jana French and Peter Gotsch hosted Chorale's board and donors for a lovely evening of which Bruce's solo performance was the highlight. He sang art songs by Chausson, Debussy, and Duparc, and attendees commented afterward on the thrill of hearing Bruce "really sing" and the treat of enjoying a centuries-old form of entertainment: chamber music in the living room. Garry Grasinski also provided videos of performances, interviews, and informal footage of Chicago Chorale on a continuous loop playing throughout the evening. If you haven't seen all of Chorale's videos yet, you should! Right here. Sharon Harris

Welcome to the Chicago Chorale Conductor's Blog!

We plan to post here about once a week—usually something from the director (me), and occasionally something from a member of the group-- about the repertoire we are singing, about the techniques we utilize to learn and present that repertoire, and about other issues of general interest which come up in the course of the group’s activities. We welcome your feedback! If you wish to comment on something you read here, or have a question about the group’s activities and projects, let us know, and we’ll respond as we are able. Bruce Tammen