Bound together by song

Bound together by song

From the Kansas City Star Tribune

Written by Ray Weikal
Wednesday, 04 November 2009 23:01

The human voice can be a powerful vehicle.

North Kansas City High School vocal music teacher Mike Shirley knows the strength of singing. He sees it every time his mixed choir gathers for practice and students from at least five different countries are brought closer together.

In the past 18 months, the transformative impact of corporate singing in Shirley’s choir was made even more obvious with the addition of five Karen (pronounced "car-rin") students.

The choir has become a kind of refuge, Shirley said, for young people who still have vivid memories of government persecution in Myanmar and life in squalid camps along the border in Thailand.

"The thing that’s so unique is that they came to this country where they don’t speak the language and they’ve managed to thrive at our school and in this choir," Shirley said. "They’re a really amazing group of young people."

With the help of North Kansas City Schools interpreter Paw Wah Tamla, student Bo Bo Htoo explained that the Karen are an ethnic minority that has been under attack for decades from the military dictatorship in the former Burma.

All five students have multiple family members who were killed by government forces, Htoo said.

"We moved to Thailand because the Burmese army came to our village and killed a lot of people," he said. "If my family had stayed, they would have been killed, too."

Most Karen are Christians, according to the students, and they practice a form that emphasizes corporate worship and community well-being.

Choral music, the students said, is a central facet of Karen culture. When they came to the U.S., singing at church and school became a way of staying connected with each other and building new relationships with their new neighbors.

"Singing is very important to preserve our ethnic group," student Eh Htoo Na said.

Kitty Robker works with students in the English-language learner program at North Kansas City High School. She was one of the adults who encouraged the Karen students to join Shirley’s choir.

"Some of the other staff and I noticed that they loved to sing," Robker said. "We’d find them sitting together at lunch, singing. And their singing is so beautiful."

As a way of educating his students about world music and to highlight the school district’s ethnic diversity, Shirley requires all of this choir members to come up with something they can perform that reflects their heritage.

During a show last year, Shirley’s Karen contingent sang the hymn "We Can’t Live Without Jesus" in their native language. The response from the other students was great, according to Eh Hit Kaw.

"People know more about where we’re from and who we are because of our music," Kaw said.

Day Three in South Korea

At Dr. Yoon’s request I gave a three hour seminar on composition for about twenty young composers, as well as a few choral conductors who attended. The topic was “Craft and Creativity” and my premise was that a composer needs to address both issues and strive for balance. We had a number of long discussions about this and also wound up on tangents that were pretty cool. I talked a bit about African-American spirituals and the arranging process there, and they had a few questions about jazz as well, particularly how to add jazz elements into a score effectively. There were some questions about writer's block (composer's block?) which were tough to answer as this is usually not a problem for me.

Dr. Yoon also asked me to give them names of American composers who are writing creatively for choirs. I mentioned Paul Crabtree, Matthew Harris, Ola Gjeillo, Stephen Hatfield, and the Canadian composer Stephen Chatman. I also found an opportunity to introduce the music of my friend Reg Unterseher to them; we examined his very beautiful setting of Sicut Cervus published by Oxford and I left Dr. Yoon with a number of Reg’s scores.

All in all, I think the seminar went well and I made a number of new friends there. The folks in attendance seemed to be very serious about their work, and I appreciated that they wanted to subject themselves to listening to me for three hours! I also realize just now as I type that the majority of those in attendance were young women- so it appears that new Korean music has strong female leadership which I think is wonderful. After that, we had a nice light dinner at a nearby restaurant and Kelley drove me back to the hotel. I then hit the neighborhood streets all by myself and explored the neon of the night as well as the street vendor alley areas which extend for long distances behind the main streets. Here you can find vendors offering yummy street food, amazing produce & grains, every kind of fresh seafood you could imagine, including little squids staring back at you with their big eyes, toy shops, carpet and textiles, clothing; you name it- it’s there. My last stop on the stroll was a sweet little bar/café called “So Cool”, which was decorated very quaintly. Here are some random photos I took on my stroll.












Next Post: Sightseeing in Insa-Dong and elsewhere, and a whole lot more Korean food!

