Coro Vaccinio

Members of Chorale haven’t sung together since March 11, thirteen months ago.  Since that time, we have met virtually, on Wednesday evenings, to vocalize, greet one another, share news, and altogether maintain the social contract that is a choir.  After a hesitant start, we began to produce virtual videos. The first, Bogoroditse 
Dyevo, was completed and posted on May 4, and we have been producing and posting them regularly since then.  That’s eight of them, with another due out within the next couple of weeks.  That’s a lot of singing by yourself, for those who have participated regularly.  It has gotten old.  But it has been the activity available to us, given the pandemic and the facilities at our disposal.

In the meantime, scientists have developed several vaccines at lightning speed, and Chorale members are getting themselves jabbed.  One of our members, Fred Behlen, suggest we move to the Coro Vaccinio stage— that we find a way to rehearse together, in person, for those who are vaccinated (assuming most members would fall into this category), with other members joining us as their own vaccinations are accomplished.  We set to work to locate an outdoor space with an acoustically reflective backdrop and protection from rain, with enough standing space to accommodate social distancing, bathrooms, a keyboard for pitches, and some privacy.  Turns out the Lutheran School of Theology, right here in our neighborhood, has a suitable courtyard and can provide for our other needs as well. Fortunately, the days are getting longer, so we can get together in the early evening without artificial light.

A couple of weeks from now, when the air might be warmer, the light better, and more of our membership vaccinated, we’ll give it a try.  

In the meantime, Alex is putting the finishing touches on our next virtual video, Wondrous Love, in a beautiful arrangement by Robert  Shaw and Alice Parker, and I am planning the Sausage video that will follow it. If all goes well, both with the pandemic and with our outdoor rehearsals, that will mark the end of this virtual year.  We are already planning dates, venues, and repertoire for our 2021-22 concert season, though nothing is set in stone—  the key word is flexibility.  We will roll with what comes.

Da pacem, Domine

Back in 2014, I planned a concert on the theme “Da pacem, Domine” for Chorale’s 2014-2015 season, to be repeated on our concert tour of the Baltic countries during the succeeding summer.  The original proposal for a concert on this subject, came from Father Peter Funk, prior of Monastery of the Holy Cross, in Bridgeport.  Chorale has had a warm relationship with the Monastery since we started up, twenty years ago;  Father peter, then called Ed Funk, was an undergraduate student of mine at the University of Chicago, had sung in all of my choirs and been my conducting assistant.  We love singing in the Monastery’s incredible acoustic, and had jumped at the chance to prepare repertoire for a performance there.  

Monastery of the Holy Cross, Chicago

The Da pacem text, and its German equivalent (Verleih uns Frieden)is set frequently by choral composers, and expresses a common, fervent wish:

Give peace, oh Lord
To our days
Because no one else
Can fight for us
But only you, our God.

Rather than plan a program consisting purely of settings of this text, I wanted to structure a contemplative, prayerful mood, reinforced by a variety of texts.  Having begun with a setting of the Da pacem text by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, I wanted to feature another setting of the same words, to echo his text and theme. The Pärt piece is a major event— it requires a lot of time and listener involvement in an a cappella program;  and I had already chosen several other big pieces, by such composers as Bruckner, Lauridsen, Persichetti, and Paulus.  I needed a smaller, simpler, more intimate setting of the Da pacem text, to sustain the mood I was after.  

I searched my personal files and Youtube, and made a list of settings I found, in Latin, German, and English. I was particularly drawn to a Youtube posting by a Spanish choir, of a setting by Javier Centèno, which featured only the incipit, the opening three words of the chant— Da pacem Domine:  Give peace, O Lord.  

The incantatory mood of his setting immediately grabbed me, with its simple harmonic language and its gentle but incessant repetition of these three words— the composer had captured the essence of the text, but without weighing it down, creating a mood which hung in the air long after the singers were done.  

The Youtube posting included the composer’s name, and I found his contact information through a Google search.  He immediately responded to my request for a copy of his piece, and I tried it— on paper, in my head— at several different points in the concert program, and finally decided to open with it— using it to establish the theme and mood for the performance.

I find Centeno’s piece to be almost Schubertian in its simplicity, and in its unerring sense of doing the right thing at the right time, just exactly the right amount. Centeno accomplishes so much in this very brief 41 measure piece.  And Chorale found, over the course of repeated performances on our tour, that it wore well— we were happy to sing it, and audiences responded positively. We have performed other pieces by Javier since that time, and have a commission in works, in honor of our twentieth anniversary. We have always been gratified by his artistic voice. His is a name— Javier Centeno— with which you should become familiar.

Javier Centeno, composer

One Year Ago

Chicago Chorale held its final face-to-face, pre-covid rehearsal on March 11, 2020.  We were in the home stretch of preparations for our performance of the J.S. BachSt. John Passion, scheduled for March 27, at St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Church in Old Town.  The venue, the vocal soloists, the instrumentalists, the rented portative organ, were all set to go.  Plane reservations and local accommodations had been arranged;  ticket sales were moving briskly.  Chorale itself had been rehearsed to the point of clarifying every final consonant, measuring precisely every vocal ornament, refining each sound in the German text.  We had prepared diligently, and were excited to bring our production to fruition.  We were aware of the Covid19 pandemic, but naive about the radical changes ahead;  like arts organizations all over the world, we hoped to be able to squeak under the wire.  We didn’t realize the enormity of the situation about to engulf us. 

My experience of that final Wednesday rehearsal was heightened by a telephone call I received mid-rehearsal, informing me that my daughter, expecting her first child, had been checked into the hospital and had gone into labor, three weeks earlier than expected. I was fearful for her.  My wife and I were able to go to the hospital and see her, and able to see her new baby two days later, March 13;  but the hospital closed to visitors right after that visit, and we did not see mother and child again for several days, until they came home.  We had a final family dinner at Pizza Capri, our favorite neighborhood restaurant, knowing that it would be closing the next day;  the owner, Max Taleb, sat down at our table and told us he didn’t really know what he was going to do: continue with a take-out business or just close down. Our sons stopped attending school, and switched to the then-experimental online system, around our dining room table.    

Chorale cancelled rehearsals and concerts, and cancelled our trip to Spain. I, and the rest of the group, were in a state of shock and disbelief;  it took us a while to become rational and forward-looking.  One of our tenors, Alex Luke, who had interest, experience, and equipment, suggested we try the new “virtual choir” format that was beginning to appear on Facebook, as a way of rallying our membership and supporters.  We organized the group over email, and chose a piece (the Rachmaninoff Bogoroditse dyevo).  Alex sent detailed instructions to the membership, and finally, on May 4, we posted our finished product. Over the ensuing weeks, we decided to continue producing similar videos.  We also decided to produce interpretive videos, talking about the repertoire and the process.  Our working title for this series of videos was Bruce’s Brats; or, How the Sausage is Made—and the name stuck.  Alex came up with an image of sausages being grilled over a fire, and that became our brand. We also decided to institute regular Wednesday meetings, beginning September 16. 

Here we are, a year later.  Choir rehearsals are one of the riskiest of super spreader activities; but each day, more of our population is vaccinated, and local infection numbers decline.  Illinois, under the leadership of our fearless Governor Pritzker, has done a good job tackling this situation. We fervently hope to be able to reconvene, physically, by next Autumn, to rehearse and present a full concert season in 2021-2022.  This year off has taken a toll on us, and on everyone— we are all older, some singers have moved away, some have moved on to other activities and priorities.  We will face new challenges; we’ll have new singers, we’ll sing new repertoire.   We have learned that we are strong, that we have a solid base, that our twenty years of growth have given us the maturity to move fearlessly into the future.  I’m looking forward to it.

