Where Does a Week Go?

Last Saturday (4/21) I went to a community sing, held at Advent Lutheran Church and featuring the Westminster Choir, one of the flagship groups representing the Westminster Choir College of Rider University. So, what is a community sing? We, the audience, actually sang portions of the concert along with the choir.

The program was Gloria in Excelsis Deo, Thomas Weelkes (c.1575–1623); Shenandoah*, Traditional (arr. James Erb); Taaveti laul No. 104 (Psalm 104), Cyrillus Kreek (1889–1962); Come let us worship, from All-night Vigil, Op. 37, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943); Heilig ist der Herr*, Andreas Hammerschmidt (c.1611–1675); Long Road, Eriks Esenvalds (b. 1977); Light of a Clear Blue Morning, Dolly Parton (b. 1946) (arr. Craig Hella Johnson); and Anyhow, Traditional (arr. Evelyn La Rue Pittman).
*Included the audience as performers (actually, we hummed and droned along with a couple of the other pieces).

This is a fine, well-rehearsed choir in a very nice, well-balanced community program. The Weelkes was a good, bright opener. Since we were part of the next work, the conductor (Joe Miller) put us through our paces with some breathing exercises, some stretching, and a light vocal warm-up. To me, very basic stuff, but probably a bit of an eye opener to some. The choir sang through the first verse of Shenandoah and then we sang it along with them. For the performance proper, the choir sang the first verse, men of the choir and audience the second, women of the choir and the audience third, all for verse four, with the choir finishing alone. Then we all applauded each other.

The choir performed the Kreek and the Rachmaninoff, with some additional humming and droning (almost “ohm”-like) from the audience. The first was to demonstrate creation of overtones; the second was to demonstrate the inclusion of performance space as part of the performance. In demonstrating overtones, we were treated to listening to one of the gentlemen of the choir who is able to produce a pure pitch with an “ooo” sound and then, by manipulating his tongue and other throat muscles, create the tune of “Amazing Grace” above his very own drone. Eerie, but interesting.

The Hammerschmidt was the centerpiece of “audience as choir”. We learned who were sopranos, altos, tenors and basses and then we were taught (we had photocopies) an eight-bar section of four-part harmony that would come back several times in the work. After the teaching period, the work began with the choir. When the eight-bar section approached, Mr. Miller turned and conducted the audience along with the choir. Indeed, in the last iteration of the eight-bar phrase, the choir was tacit and the audience performed alone. Great fun.

The Esenvalds involved a split choir, the Parton was a folksy rendition involving the audience with a few responses, as was the Traditional Anyhow (a spiritual new to me).

The choir sang a very well-deserved encore of Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho.

ConcertMeister (and performer!)
p.s. My pipes ain’t what they used to be.