Day Two in South Korea: The concert

(cool sculpture outside auditorium)

After the dress rehearsal Dr. Yoon, most of the choir management, my interpreter for the evening, and I grabbed a very light dinner at a sweet restaurant located within the Seoul Arts Center complex. The fare was mostly Italian, and that cuisine seems to be a favorite non-Korean fare, and is prepared quite well.




(dinner with very gifted composer Hyo- Won Woo and Dr. Yoon)


As concert time neared the lobby filled with more and more people and a great deal of excitement. These Incheon City Chorale concerts are seen as great events, and the audience would number over 2,000. I was glad to see a fair amount of families with grade school age children attending, even on a school night. The hall has excellent acoustics and in a few ways reminds me of the great hall design inside Disney Hall in Los Angeles- most noticeably the use of acoustically favorable woods on virtually every wall and ceiling surface.

The concert began with the Missa Brevis Incheon and the singers launched into it sounding fully warmed up and ready to make great music right away from measure one. Perhaps some other choirs would have started off a concert with a shorter, simpler piece to warm up the audience and their voices, but not this group. They sang the Kyrie with great sensitivity and at times the basses led the way in the sound. I had especially noticed the power and richness of the basses in Oklahoma City and knew that I could write passages which would be purposely be bass-led. The Gloria started with the whirlwind bravura passage I was worried about- but this really was of no great difficulty for them and they ripped through the movement with great power in the fast and loud outer sections, and with great sensitivity in regard to some intimate tonal inflections in the middle soft part-wow. The Sanctus was sung with even more exciting bravura- the movement never lets up its forward drive, and the final three cadences build in intensity and in more and more divisi until all of the singers wind up on a very complex chord in their high tessituras at fff. Their singing of the last two pages or so made my hair stand on end, and I knew they were enjoying themselves. The final movement, the Agnus Dei, is obviously more intimate due to its text, and my setting employs some very lush harmonies. Once again, the choirs richness colored the sound in a beautiful way. When the piece was over, the audience reacted quite favorably and Dr. Yoon asked me to speak to the audience briefly. Through my very nice young interpreter, I was able to thank Dr. Yoon and the choir and everyone there for their wonderful graciousness, support for the arts, and so on. I was very pleased with the audience response to my music both during the concert and afterward in speaking with many of them in the lobby. Incheon City Chorale has a pretty sophisticated audience attending their concerts, yet none of them are music snobs.

A few word about this choirs soundmodel- Dr. Yoon has assembled 48 professional singers in their vocal prime who project “formant sound” (sound filled with many rich overtones) in the way an opera singer is trained to project. This creates an amazing richness to the sound at all times, yet is still not at all impossible to “blend”, due to the commitment to fine musicianship from all involved. Dr. Yoon’s concept of choral tone should challenge English and American choirs who try to “blend” their sound by singing blandly toward some imagined warm and fuzzy goal; a mediocre goal which creates mediocre results. This type of non-resonant choral singing is actually becoming more and more a thing of the past- thankfully, because most of the time it just makes for a dull sound with no vibrancy or color, and also lacks any hope for wide dynamic range.

The balance of the serious part of the program were some of my spiritual arrangements- Go Down Moses, Peter go Ring-a dem Bells, and the quasi-spiritual (on an interesting text by Natalie Goldberg) My Friend Elijah, plus an amazingly gorgeous and sensitive performance of Book Six of Monterverdi’s Madrigals. The singing of the Monteverdi was worth the admission price all on its own, in my opinion. In the spirituals the chorale especially brought out the story and drama of Go Down Moses--it was very rewarding to hear Dr. Yoon’s use of very specific dynamics to do so. There were some hoots and hollers in the audience for the big fff ending to Peter Go Ring-a dem Bells, an ending I enjoyed constructing!