Together

The sky today is a crisp, bright blue.  Fresh snow covers the ground, but it melts rapidly in the strengthening sun.  A day to look hopefully, energetically toward the future.  The city’s major museums have announced that they will begin opening to the public, on a limited basis. The pandemic continues to rage, but the air carries the promise that it will, in time, burn out and we will be able to rebuild our lives and careers. 

Canada geese, together against the cold.

Chorale members zoomed in for our weekly meeting last night.  We greet one another, talk about events and concerns, sing (muted, each member acoustically isolated from the rest of the group), discuss issues raised by our current project.  We are preparing a video performance of a Kyrie eleison, adapted from music composed by Edvard Grieg for Ibsen’s play, Per Gynt. Each singer prepares the music on their own, then sings along with a piano version recorded by our accompanist, Kit Bridges, along with a video of me, conducting it. Audio and video versions from each singer are then mixed by our engineer, Alex Luke, culminating in the Hollywood Squares-type presentation you see on Youtube.  Sound complicated?  

This is how choir is done, nowadays.  In the late summer and fall, when school and university ensembles were reconvening, choirs were able to rehearse outdoors, socially distanced, in drained swimming pools, parking ramps, athletic fields, even on Chicago’s Midway.  Once cold weather settled in, however, these options were no longer available to choral groups.  Some ensembles gathered indoors, wearing special “singer masks,” limiting their numbers and their time together, carefully cleaning and ventilating their rehearsal spaces.  But the surge in covid cases as winter closed in discouraged most groups, and Zoom rehearsals and performances once again became the norm.  

Chorale has completed six virtual projects and posted them on our Youtube channel, with a seventh currently in production.  Even our upcoming gala, on March 24, will take place on Zoom.  For the foreseeable future, until vaccination really takes hold and breaks the back of this plague, this is what we, and our fellow choristers and choral ensembles around the world, have.

We call ourselves an ensemble for good reason. The word means “together” in French, which meaningfully describes what a choir is, and does:  we are together. We sing, and make music, together. The name of the popular American ensemble, Conspirare, says it all:  we breathe together.  And the toughest thing for us, these days, is to be and breathe together.  Ensembles are not static entities—  if they are not together, they tend to fall apart. With your help and support, along with the courage and discipline of our membership, we hang in there.  We all look forward to better times ahead—  but for now, we are learning, on the most basic level, the meaning and value of what we do.  

Chorale and Kit Bridges, rehearsing together during pre-Covid times.

The Old Year Flees Away

Just one year ago, on January 8, 2020, Chicago Chorale was poised to dive into our 2020-20121 season.  In my January 8 blog entry, I wrote: 

“Chicago Classical Review has honored Chorale’s March 2019 performance of Vigilia, by Einojuhani Rautavaara, with the #2 position on their Top Ten Performances of 2019 list.  Fantastic, that a volunteer group, operating on a shoestring budget, should be recognized in this way.  We all know that the CSO, Lyric Opera, Music of the Baroque, Chicago Opera Theater, Bella Voce, and other local, professional ensembles consistently produce world-class performances of great music; to appear on this list with them is something we will always treasure.”  

We began rehearsals that very night on the Bach St. John Passion, and were in the midst of making final arrangements for a tour of Spain in July of the following summer. Right up until our final face-to-face rehearsal, on March 11, we were pedal to the metal, preparing to celebrate our twentieth anniversary in grand style.  

So much has changed in a year.

But some things have not changed.  Chorale continues to provide its singers with a platform on which they can meet and make good music together, keep their skills and disciplines fresh, and enjoy interacting with one another.  And we continue to provide our listeners and supporters with new content, new virtual videos, and fresh information about the music we perform, and about the way we perform it.  

Like musicians the world over, we await a return to good health and safe performances, and ache to be able to present our audiences with live, vibrant performances.  But we aren't sitting still, mourning lost opportunities, and watching our ensemble erode and disappear.  The season of Christmas and the Winter Solstice is both the darkest and the most hopeful time of year;  with one eye we face the worst, and with the other we look to the future, with hope and joy in our hearts.  

This little boy, my grandson, was born March 13, just as our world was shutting down, Chorale’s big plans with it.  I can’t think of him without thinking of the pandemic— in his bright eyes and fearless gaze lies the hope of the future.  Like Chorale, he runs with the big dogs.  

We have good things ahead of us.

Thanksgiving with the Chicago Children's Choir

Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza, New Years— this is the season for people to get together, share good food, listen to music, enjoy family and friends, and fight off the gloom of shortening days and wintry weather. We are challenged, during these covid19-afflicted times, to find ways to do this safely.

Nearly every year since 1928, the Hyde Park and Kenwood Interfaith Council has sponsored a Thanksgiving Day service at Rockefeller Chapel. In a normal year, this service fills Rockefeller Chapel, and features prayers, readings and songs from the representatives of diverse faith communities, music by the Chicago Children’s Choir, and a keynote speaker. It is the single largest, most diverse gathering of our community, and effectively kicks off Hyde Park’s holiday season.

This year, the event will be on-line and virtual, and will feature Chicago Chorale!  We are currently in the production stages of our virtual choral performance, collaborating with the Hyde Park neighborhood chapter of the Chicago Children’s Choir in a performance of Stephen Paulus’ beloved choral piece, The Road Home.  Behind the scenes, this production is a technical marvel— each member of Chorale, as well as each member of the Children’s Choir, prepares, on their own, at home, their own video and audio contribution to the finished performance, which is then engineered and mixed by Chorale member Alex Luke, in his own home.  Alex will send his finished product to those who are engineering the service, and the final production will be available for public viewing Thursday, November 26, at 11:00 AM  on the Interfaith Council website, hpkinterfaith.org, . It will continue to be available for viewing, through the holiday weekend. 

This year’s featured speaker will be Najeeba Syeed, Associate Professor in Muslim & Interreligious Studies at Chicago Theological Seminary.  She will speak on  Angelic Troublemakers: Interfaith Collaboration in Human Rights. Other participants will include Maurice Charles, Dean of Rockefeller Chapel, and representatives of the area’s various faith communities.

Najeeba Syeed, Associate Professor in Muslim & Interreligious Studies at Chicago Theological Seminary

Many organizations have been forced to shut down regular operations, and find creative ways to continue with their programming. Live musical performance has been hit so hard— and  Chorale’s health is at the front of my mind, all the time. I think constantly about ways to keep singers and audience engaged.  What a wonderful opportunity, to collaborate with these young people, and to serve the community from which we draw so much of our identity.  I hope you’ll be able to tune in and hear us, and participate in the rest of the event.

Maurice Charles, Dean of Rockefeller Chapel

Chicago Chorale, Season 2020-21

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.

The Baroque Performance Institute

My recent blog entries have focused on Chicago Chorale’s genealogy.  Traditions and styles don’t just appear and assert themselves; whether we acknowledge our predecessors or not, they influence us and shape our work, as we in turn shape those who follow us.  I have reflected upon the conductors and teachers with whom I have worked, and whose influence is reflected in Chicago Chorale’s approach to choral performance.  

This week, I write about an influence larger than any single person: the Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin Conservatory.  Rather like a colony of honeybees, this 47-year old institution, comprising so many individual musicians, teachers, and students, is more important than any individuals I might feature. Unity of focus, and the combination of talent and insight, gathered under one umbrella, have made this organization an all-important generator of ideas, knowledge, and performance practice, influencing and disseminating lasting interest in the music of the 17th and 18th centuries.   

 Andre Bouys, 1710. National Gallery, London.  Served as the visual logo for the Institute for 25 years.