The final portion of the concert was what many in the audience were waiting for- folk songs and popular music which highlighted chorale’s love of showmanship and the joy they take in entertaining an audience (gee, could we start doing this more in the US?!). There were a number of pieces where the choir acted and danced, often with sly comedic intent. One of these was an a cappella arrangement of La Cumparsita wherein two of the singers in the choir strove boldly (but with winks and gestural asides to the audience) to outdance two professional tango dancers onstage. The audience roared with laughter as they sometimes danced well but sometimes flubbed too- but really their comedic talent gained the audiences favor, as all roared with laughter at the wonderfully broadcast inside joke. It was all a great witty choral/dance/comedy performance of great hilarity. What a great way to finish a concert for all the young people in the audience- to see that “classical music” could be deeply beautiful AND really entertaining and witty-- and not just for self-appointed aesthetes! Oh, by the way, the women of the chorale used three different outfits for this concert- all three were gorgeous and added some extra visual class and interest to the evening’s performance.

After the concert ended there was great excitement in the lobby- the audience and performers mingled, Dr. Yoon’s entire church choir was there to applaud him, everyone was smiling and taking pictures, many choir directors attending approached me and I chatted with many people. We did a lot of photos and I signed a few autographs (that still feels strange to do) ad everyone went home happy and fulfilled. I was driven back “home” to my hotel and I relaxed with a very nice bottle of Spanish red wine that just happened to appear there. All in all, this was my most rewarding evening ever as a composer and I was so thankful to all the many people who contributed to the evening’s fun and success.

Day Two in South Korea: Leading up to the concert

Day Two in South Korea:
Leading up to the concert

The plan for the day was for Kelley to show me around Seoul a little bit, get some lunch and then get to the dress rehearsal in preparation for the evening’s concert at the very impressive and architecturally attractive Seoul Arts Center, home to an amazing array of performing and visual arts.


Kelley drove me from my hotel on the south side of Seoul (south of the Han River) to the more prominent part of the city north of the river. We passed some very interesting sites, such as Gyeongbokgung Palace, and went up the hills past the South Korean president’s “Blue House” (hey, ours is white, theirs is blue!). Way up at the top there is a sweet lookout point with a restaurant and teahouse or two. We looked out from this hilltop at the amazingly large expanse of Seoul (pop. fifteen million, not even counting the additional millions residing in Incheon City and other immediately surrounding large cities) and had some tea. I opted for the most traditional Korean tea , as my goal on the trip was to steep myself in things Korean- haha, here I was literally steeping in Korean tea-- hey, I made a joke!


From there we drove back down toward the main city business district and had a traditional Korean lunch at a very nice restaurant. Okay, a traditional Korean lunch is about fifteen courses, an amazing assortment of soups, fish, vegetable dishes, noodles, gelled dishes; on and on the food comes! I was tanked by about course eleven , so Kelley had to be the good soldier and finish through to the last dish. For one who hasn’t tried this food it really is hard to describe, there are a few very spicy delicious dishes, yet others which are very refined and not spicy at all. It has similarities to other Oriental cuisines, yet still very much has its own strong identity. I also discovered that every kimchi is different (kimchi is a moderately spicy cabbage dish). And this pickle fan discovered that kimchi and pickles are the ubiquitous appetizer munchies presented at almost every Korean meal.



From there we went to the dress rehearsal. We grabbed an espresso near the concert hall and then headed in. The singers were already intently rehearsing Monteverdi and greeted me warmly. We then launched into the Missa Brevis Incheon and I was in heaven. They really understood the drama of the piece and were singing it with great artistry. The tonal/timbral qualities were exactly what I imagined they might be like (as I worked on my Finale files at North Carolina and at home) when sung now by these real, live, highly talented singers, and I couldn’t have been any happier. Dr. Yoon asked me for comments and/or criticisms, and really it was hard to come with anything. What a luxury! I did point out a few cadences for them tune a little tighter and a few English pronunciations that needed fixing on my African American spiritual arrangements, but that’s about all I could find to talk about. The dress rehearsal was so great, even with the singers cruising a tiny bit and saving their voices for the evening-- I knew the concert would be awesome.

Candid fun photos from rehearsal:







Next post: Day Two, The Concert

My Super Fun and Rewarding Trip to South Korea for the premiere by
the Incheon City Chorale of Missa Brevis Incheon

Part 1- The Background

If you have been following me on this blog, FaceBook, Twitter, my webpage, etc. you definitely know that I was commissioned by the Incheon City Chorale of South Korea to write a concert mass for them to premiere in October 2009. The commission came soon on the heels of my meeting the Chorale and their director Dr. Hak-Won Yoon in Oklahoma City during the ACDA 50th anniversary convention, where they wowed the audience of professional musicians to the max.