As a graduate student at the University of Chicago, I sang with a small group of early music enthusiasts, under the leadership of Howard Mayer Brown, an important Renaissance scholar on the university’s faculty.  Another participant in this group was Ken Slowick, a Chicago musician who specialized in baroque cello and viols (Ken is now the director of BPI). In 1978, Ken and Howard urged me to attend a summer session at BPI, where Ken was on the faculty, to learn more about performance practice of the Baroque period, and to work with Dutch baritone Max van Egmond, who was about to commence his long-time association with the Institute.  I listened to a recording of Max’s rendition of the bass solos in the Bach B Minor Mass, realized this would be a wonderful opportunity for me to learn from a master, and signed up, though not without some trepidation—I was fairly provincial in my experiences and tastes, and embarrassed about that. But I had by that time spent several summers in the choruses at Ravinia and Grant Park, and noticed that singers around me who did not grow and move on, became stale and dissatisfied-- and I feared that might happen to me.  So I drove to Ohio, and embarked on the first of eight summer sessions of challenging, fruitful study at Oberlin Conservatory.  

Max van Egmond, baritone.

Most of what I encountered was completely new to me:  historic tunings, especially the accepted baroque pitch of A=415; national styles; ornamentation and improvisation; vocal production that would allow singers to perform the fiendishly difficult music of the period; conductorless ensemble work—especially the close relationship between singers and continuo players (I had never before encountered the idea of continuo!); and a whole world of repertoire, the existence of which had previously been only hinted at in the pages of my college textbooks.  I had several private voice lessons per week with Max, whose personal interest and example were invaluable; participated in daily master classes; rehearsed and performed with student ensembles; and sang small roles in “main stage” faculty concerts, under the direction of August Wenzinger, director of the Institute.  I observed coaching sessions and rehearsals with other performers, and became acquainted for the first time with issues confronting players of period instruments.  I particularly remember the energetic, insightful coaching I received from such teachers as organist Harald Vogel and violinist Marilyn McDonald, who changed forever the way I experienced music.   

August Wenzinger, Director of The Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin Conservatory

Just as important—I spent social, as well as professional, time with a community of deeply-committed musicians who cared for one another, treated me as a colleague, and who have continued to influence me in succeeding years.  At one point, Mr. Wenzinger spent an afternoon with me, coaching me in songs of Hugo Wolf (1860-1903)-- hardly a baroque composer, but someone about whom Mr. Wenzinger had strong opinions and important insight.  As he said at that time—music is music.  And although I did not remain in the early music “fold,” I was deeply influenced by my BPI experiences in my succeeding choices of repertoire, in my preparation of choirs for the concerts of baroque and classical music Chorale does present, and in my hiring of contractors, concert masters, and players for those concerts, many of whom have participated in BPI, themselves.   

Dalton Baldwin and Gérard Souzay; Robert Shaw; Helmuth Rilling; Margaret Hillis; Weston Noble; Max van Egmond; August Wenzinger—what a collection of foreparents stands behind Chicago Chorale! I often imagine what they might say in certain circumstances, wonder if they would approve of what I do, what criticisms they might have, what they might do or have done in my place.  I have been blessed personally, through the role they have played in my life; more, though, I see myself as a conduit through which they influence those who sing under my guidance.   

Weston Noble of Luther College

Weston Noble

I first encountered Weston when I was a member of the 1966 Minnesota High School All-State Choir.  Choral music was a big deal in Minnesota, and for many of us, All-State, which met at Bemidji State for one week each summer, was the pinnacle of what we would achieve.  Our guest conductor was Weston Noble. We all knew his name:  he was a legend in our Midwestern, Lutheran, mostly Norwegian American world. His college choir toured regularly through the Midwest, and he conducted a massive, all-city Messiah in Minneapolis each December.  During All-State, I became aware of further connection:  he rented a room on the Luther College campus from Magdalene Preus, my grandmother’s cousin, and was acquainted with many members of my family. Like the other participants in the program, I was swept off my feet by this young, 46-year old conductor, at the peak of his powers-- he knew exactly how to communicate with 17-year olds, and bring our musical performance to life.   

I decided to attend Luther College, where Weston taught, and audition for choir, though I had no plans to study music, much less major in it. Arriving on campus, though, I was assigned a Music Department advisor, who convinced me to take first year music theory; and when I auditioned for choir, Weston suggested I take voice lessons. A year later, due to financial hardship, I moved out of the dorm and into Magdalene’s house-- and joined the Nordic Choir.  

Weston was a regular fixture in my life, during the ensuing three years.  I ate breakfast with him; rehearsed with his choir five days a week; shared a cat with him; watched the late news on TV with him before going to bed. I worked as student assistant in his office. He traveled frequently, to conduct festival choirs and attend meetings, all over the U.S.; when the travel was by plane, I drove him to the airport, and when the engagement was closer to home, I frequently drove him there and back. I talked endlessly with him, about my hopes and fears; he, in turn, listened, and counseled me, and talked about his own life and projects.  My financial difficulties continued throughout college, and Weston always came to my rescue.  When graduation came around, he was one of a handful of people who pushed me, hard, to attend graduate school at Chicago.  And, a few years later, early in September 1977, he called me on the phone and offered me a job at Luther, conducting a new choir and teaching voice lessons.   

As a college student, I was on the receiving end of his skill as a choral conductor, but never thought much about it.  I had no intention of becoming a choral conductor, so I did not take notes.  But an hour a day, five days a week, for three years, could not help but change me, and I absorbed a great deal; and maybe because I lacked an agenda, his conducting and teaching became more an integral part of me, than they would have, had I been at all calculating in my relationship with him.  His exacting demands, his reductive techniques, his many stories and illustrations, became mine, though ultimately on my own terms, due to our very different personalities.  He was small, well dressed and groomed; he loved driving expensive cars, was always tidy and careful, and circumspect in his social interaction. I was large and sloppy and careless, drove a junky car, was prone to hurtful social missteps.  In other ways, though, we were very similar—in the integration of our emotional lives with our musical expression, in our restless insomnia, in our physical conducting gestures, in the close relationships we developed with our singers. We had different tastes and priorities, musically; leaving this aspect of him behind was a big part of my musical maturation, but it never came between the two of us personally.  

I didn’t realize what I had, back when I had it: the opportunity to know another person, and such a formidable one at that, so well. I believe now it was best, that way.  Naiveté allows us to be more porous toward the other. 

As the years passed, Weston became more and more an eminence in the corporate choral world, speaking at conferences, accepting awards, becoming the public face of his profession. People wanted to meet him, be photographed with him, absorb some of his magic.  My own professional trajectory was very different, and we inevitably grew apart.  But the love and respect I felt for him, beginning when I was a teenager, though it changed and developed, never disappeared.  A few years ago, not long before he died, Luther College presented me with the Weston Noble Award for achievement in vocal music education, and I treasure this award as much for the photo taken of us, as for the award itself.  For so many years he helped and supported me; finally, it was my turn to support him.   

Helmuth Rilling: We Must Be Together

The first summer I sang with the Shaw Festival Singers, a number of singers—some of our best singers—showed up a day late.  They had just completed a three–week stint singing with the Oregon Bach Festival, and that was how travel arrangements worked out.  I was immediately aware of these singers as a group of particularly successful, involved participants.  They were young, mostly recent graduates of DMA conducting programs, on the hunt for credentials, resume lines, good jobs.  During meal breaks, and around beers at the end of the day, they talked a lot about the Oregon Bach Festival, about the group’s organization, repertoire, and artistic director, Helmuth Rilling.  They argued, sometimes heatedly, about the many differences between Mr. Shaw and Mr. Rilling.   

I have often noticed that loyalties to particular conductors, even amongst professional singers, can be a very important aspect of the choral experience.  Conductors encourage loyalty, sometimes manipulating their singers shamelessly and trashing the competition, while singers eagerly take sides, sometimes expressing irrational opinions.  Both Mr. Shaw and Mr. Rilling inspired such heated fealty, though to give them credit, I was not aware of either trying to do so.  For myself:  I was grateful, even overjoyed, to have been chosen to sing for Mr. Shaw; and I became intrigued at the possibility of singing for Mr. Rilling.  I wanted to learn technique and repertoire. So when, the following winter, I read an audition announcement for the Oregon Bach Festival Chorus in the Choral Journal, I immediately responded, prepared my materials, and flew up to Minneapolis to sing an audition.   

The Shaw Festival had a very simple design:  rehearse, perform, record. We, the choir, were the focus. The Oregon Bach Festival was far more ambitious. Designed by Managing Director Royce Saltzman, who was on the University of Oregon faculty, and by Mr. Rilling, it included conducting master classes, a youth choir, an organ recital series, a conductors’ forum, concerts and presentations by guest ensembles, and a series of more or less popular concerts, for a broader, summer festival audience, in addition to the “main stage” performances of major choral/orchestral works, conducted by Mr. Rilling. The professional chorus was only one part of the overall offering, albeit an important one.  We comprised the chorus for the major works and for the master class rehearsals and performances, and rarely had time off from cramming notes and pounding our voices.  The singers had to look out for themselves, keep their voices in shape, remain healthy, while around them swirled a bewildering amount of activity.   

Looming over the entire project was the quiet but powerful presence of Helmuth Rilling.  Assistants organized the master classes, prepared the chorus, administered the large number of available offerings; but his influence informed everything.  It was a family affair for him:  even his wife and daughters participated, setting a tone which became a major theme of the festival—that we were all together in this venture, sharing in a common goal.  Helmuth considered himself a bridge builder—even, jokingly, wearing a hard hat at some events. One striking aspect of the experience for the performers was, that singers and instrumentalists lived and ate together, and treated one another as peers-- something I had never before experienced.   The normal barrier between the two groups simply did not exist.  Social interactions included all of us, just as musical events did. 

We had only a fraction of the rehearsal time that we had with Mr. Shaw; there was simply too much music to prepare.  We spent six hours a day with Mr. Shaw; we were lucky to spend six hours total with Helmuth, per preparation.  He did not have a particular system for seating us, a rehearsal “method,” or easily recognizable principles; he just wanted us to sing the music accurately, with good German diction, at impossibly fast tempos.  A couple of times I had the opportunity to sing with his German choir, the Gächinger Kantorei, in Germany and in Israel, and saw the same procedure there—sing through the piece, fix problems, regularize ornaments, emphasize text.  Yet he managed, through force of personality and clear vision, to get what he wanted from us.  

The totality of the work at hand was of paramount importance to Helmuth-- the structure, pacing, and meaning of the Bach Passions, for instance, took clear precedence over the techniques we used to express them.  He always sought to express this meaning, through his interpretation, his pacing, what he said to us, the expression on his face.  Mr. Shaw often said, “Sing the sounds of language, not the language itself;” I cannot imagine Helmuth ever saying such a thing.  I took every possible opportunity to participate in master class rehearsals and performances—at least twice as many as were required of me—and did see more discussion of techniques there, in what he said and demonstrated to the student conductors. Mostly, though, he was simply more confident, more efficient, more commanding than they were: he did things better, not differently.  

During my years with Helmuth, I sang a king’s ransom of Bach: both Passions, the B Minor Mass, Magnificat, motets, a tremendous number of cantatas;  Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Mozart’s Requiem and C minor Mass, the Brahms Requiem, several Haydn masses, the Britten War Requiem, works by Bruckner, Penderecki, Tan Dun, Duruflé,-- and these are just the ones I pull off the top of my memory as I sit here at my computer.  Others will surface later.  One night after a concert here in Chicago I went out for a drink with Helmuth and his wife, Martina, and they asked me, Why do you leave your family, summer after summer, and come to spend three weeks in Eugene, Oregon?  I answered, Because of the repertoire.  Where else would I have such a rich opportunity?  But at least as much as the repertoire, I treasured being part of the Togetherness that Helmuth sought through his work; part of his family. He built bridges I still use and love. 

Margaret Hillis and My Introduction to the Chicago Choral Scene

I originally came to Chicago right out of college, to attend graduate school at the University of Chicago.  The university, and the city, changed my life, and I have been grateful ever since to the people who pushed me into taking such a major step, and to the people who put up with me once I got there.  But after a couple of years, it became clear to me that my future did not lie in earning a PhD in English.  My college degree had been in vocal music, and I fell back on that-- it turned out I could actually make money singing, and enjoy what I was doing.  I resumed voice lessons, after a two year hiatus; and my teacher, Elsa Charlston, urged me to work with Dick Boldrey, a repertoire coach, and to audition—everywhere, for everyone, to get a feel for auditions, to see what was out there, to find where I could fit in.  One of the most consequential early auditions I sang was for Margaret Hillis, director of Chicago Symphony Chorus.  She accepted me, with professional status, which solidified my commitment to a musical profession, and I was inducted into a brand new world.  

Margaret Hillis and Doreen Rao at Carnegie Hall

College choir had been a refuge: a kind, supportive home, populated by idealistic, emotional adolescents like me, overseen by a loving, benevolent conductor who, though a perfectionist, controlled his singers with kindness, prayer, flattery, and polite persuasion. Professional choral singing was a very different situation, and Ms. Hillis used very different tools.  Her very considerable accomplishments were based upon high expectations, rigid regulation, threat, fear of failure, and an extraordinary degree of control and preparation.  From the moment one arrived for rehearsal and signed the attendance sheet, one was in her hands—sitting according to a competitive rating system, marking scores according to her specific instructions, learning notes and words according to uniform, prescribed techniques. Rules governing attendance and rehearsal behavior were rigid and unforgiving. Punishment was swift.  The singers, and our union, were her enemy, but a necessary and beloved enemy.  Rehearsals could be exciting; they could also be both tense and boring.  But always efficient. She and her assistants kept one hundred plus singers in line, and produced a high-quality product—a massive but precise, neutral, flexible version of the choral/orchestral masterwork in question, upon which the “maestro” (either our regular conductor, Georg Solti, or any of a number of A-list guest conductors), would then put his own stamp and character.  

It was an efficient system, and produced good results.  Ms. Hillis had studied with Robert Shaw, and I discovered, years later, that the two shared much in common. Both subscribed to intense, demanding preparation and rigid procedures; both believed that a group performed only as well as it rehearsed.  Ms. Hillis accepted no nonsense from her singers and employees, and did not indulge in displays of passion and temper; but her intensity was never in question, and her anger and disapprobation found other outlets.  I feared her, far more than I feared Mr. Shaw. I found, during my time as a professional chorister in Chicago, that other conductors and ensembles adopted a good deal of her character—she trained many of the city’s conductors, in her position as Director of Choral Activities at Northwestern University.  Her precision, her level of preparation and organization, her overarching “roadmap” approach to projects, provided a standard to which many of them adhered. I sang for her only one year, but I learned a great deal, and when I formed my own first choir, back at my Alma Mater, I was as influenced by her, as I was by the traditions of the college, though I didn’t realize it at the time.  She was tough in a way I could understand and appreciate.  She got the job done.     

Margaret Hillis

Summers with Mr. Shaw

Abbatiale St. Pièrre, where we sang an annual concert in our "home town" of Souillac, against the background of the hills on the other side of the Dordogne River.

Robert Shaw’s name was familiar to me from early in my life.  Professional choirs conducted by him, Roger Wagner, Norman Luboff, and others, regularly stopped in the Twin Cities on their tours, and I was aware of them, though I never heard them-- like most middle and high school kids, I cared only about what happened in my local world, and my parents were content with that.  Each of these conductors published numerous choral octavos under their own names; my church and high school choir conductors used a lot of these publications, especially those edited by Robert Shaw and Alice Parker.  So his name hung in the air, if passively. 

My college choral conductor, Weston Noble, attended summer sessions under Mr. Shaw at the Meadow Brook Music Festival, and was profoundly influenced by him.  Barely a week went by that we did not hear “As Robert Shaw says” or “How does Robert Shaw feel about rhythm?” or “What does Robert Shaw say is the most important aspect of music?”  Weston was a believer, and adopted many of Shaw’s ideas and procedures, bending them to his own preferences and mode of expression.