Dr. Yoon asked me to write a 15-18 minute piece (essentially a four movement “Missa Brevis”) which had to be written in about sixty days, which also happened to coincide with my challenging new summer job teaching at the amazing North Carolina Governor’s School for all of June and July. It wasn’t easy to make the time to sketch and write the piece while working such a challenging new job in North Carolina, but I knew it was important to make the time to write creative and challenging music for this amazing choir. I was able to complete the Kyrie while in North Carolina, write most of the Gloria, and have ideas and sketches for the Sanctus and Agnus Dei. Perhaps the most exciting thing was that a certain idea (quickly racing through tessituras) I had for the opening of the Gloria would perhaps be very hard to sing, and I was constantly curious whether it was really singable. But I knew this choir of virtuosi just might be able to handle it. And I was also fortunate that I could still hear the sound of the choir in my head as I wrote.

So the piece was finished after I got back home in early August and sent off via pdf file to Dr. Yoon. After awhile I heard back, Dr. Yoon and the singers liked the piece a lot and the singers especially loved the fast and forte Gloria and Sanctus. They loved the fact that I was allowing their abilities to shine and to challenge them to some degree. One interesting side note-- some pentatonic elements started writing themselves into the score while in North Carolina. I didn’t set out purposely to bring pentatonic, seemingly Eastern elements into the piece, they just kind of happened (I am one of those composers who often feels that a piece in progress takes over at some point in the creative process and seems to start writing itself). Actually a number of my pieces lately have had pentatonic elements to them- this just happened to have some of that as well (thought really only quite noticeable in parts of the Gloria).

Just about two weeks before the Seoul premiere of October 20th, Dr. Yoon informed me that a way had been found to sponsor a trip for me to Korea for the premiere. This was pretty exciting- I wasn’t expecting this to happen. Travel arrangements were made, and off I flew to Seoul on Sunday, October 18th, leaving O’Hare in Chicago about noon on Korean Air. The only other thing I had to do was make sure that Aidan, our six year old little guy, would know that Daddy would be back in five days- and not be gone the seven long weeks the poor little guy endured while I was in Raleigh, NC for most of the summer.

Next Post: Day One in South Korea

Music contributing to society- Bravo to Emporia H.S.

I happened across a mention of a performance of my fun "Mashed Potato Love Song" recently.

The Emporia(KS) Gazette ran this info last week:

Emporia High School Choral Department will present its annual fall concert at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the high school auditorium. More than 200 singers will be featured, representing five choirs from EHS, who are accompanied by Melinda Groves. The concert will use the theme, “If Music Be the Food of Love….Sing on!”

“All of the literature that will be performed on this concert pertains to the food theme,” said Sheree Stoppel, director of the choirs. “You will hear a variety of styles and time periods. We are asking the public to make a special donation at this concert in the form of canned or boxed foods for the Abundant Harvest Food Bank, instead of an admission fee. Boxes will be placed outside the auditorium doors for the donations.

“We are hoping the Emporia community will come and hear a wonderful concert and help support the food bank at the same time.”


I was compelled to contact Ms. Stoppel to congratulate her on the concert's goals, and asked her to e-mail back an update on the results.

Here is her response, and its truly great to see how much food they collected:

"The concert last night went well. Since I have a little over 200 singers, we filled the auditorium with family and friends. At last count, we had 449 food items donated! And Mashed Potatoes was a hit! The chuckles at the end of the song told us we'd carried it off. :) Also, the ensemble singers threw a little party today in rehearsal and one girl brought enough mashed potatoes for everyone to enjoy. With a little pool of butter, of course!"

Sheree and I are now FaceBook friends and I hope to meet her in person some day. Wouldn't it be "wunnerful" if every choir across the country did something like this AT LEAST once a year?

Bravo to Sheree Stoppel and all the Emporia High School students, their families, and their generous audience!