Robert Shaw

During my sophomore year, the Luther choir participated in an International Collegiate Choral Festival at Lincoln Center, headlined by Mr. Shaw.  In addition to presenting short concert performances of their own repertoire, the choirs joined together to sing (if I remember correctly) the StravinskySymphony of Psalms, the Haydn Lord Nelson Mass, and the Verdi Te Deum.  Shaw was young, powerful, bombastic, sweating buckets and tripping over his own words. Somewhat frightening. We thought he was an unapproachable god.

Quite a few years later, when I was conducting at the University of Chicago, I read a notice in the Choral Journal, soliciting auditions from singers who were specifically music educators, to spend several weeks in France with Robert Shaw, rehearsing and performing.  I submitted a tape (sounds antiquated, doesn’t it?) and received a telephone call just days later from Maurice Casey, director of the program, inviting me to participate.  A few months later I flew to Paris, took a train to Souillac, a small town in the Dordogne region, and became a member of the Robert Shaw Festival Singers.

Festival Singers Rocamadour 1993

I had not met a single one of the other singers previously, did not know any of their names. Turned out that most of them had attended grad schools together, had sung together, had worked with Mr. Shaw; a high percentage of them sang in the Atlanta Symphony Chorus, and were familiar with most of the repertoire we were singing. They knew his techniques, his rehearsal procedures, his temper, his expectations.  I didn’t. I felt very much outside of things, on the spot to prove myself. 

Turned out that was not such a good idea.  One did not want to come to Mr. Shaw’s attention.  We rehearsed in a circle, with the piano and Mr. Shaw’s chair and music stand in the middle.  He could hear and see most of what was going on, and kept on his feet, moving, most of the time.  If he heard something that stuck out of his preferred texture, he might suddenly turn on the offending singer, and roar “Leave that in the studio!” or “immodest voice!” or “Listen louder than you sing.”  I heard a lot of this, directed at me, during my first week or so.  His assistant, Ann Jones, took me aside one day during a break, and said something to the effect that I clearly had been doing a lot more conducting than choral singing, and that I had better be careful.  During a rehearsal in a church at Rocamadour, before a concert, I had the misfortune to be seated in front of an acoustic sounding board, which amplified my voice.  Mr Shaw raged and raged; I though I would be kicked out of the concert.  This brought another warning from Ann Jones.  Fortunately, we figured out the problem, adjusted, and I lived to sing another day.

 Lunch breaks were mercifully long.  I could eat quickly and then walk down to the river and go swimming, or up in the hills, enjoying the incredible natural beauty of the countryside.  One day I walked too far, and arrived a few minutes late for afternoon rehearsal.  Not a head turned in my direction as I took my seat, in complete silence.  During break, another Ann Jones warning: “The train leaves every day for Paris, and you could be on it.” I was never late again.

Images from Shaw’s home in Couzou (near to Souillac)

 Six hours of choral rehearsal per day, six days per week.  And then we began traveling to present concerts throughout the region.  Even as we became a better choir, I was aware of widespread vocal fatigue and carelessness—I heard it all around me.  Some of the better and more notable singers in the group—we had amongst our numbers such luminaries as Christine Goerke, Glenn Miller, Karl Dent, Martha Hart—vocalized regularly. There was no privacy-- if you sang, you would be heard.  After initial embarrassment, I began vocalizing, too—I did not want to be pointed at in rehearsal and accused of singing flat. No more warnings from Ann Jones, please!

I was making friends, finally, and having a good time.  It helped that I made it my job to buy cheap bottles of the local Cahors wine and bring them on the bus, to drink after concerts.  After our final such bus trip, a group of us decided to rent a car and drive to Lascaux, to see the facsimile of the famous caves, on the rest day before recording sessions. Rather late the night before the trip, however, Maurice Casey knocked on my door, and told me Mr. Shaw wanted to hear me early the next morning, on a short solo in the Brahms Liebeslieder.  I had never exchanged one word with Mr. Shaw, had never even auditioned for him—but it turned out someone had heard the vocalizing.  I protested:  wouldn’t the current owner of the solo be angry?  And besides, I really wanted to see those caves. Maurice was not sympathetic:  this is your opportunity; don’t screw it up. So I pulled out of the trip, and finally met Mr. Shaw formally the following morning.

It was nerve-wracking, but went well.  When it was over, Mr. Shaw, in a good mood, asked me to sing the solo in one of the spirituals we were recording.  I balked—I already had one baritone potentially hating me, I didn’t need two.  And besides, I told him, I couldn’t sing the black dialect convincingly.  To which he replied that he would teach me.  I assured him that I would really mess this up and ruin our recording, and he backed off.    

Me. Shaw gave me such courage.  His temper, his impatience, his perfectionism, his self-doubt, his overwhelming energy, his embarrassment and mortification when he overstepped-- I saw so much of myself, and of who I wanted to be, in him.  His recognition of my talent, which continued to manifest itself over the ensuing years, made me feel legitimate.  I came home from that first summer forever changed, and returned for several more.  I never developed any sort of personal relationship with him, and probably didn’t need to:  one time, I saw an interchange between him and one of his long-time Atlanta friends, who walked up to him during a break and called him “Bob.”  Mr. Shaw wheeled on him, pointed his finger, and said, “You call me Mr. Shaw.” And I always did. 

Outside Shaw’s home in Couzou (near to Souillac)

Dalton Baldwin, Fellow Gardener

Dalton Baldwin, pianist

One of my most inspiring gardening friends was also one of my most influential music teachers.  Dalton Baldwin had homes in Toms River, New Jersey, and in Antibes, France.  He carefully oversaw the design and building of each house, with the result that the two homes shared many characteristics:  they were secluded, they were on water, each had a private, tower-like structure where Dalton had his own bedroom and piano, each had a more public main floor where he had another piano or two and did his teaching and coaching.  And each had extensive gardens, in which he worked whenever he had spare time (he also hired part-time gardeners), and which were luxuriant, fantastic places, reminiscent of the vocal music which was his professional bread and butter. 

I first met Dalton after a concert he presented with soprano Elly Ameling, at Northwestern University, during the summer of 1980. I tagged along to a dinner presented in their honor, and in the course of it he told me about an art song festival he was organizing at the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee for the following summer.  The list of master teachers was amazing, Gérard Souzay and Elly Ameling among them; so I applied and was accepted.  My first time up, I sang Schumann’s Schöne Wiege meiner Leiden.  I wasn’t four measures into the piece, before Gérard, whom I had never met, stopped me, turned to the auditors, and said, “Why is it that all you American singers think German music is angry?  You all try to sound like that singer with three names.” And with that, I was ushered into the cult of Gérard Souzay.  The ensuing “lesson” was excruciating, but I gradually became aware that his cutting criticism and sarcasm meant that he actually like my singing and thought I was worth his time; so I loosened up and enjoyed myself.  Gérard did not care about flowers, but he was a great artist and a grand teacher.

My second time up, I sang Fauré’s En sourdine, for Elly Ameling and Dalton. Again, we did not make it past four bars before being stopped.  Dalton came over to the pianist, told her to move aside, and played for me, himself. As he began the simple arpeggios of the introduction, I was transported to paradise. This was music making at a level I had only dreamt of.  I was lifted on the wings of his playing, without interruption, through to the end of the piece.  The experience was breathtaking.  

Dalton Baldwin, pianist

At the end of the festival, Dalton and Gérard spoke with me about coming to Nice the following summer, for a session at the Conservatory.  I had never been to Europe, and it took a lot for me to gather the courage, and money, to go; but I took the plunge. It was through this trip, and subsequent visits over the following years to Dalton and Gérard’s home in Antibes, that I became aware of Dalton as a gardener. He deeply loved his gardens—once he told me that it was his goal to be constantly surrounded by flowers, and he came close.  