In Memorium: Alicia de Larrocha (May 23, 1923- September 25, 2009)

The brilliant, one of a kind Spanish pianist Alicia de Larrocha passed away a few days ago. She was always one of my favorite artists- an amazing interpreter of Spanish music and Mozart as well. Her recordings of Granados and other Iberian composers will always be the yardstick by which other pianists are measured when they perform that repertoire.

I especially loved how she could, when the music required it, make the piano sound like the percussion instrument it is, yet in an instant change to the most gorgeous, warm tone imaginable. Her uniquely personal mastery of color, finely shaded internal voices and sophisticated, nuanced phrasing was something to marvel over.

I was fortunate to hear her live twice, once in the early 1990's and then again, at one of her last performances (at the Chicago Ravinia Festival, not sure what year, early 2000's I believe).

The first performance was memorable in a couple ways. What was endearing to me was the following; she started the program with a simple Sor sonata- a warm-up piece and really something most any advanced fourteen year could play. At the end of the exposition, there was a little “stinger” tonic tone in the left hand. Ms. de Larrocha missed the note, landing in the cracks and immediately made a nasty face to herself (weren't we all taught not to do that in public?!). This certainly didn't bother me- I was there to hear her interpret the Granados Goyescas, and who cares about a little flub? So I grinned a bit about the flub and her sour face, and then when she repeated the exposition she missed the note again,and made an even more sour face! I just thought it showed what a perfectionist a concert pianist of this caliber is and how much pressure there is from without and within. The flubs and the faces actually endeared her to me- she obviously was not a robot, but instead, a deeply spiritual and talented human being. (this actually reminded me just now of an appearance by Garrick Olsen on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show back when classical musicians still were welcome in mainstream media- he was playing the Debussy Feux d'artifice [Fireworks] and missed the fff low A, hitting the cheekblock of the piano next to the low A with full force -ouch!).

The rest of de Larrocha's recital was a revelation. I had been bashing horridly through the Goyescas at home for awhile and discovering that all its layering of voices is truly difficult to pull off. I wanted to hear it played by its master, so I brought my score with (yes, nerdy) and followed along as she played. It was just amazing to hear her float across the piano and make all of these intertwining lines make sense horizontally and still maintain an amazing vertical sound, wow! In my opinion, this is one of the hardest things to do as a pianist, maintain an artistically convincing balance of the horizontal and the vertical without one or the other being favored to the detriment of the score.

One of the section of Goyescas I was especially looking forward to hearing her play that day was the section usually translated as “The Lady and the Nightingale”. This is a gorgeous lyrical movement in three parts; first some introductory melancholy tonal wanderings of the lady, followed by the main section, a fully developed and richly harmonized melody which Puccini would have paid money to attach his name to, followed by the final page where the nightingale sings. This page of birdsong is so intensely beautiful that if it doesn't touch you, it would prove you have no soul. So as she played this page I just melted and certainly wasn't following the score anymore- just soaking up the moment of pure magic from composer and interpreter!

The Ravinia performance a few years later was a bit different. She had definitely lost some of her powers technically, but that was, of course ,of no importance to the audience. What we all wanted was one last chance to hear her artistry. The other thing that happened at this performance was some stupid stupid person's cellphone rang twice during the same piece of music- Lord. After Ms. de Larrocha finished the piece she retreated backstage at which point Ravinia management came out and handcuffed and led away the transgressor (nah, kidding- but they did come out and sternly told the audience to turn off their damn phones!).

So Alicia, you will be missed greatly by music lovers the world over. Thank you so much for all your amazing performances and recordings.

Trivia item #1: Enrique Granados passed away in the icy waters of the Atlantic- he was sailing in a ferry that was torpedoed by the German navy. He was only 48 years old. Think what amazing music he might have written had he lived longer- he was certainly expanding 19th-early 2th century tonality in his own Spanish way.

Trivia item #2: Spellcheck does not like the word “Goyescas” and would prefer the word “escargot” be used in its place- huh? I have decided to not allow spellcheck to have its way.

9/11

The Leaves are Falling (adaptation of Rilke's Herbst)


The leaves are falling, falling as if from afar;
Wither'd they fall from distant gardens of the sky.
And through this deep night,
The earth falls away from the stars into solitude.
Yet the leaves, the earth, our souls, are gather'd, gather'd gently.