Early each morning we would walk down his driveway and jump into the Mediterranean, swim out to some rocks and back, then hike back up his driveway.  We’d drink coffee on his terrace, surrounded by his gardens, and he’d plan his day.  I never saw him so happy, so relaxed, as he was at those times. He would give me gardening assignments—weed here, prune here, pick these beans.  I think he was genuinely thrilled to find a fellow traveler, and he made the most of my presence, taking me to visit farms and gardens in the area, and hiking up in the mountains (where he had yet another house) to see the wild cherry trees and swim in the ice cold alpine lakes.  The beauty of the forests, the meadows, the flowers, was a holy thing to him—he embraced it with a religious fervor, he couldn’t get enough of it. And I grew to realize that he sought, through music, the same passion and fervor, the same total experience of beauty and joy.

Over the years Dalton sent me flower seeds, as well as advice; when I visited him in New Jersey, he gave me plants. When he came to Charlottesville to accompany me in a Poulenc centennial recital at UVA, he gave me $150 and told me I needed to buy some rhododendrons; he even told me where to plant them. And he sent me photos of flowers he was growing, of a newly discovered vistas in the Alpes-Maritimes, of gardens he admired.

Once, in a master class, a very competent soprano, a college voice teacher, sang a major Poulenc song.  When she was done, Gérard said to her, “You are such a good student.  But good students bore me. I need fire.” Pretty much destroyed that soprano.  But I heard, and felt, what he meant.  He and Dalton shared a total commitment to beauty, to passion, to no-holds-barred expression.  It was their fiery gift to the world. 

One summer when I was singing a Brahms concert with the Robert Shaw Festival Singers in Souillac, France, Dalton drove up from Antibes to hear us.  He then drove me from the concert site back to where we were staying, complaining all the way about how boring we were.  The repertoire had included both sets of Liebeslieder Waltzes, which I had sung the previous summer with Dalton, in a series of daringly expressive performances, so I understood his complaint-- one can bend things far more with one piano, two pianists, and four singers, than one can with two pianos and sixty singers.  Dalton did not in the least understand the strictures of choral performance. 

It was, finally, Dalton’s and Gérard’s commitment to beauty at all costs, to the fires of creativity, that affected me and shaped me.  I am incredibly fortunate to have been touched by these great artists.

Choirs and Gardens

I have been involved with gardening, especially the growing of food, all my life. Both grandfathers had extensive gardens, berry patches, fruit trees—they expected to grow a lot of what they ate. My parents were committed to modern supermarkets, but the inner need to raise food came roaring back in my generation.  It is more than need; it is compulsion.   

My wife and I moved into a building on the north side of an east-west alley. Between the building and the concrete edge of the alley was a strip of land about three feet deep, piled high with post-construction rubble—concrete chunks, lengths of two by four, rebar, and broken glass, with volunteer trees coming up between and among them.  On the south side of the alley was nothing but a parking lot, an underground garage, and full-day sun: a bonanza of sunlight, rarely found in the city. And I could get water to the place from our building.  With permission from the alderman, I set to work from the east end, about fifteen feet at a time, clearing the refuse, digging out trees.  The soil that was left was awful—sand, pockets of gravel, the likelihood of mysterious toxins, and little fertility or organic material.  I had no money for this project, so could not afford to hire a backhoe to dig it all out, or trucks to come in and dump loads of topsoil; I had to work with it, build it up bit by bit, year by year, with kitchen compost, bags of leaves and grass clippings from the neighborhood, coffee grounds from Starbuck’s, buckets of horse manure and bedding from the police stables. Even earthworms had to be collected elsewhere and planted in the dirt.  Slowly, it changed into friable, usable soil—not the glorious rich black stuff I was used to from Minnesota and Iowa, but at least living soil.  Over the years so much accumulated that I built a retaining well the height of two cinder blocks, to hold it in.

The first crop I planted was raspberries. Starting with two plants, I eventually ended up with a hedge about twenty-five feet long, which I struggle to keep under control, pruning back the old canes each fall, tying back the new canes so the cars and trucks don’t crush them as they drive down the alley.  But there were no bees!  No pollination.  So I planted the next forty-five feet in flowers, including messy, native weedy types that would be mostly likely to attract said bees.  

Over a period of years, I established the garden all the way to the street at the west end of the alley.  I tried numerous crops:  greens, tomatoes, peppers, bush beans, okra, broccoli, the usual suspects.  But the neighbors could not keep their hands off my produce, growing right out where they could see and reach it. They stripped the raspberry bushes bare every morning, before I was even out of bed. The situation seemed hopeless, until we moved into a house of our own, with a fenced-in yard, just a block away; I reserved the alley garden for potatoes and onions (which are not intrinsically attractive to thieves), accepted my losses in the raspberries, and planted the other crops in my new, protected back yard.  

 Building the soil, enabling an environment in which satisfying growth could occur, producing something of deep, necessary worth, was very gratifying for me. I was establishing Chicago Chorale at the same time, and the garden-building profoundly shaped my thinking about the choir. Because I had a background in professional choirs, colleagues assumed I would aim to build a professional choir, and that my principle challenge would be fund-raising.  But before I had ever been a paid chorister, I had sung in good choirs that were not paid.  I believed in those choirs, what they did for their singers and for their audiences. And for me. In my gardening project I saw a blueprint for Chorale:  work with the materials at hand. Build the group, train and rehearse them to perform first-rate repertoire with technique, discipline, and understanding, expect a professional commitment and level of performance from them.  As I loved my garden, I loved my choir, built with those who were willing to sing well. 

I learned under inspiring conductors along my way.  Visionaries who were, themselves, builders and inventors, who ran with the opportunities they were given, and invented opportunities where none seemed to present themselves: Weston Noble, Margaret Hillis, Robert Shaw, Helmuth Rilling. I sought to learn their techniques, to emulate their conducting; I found them to be master gardeners, who built their soil, planted their worms, picked their own potato bugs, pulled their own weeds, wholeheartedly nurtured their gardens from the ground up.  That is the most important lesson I learned from all four of them.

Pruning Garlic

Last week I wrote about pruning my Chorale rose bush, and pruning in general.  I discuss pruning again this week, though of a different sort:  I also prune garlic.

I suspect that some variety of garlic thrives in every part of the world. It is a very adaptable plant, and I encounter it in every cuisine I have tasted.  Garlic is in the Allium family, closely related to onions, leeks, shallots.  They all have a lot in common, but garlic has special cultural requirements.  The garlic I grow was brought to this country from Ostfriesland, Germany, by my great- great- grandparents, who ended up farming in western Minnesota.  Their garlic has passed down through the generations of Tammens, and now resides with me.  My brothers and I call it German Stiff Neck, which means that it produces a rigid stalk, unlike the soft neck garlic one commonly purchases in the store.  This stalk terminates, at its tip, in a “scape,” which functions in place of a flower; left to its own devices, it produces small bulblets which end up on the ground, grow roots, and become, after a couple of seasons, new garlic plants. All of the parent plant’s strength goes into producing this reproductive unit, and the head, the part we would eat, shrivels up.   

This is where the pruning comes in.  As soon as the stalks emerge from the plants, I clip the tops off (and eat them—they are delicious).  The stalks stop growing, and the underground garlic heads expand, instead of feeding the scapes.  We are in the middle of that process right now-- I prune every day, so that the scapes don’t get ahead of me.  By July 1, the leaves will begin drying and turning brown; I await the magic day when the heads are dry enough to store, but not so far along that the outer skin of the heads begins to deteriorate, allowing the heads to shatter in the ground and separate into cloves. I dig the plants, leaving the heads attached, about July 15, and hang them in a dry, shaded place to cure.  In September I choose the best looking heads, separate them into cloves, and plant them for the following year, much as one would plant tulip or daffodil bulbs.

Were I to leave the garlic to its own devices, it would happily fulfill its natural function, putting up strange and beautiful stalks, being itself; but it would not produce the fat garlic heads my family eats the rest of the year.  The garlic bed needs me, needs my experience, my judgment, my shaping, my work, if it is to be productive.   

As I wrote last week, gardening is, for me, the most important, dirt-under-the-fingernails metaphor for what I do as a musician, and as a conductor.  My job is to gather the raw elements into one place, assess them, keep them from going each in its own way and doing whatever it feels like doing, whenever it feels like it; prune and shape the vocal sound, the musical expression, get everyone singing in tune and in tempo with one another, pronouncing uniform vowels and consonants, entering and exiting simultaneously, moving and sounding together.  Helmuth Rilling said that the choir’s first job is to be together.  The conductor’s first job is to define what that “together” is to be, and shape the choir in that direction. 

The results are tasty and satisfying. 

The Chorale Rose

I happened upon the Chorale rose in a horticultural catalogue several years ago, and for obvious reasons thought I’d give it a try.  This high-end nursery sells only “own root” roses, not grafted ones, and my rose bush has been happy, even through the Polar Vortex of 2019—the canes all froze, but the base plant put out strong, healthy new shoots and they bloomed appropriately and beautifully, by the middle of the summer. 

Chorale doesn’t flower just once, in early summer, like many roses; a real “work horse” of a rose, it enjoys at least two major blooming periods, and is never without at least one blossom. Japanese beetle season, in August, is always devastating—the beetles skeletonize the leaves and eat the flower buds, both. A single blossom can have as many as ten of the beetles in it, munching away happily. But the plant survives, just as it survives our bitter winters, and is none the worse for what appears to have been a truly horrible experience.

---

I dump a bucket of horse manure at the base of each rose bush in November, after dormancy has set in.  The manure rots slowly over the course of the winter-- the original slow-release fertilizer.  Then, I prune the roses in late February/early March. Older canes have become less productive, and either die outright, or limp along for another season, spoiling the look of the plant, harboring pests, and accomplishing nothing good.  New canes from the previous season may be too tall and ungainly; some of them may be weak; there may be too many of them, blocking air circulation. 

In their own seasons, I prune roses, raspberries (a close relative), peaches, apples—they all have their needs, all need particular attention.  I drink a lot of coffee, don my leather gloves and jacket, and go at it, trying not to feel like a murderer, trying to make the right choices.  My family and I lived in Virginia for five years, on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge, an area rich in apple and peach orchards, and I often drove by the orchards, studying the pruning methods, marveling at the beautiful work being done by the pruners. 

This photo shows the Chorale rose in early April, maybe a month after being pruned.  I pruned it hard, and was somewhat worried, awaiting the results.  But the new growth is strong and vigorous, with great color. The year ahead will, as usual, have its beauties and its beetles; some new pest or malady may show up, or a car may crash through our fence and crush the plant.  Who knows? I do my best, plan for the future, and take the best care I can, knowing that the plant is a good one, and likely to thrive into the future. 

Gardening has been my living, dirt-under-the-fingernails metaphor for building choirs, ever since I began building them. Chicago Chorale, like everyone else, has had a hard time of it, this spring. But we have good roots, and we will bloom, true to those roots, again, and even more beautifully than before. 

Chicago Chorale, 2019-2020.

Sunrise over Lake Michigan. View from 63rd Street Breakwater.

Season 2019-20 was to have been a banner year for Chorale, ushering in our twentieth anniversary.  Two Christmas performances in Ravinia’s Bennett Gordon Hall, plus an inaugural reprise of the same concert in Hyde Park; a production of Bach’s St. John Passion at St. Michael’s Church, with a bravura slate of soloists and the Haymarket Opera Orchestra; a concert tour in Spain for nine days in July, including a commissioned work by Spanish composer Javier Centeno. 

But our season, along with most commerce and live performance around the world, has instead folded its tents and stolen away in the night.  America is in the midst of its worst crisis in many years, and all of us are touched by it.  Like other organizations, Chorale waited as long as we dared, before announcing the cancellation of our rehearsals, performances, and travel.  I would be sorry at anytime to cancel any of our activities; but I was particularly sorry this past week, when it became clear that the remainder of our season would not happen.  We had tentatively scheduled the resumption of rehearsals for Saturday, April 4; and as it became increasingly clear that we would not meet, I continued to hope, against all evidence, that we would rehearse, and make some good music, creating sparks of light in this gloom. Some of our singers are graduating students, who will be leaving the area; some of our singers are moving to other cities and new professional positions.  Too many will not be with us any more, when we finally convene again.  I'll miss them, miss their contributions to our Chorale community, miss seeing and hearing them each week.  

I don't question the wisdom of this extended shutdown.  Our neighborhood, Hyde Park, is a careful, observant, educated community; many of our residents enjoy the luxuries of working from home, and have resources from which they can draw; they have well-stocked freezers and pantries, grocery stores in which it feels safe to shop, a major medical center just down the street.  But the population surrounding us is suffering deeply, horribly, to an extent we can hardly imagine.  Life is hard and dangerous for these people, perhaps always, certainly now-- they who drive our buses, who staff our hospitals, pick up our garbage, deliver our mail, stock our grocery shelves, keep our power and water going. We have to do all we can to slow down the progress of this deadly disease. We have to remember that no one is an island-- that any death diminishes us, because we are involved in mankind.  The bell tolls for all of us.  

I hope all of you are remaining safe and healthy, finding therapeutic activities to keep your spirits up and mitigate against the loneliness, anger, depression, anxiety that are so prevalent now.  I am locked down with my entire family, including my daughter’s new baby, born March 13.  We get on one another’s nerves; but we know we are very lucky to have one another, and our dogs and cats, and our spring-bursting gardens.

Chorale looks forward, fervently, to the day when we can sing for you again.

COVID-19 and the Performing Arts

By now, most, if not all, performing arts organizations have cancelled rehearsals and performances for the next several weeks.  The busiest time of year for “classical” vocal music, the Lent and Easter season, has effectively been wiped off the calendar.  Just one week ago, we still hoped to present our scheduled performances. Professional soloists had airline tickets carefully coordinated, and suitcases planned for all contingencies, so that they could travel as efficiently as possible from one engagement to another, and earn what in many cases would be half of their year’s income.  Freelance instrumentalists had their calendars carefully planned, childcare arranged, performance attire cleaned and ready to go.   Performance venues, many of them churches with very limited incomes and high overhead during the winter months, were set to rent and staff their spaces for rehearsals and concerts, in addition to the weddings that become more and more frequent as springtime advances, thereby generating enough income to remain open for another year.  Printers were all set to produce mailers, posters, programs, letters, earning their own livelihoods in this intertwined industry.

 Chicago Chorale, like most of our peer organizations, was set to present a major concert, in our case the St. John Passion by J.S. Bach. We spent more than a year planning, preparing, and fundraising. Our orchestra comprised the best players we could find for this repertoire, and included players flying in from considerable distances, one even from England.  Our vocal soloists, likewise, were the best we could find, seasoned specialists in Baroque performance practice. We had budgeted carefully, planning for a somewhat predictable income through ticket sales to support our efforts, paying our salaries and bills.  And we were busily planning a gala for next month, which, we hoped, would generate enough income to cover any shortfalls in the current season, and carry us into the future. Chorale’s singers had learned the work, a mighty accomplishment in itself, through many hours of group rehearsal, individual practice, language coaching, and listening. To the extent that anything can be sure in the independent world of freelance music, we were all set to present a polished, successful performance of one of the world’s great cultural treasures.