Tears of laughter

This is from a blog awhile back by Jonathan Miller, the director of Chicago A Capella, a very fun and talented professional chamber choir in Chicago. I love the fact that Jonathan talks about music affecting people in a personal way, and I certainly enjoy hearing about how silly music, not just serious music, can make life special (and a piece of mine plays a small part in this).



Jonathan Miller
Making Someone Happy
Mon, 7/9/2007

Last weekend, Chicago a cappella had a special performance, along rather unusual lines. A longtime patron was having a big birthday, and his wife hired us to go the Unitarian Church of Evanston for a surprise party and concert.

Sometimes it's hard to know if you're affecting someone, but this was not one of those times. The fortunate birthday boy, Craig (who was turning 50) sat up in the front row, enjoying all of it. One of the requests was the hilarious song by Paul Carey, "Mashed Potato/Love Poem" from the cycle "Play With Your Food!" We hadn't sung it in a few years, and it was wonderful to once again witness that song's effect on an audience.

It was especially touching when Kathryn Kamp and Betsy Grizzell sang a duet that had been written for Craig's wedding thirteen years ago. Then we sang "Happy Birthday" in wonderful harmony, with all the people who had gathered in that reverberant space. At that point, Craig said, "I don't know if my heart can take much more of this," to which I replied, "Okay, we're done!" (which we were).

I have often taken pride in the intimate connection we have with our audiences, even with 300 people in the concert hall. This was a lovely occasion when the intimacy was the total point, and all of the singers totally delivered.

To Amy, Kathryn, Susan, Betsy, Trevor, Hoss, Aaron, Matt, and Ben: thank you.

To Craig and Judith: thanks to you of course, and congratulations, and many happy returns!

Have a good week.

* 1 comment




Craig's 60th birthday
Wed, 7/18/2007 - 10:49am — Judith

I heartily recommend CAC for a festive occasion! Almost two weeks later, Craig is still talking about the performance and how moved he was and so are our friends. He laughed so hard at the Mashed Potato song that he couldn't catch his breath and tears were streaming down his face (although that might have been sweat, as it was 95 degrees outside and the church has no air conditioning where the party was held).

A score is not music

Doing another visit to a choir premiering a commission I wrote for them- I just feel more and more that the key to a great performance is memorizing the darned music!

At the last few clinicians gigs I have done or visits to choirs about to premiere a commission I have written for them I simply get to the point where I just tell them.. put down your scores and just sing! The INSTANT they do this they are watching their conductor better(most of these choirs I have visited recently really do love their directors), hearing other parts better, hearing vowels better and thus tuning better, matching rhythms better,you name it. EVERYTHING is better without the score distracting from the actual music. And we all need to constantly remind ourselves and each other that a score is not music, right?

So the next point of my rant is that everyone should be doing their concerts from memory- everyone. Or at least, do some of the concert pieces from memory, and this should even include community choirs, who often give their aging brains as an excuse for not even attempting to memorize anything. From what I have read lately, working the brain harder by memorizing music would be very beneficial for the health of those "aging brains".

Memorized pieces will always come off better with an audience for so many reasons, and really do force the weaker singers to do their work. They can no longer hide behind the score and fake things. The message is sent that 1) we are serious about our work 2) let's let our audiences notice this as well when they see us singing from memory. A choir memorizing music will always be capable of far better performances and hopefully be more inspiring to listen to and watch.

I recall a choir at the recent ACDA convention in Oklahoma City. Most choirs sing from memory at important events like this and are very prepared with their performances. In addition, they only have time allotted to sing about a half-program anyway. Yet, there was a community choir from the Southeast who read from their scores for their entire performances, and were pretty much buried in their scores. Their results were atrocious and they did not belong at the convention. It was pathetic to see how under-prepared this choir was, but the bottom line blame has to go to their director- he allowed it to happen. If these singers had been made to memorize their music, there would have been no way that they could have slid through in such an underprepared way- I am certain of this.

And besides, isn't it a joy to hear people singing beautifully, and isn't it glorious to see the shining faces of an entire choir opened up to their director and the audience as they do so- without their faces buried in a score? I rest my case.