I love Bach’s St. John Passion. There is little in this life which exceeds the full-body thrill I experience, singing or conducting the music of this giant.  “Been there, done that,” doesn’t figure into my relationship with Bach’s music; each time I reengage, I find new beauty, new profundity, new understanding, new questions.  Rehearsals were the highlight of each week; cancellation of our performance felt like ripping my heart out.  And I ache for all the participants in this project, not only because they are deprived of the opportunity to perform, but because of the upset this cancellation causes.  The effect of the lost income on the lives of our professionals, and the near-universal unemployment this crisis is causing, is almost incalculable-- if any of them find that giving their talent, time, energy to projects like this is simple too risky and impractical, and that pursuing excellence in their musical lives is simply not worth the trouble, we are all the poorer for that. Had I the money, I would gladly pay all their fees out of my own pockets. 

Would you please consider donating to Chorale at this time, to help us honor our commitments to these outstanding musicians and to help us overcome the loss of income created by the cancellation of these two important events. No amount is too small!
Simply visit  gf.me/u/xrg8y2 for our GoFundMe campaign, or https://www.chicagochorale.org/donate to assist all of us during this unprecedented time.

Stay safe!  And healthy.

Our Soloists.

In my previous soloist installment, I introduced soloists for Chorale’s upcoming St. John Passion who actually reside in Chicago.  Some of our soloists, all specialists in this repertoire, fly or drive in to perform with us. 

Our concertmaster, Robert Mealy, is one of America’s most prominent Baroque violinists. The New York Times recently commented in a review that “Mr. Mealy seems to foster excellence wherever he goes, whether as director of the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, concertmaster of the Trinity Baroque Orchestra in New York, or at The Juilliard School, as director of the historical performance program.” While still an undergraduate, he was asked to join the Canadian Baroque orchestra Tafelmusik; after graduating he began performing with Les Arts Florissants. Since then, he has recorded and toured with many ensembles both here and in Europe, and served as concertmaster for Masaaki Suzuki, Nicholas McGegan, Helmuth Rilling, Paul Agnew, and William Christie, among others. As a recitalist, he has appeared at Carnegie Hall, the Smithsonian Museum, and on series across America. A devoted chamber musician, he co-directs Quicksilver, whose début recording was hailed as “breakthrough CD of the year” by the Huffington Post. Mr. Mealy is Director of the distinguished Historical Performance Program at The Juilliard School; prior to that, he was on the faculty of the Yale School of Music. He taught at Harvard for over a decade, where he founded the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra. In 2004, he received Early Music America’s Binkley Award for outstanding teaching and scholarship. He has recorded over 80 CDs of early music on most major labels. He still likes to practice.

Robert Mealy, Concertmaster

Tenor Steven Soph returns for his fourth appearance with Chorale, singing the Evangelist.  A "superb vocal soloist" (The Washington Post), Steven performs music spanning the medieval to modern day. This season, Steven debuts with the Charlotte and Winston-Salem Symphony Orchestras in Handel's Messiah, Mobile Symphony Orchestra in Mozart's Requiem, Apollo's Fire as Evangelist in Bach's Christmas Oratorio, the Elmhurst Symphony as the Evangelist in Bach's St. John Passion, and the Baldwin Wallace University Bach Festival as the Evangelist in Bach's St. Matthew Passion. Steven returns to the Baltimore Choral Arts Society for Mozart's Requiem and Britten's Serenade; to the Bach Society of St. Louis, Apollo Chorus of Chicago, Charlotte Bach Festival, and Chicago Chorale as the Evangelist in Bach's St. John Passion; and to New York City's Voices of Ascension for Bach's Mass in B-minor. A long-time member of Miami's Seraphic Fire, Steven will sing the role of Acis in Handel's Acis and Galatea.

Steven holds degrees from the University of North Texas and Yale School of Music and studied at Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music with renowned tenor James Taylor. Steven was an American Bach Soloists Academy Artist, a Carmel Bach Festival Adams Fellow, and an Oregon Bach Festival Young Artist. 

Steven Soph, Tenor

 The bass arias, and the part of Pilate, will be sung by Daniel Fridley.
Daniel is a third year doctoral student in the Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) Historical Performance Practice program, studying with Ellen Hargis and Dean Southern. His "wide palette of colors" (Parterre Box) and "spotless, resonant bass" (Cleveland Classical) lends itself well to a wide variety of genres and styles. He obtained his Masters of Music degree in Vocal Performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM) in 2017. Last summer he was a Studio Artist with Teatro Nuovo, a summer program specializing in historically performed bel canto opera, singing Pretore in Rossini'sLa gazza ladra. The previous summer he was a Studio Artist with Central City Opera. This summer he returns to Teatro Nuovo, covering Maometto Secondo in Rossini’s Maometto Secondo.

            Recent performances include Sarastro in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (CIM); Handel's Messiah(Bourbon Baroque); Thésée in Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie (CIM and CWRU joint production); Fiorello in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia (Cleveland Opera Theater); "Dangerous Love," a program of fiery 17th-century Italian music (Newberry Consort); Dottore Grenvil in Verdi's La traviata (The Cleveland Opera); Jesus in Bach's St. John Passion (Atlanta Baroque); Leporello in Mozart's Don Giovanni (La Musica Lirica); and Polyphemus in Handel'a Acis and Galatea (CWRU).

Daniel Fridley, Bass

Introducing ... Our Soprano and Bass Soloists.

Mounting Bach’s St. John Passion involves far more than preparing the choir.  A full production requires an orchestra (in our case, an orchestra performing on period instruments), and five vocal soloists, all of them especially adept at singing eighteenth century music.  Much of our success depends upon locating singers and players who can handle this very specialized repertoire. 

Our soprano soloist, Hannah De Priest, has been called a “natural Handelian” by Chicago Classical Review, and is especially sought after for masterworks from the high baroque.  Her opera credits include Belinda in Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas, Ïole in Handel’s Hercules, Drusilla in Monteverdi’s L'incoronazione di Poppea, Isabelle in Campra’s Le Carnaval de Venise, and Oberto and Morgana in Handel’s Alcina. As an oratorio soloist, she has performed major works by Handel, Mozart, Bach, Purcell, and Vivaldi, as well as newly-composed works, including Lost Objects, which was collaboratively written by Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe. In Chicago, she is a regular soloist with Ars Musica Chicago, an early music collective led by renowned harpsichordist Jason Moy. 

Hannah De Priest, Soprano

Hannah was recently the sole American finalist in the Concours Corneille, an international baroque singing competition in Rouen, France. She is an alumna of The Boston Early Music Festival Young Artist Program, the Carmel Bach Festival Virginia Adams Best Masterclass, and the American Bach Soloists Academy. She holds advanced degrees from McGill University and Case Western Reserve University. On the recital stage, Hannah collaborates frequently with pianist Michael Pecak. The duo was recently selected to participate in the prestigious Oxford Lieder Mastercourse and will perform Beethoven’s seminal An die ferne Geliebte in Chicago later this spring. 

Bass David Govertsen, who will sing the role of Jesus, is also based in Chicago, where he has been active as a professional singer for nearly twenty years, portraying a wide variety of opera’s low-voiced heroes, villains, and buffoons.  Mr. Govertsen has appeared as a soloist with numerous local and regional opera companies, including Lyric Opera of Chicago, Santa Fe Opera, Tulsa Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, and the Haymarket Opera Company.  He is a member of the vocal chamber quartet Fourth Coast Ensemble, performing art song in Chicago and throughout the Midwest. 

David Govertsen, Bass

As a concert soloist Mr. Govertsen has performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Grant Park Symphony, Santa Fe Symphony and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, among many others.  He made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2011 as the Herald in Otello with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Muti.  He is an alumnus of the Ryan Opera Center and the Santa Fe Opera and Central City Opera apprentice programs, and holds degrees from Northwestern University, Northern Illinois University and the College of DuPage.  Mr. Govertsen is currently on faculty at North Park University, Valparaiso University, Lewis University and the College of DuPage.