It was so worth it! Pacific Mozart Ensemble should feel proud and humble. Yesterday we accomplished a very rewarding and equally challenging concert program. It was the final concert of “The Little Match Girl”. I took today off because I am so exhausted. Granted, I have extenuating circumstances that made my weekend even more tiring, but this concert was just plain demanding.

The program was well thought out, with intelligent and beautiful music. It featured compositions about women, one a pulitzer prize winner, and also some young composers. It was refreshing to be singing about women and feminine energy during the holiday season, when choral concerts are usually exclusively oriented towards Christmas. It is especially gratifying to perform the work of someone who is developing as a composer. There is a special responsibility to deliver the piece in a way that he or she can experience the realization of their ideas in a live situation. I can only imagine how that informs their process.

Especially gorgeous was Michael Roberts’ “Cast Thy Bread Upon the Waters”. It was my favorite, for personal reasons. It explored the same space as Match Girl, where pain and joy merge, in a musical vocabulary that is perhaps more accessible. Michael was there, and I hope he was pleased. When he stood up to be acknowldged, I felt so humbled to think that he had etrusted us with his music.

Actually, it is hard to say that any one piece was more beautiful than another. They were all wonderful. I had friends in the audience who said that every piece was great. I was surprised that the carols we sang with the audience at the end were what had me crying. Watching the joy in the audience as all 200 people joined us was overwhelming. Also I think I was working too hard to feel much emotion until then.

I wonder if the audience knows that the conductor and singers have their attention on dozens of technical details at every moment to create an experience for them. I stand in the back row, where it is difficult to hear much more than the people on either side of me, so I don’t get the experience of hearing the ensemble the way they do. Also, I am listening specifically for mistakes in the alto section, so we can fix them. The altos had three extra sectional rehearsals to prepare for the concert, which is perhaps a record for us. Modern music is often deceptive. Transitions from one section to the next are unexpected. Tempos change often. Voices alternate between leading and background in unusual and dramatic ways. Tuning can be challenging, as are tone clusters. And then there is just learning the piece, spending whatever time you personally need to be able to stand in the group and hold your own.

David Lang’s “Little Match Girl” is a special challenge with its polyrhythmic and range challenges and the pristine silences. You don’t want to “step in the hole” as we say, that is to sing into a silence, and this piece is built around the silences. It is like racing your bicycle along a street that is filled with potholes and rocks. You might avoid the big potholes but the little rock at the edge of the road makes you wobble or even crash. If you do, you must get right back on the bike and back into the peleton. Not quite, but you get the picture.

The honor of performing David Lang’s “Little Match Girl” was one that no one took lightly. This piece won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for music, an honor shared by the likes of Aaron Copland, Virgil Thompson, Gian-Carlo Menotti, Ornette Coleman and Wynton Marsalis. We gave its West Coast premiere. Talk about pressure. It was gratifying that KQED’s Cy Musiker gave the concert a plug. Those who were there were so lucky. Lang’s piece gave them a unique experience. Everyone I spoke to indicated in words or just with gestures that “Match Girl” opened a wide, wide space in their heart. Often they didn’t have words for what it did, always the best response, if you ask me.

I have been wondering how many man-hours this concert took to produce. This is off the cuff but for me it was perhaps 28 hours of regular and dress rehearsal and 6 hours of sectional rehearsal. Another 20 hours of personal practice, say 6 hours preparing for sectional responsibilities, 3 hours talking with others about our process, 12 hours travel time, 2 hours communicating about the concert with potential audience and dealing with my friends” ticket concerns, 2 hours shopping for ways to better organize my music, 10 hours on the two concert days. I can safely say that I spent the equivalent of two work weeks. Please don’t imgine that I am complaining. Doing this is my great joy. However, multiply that by 50 and add the work of our conductor, administrator, board members, marketer, webmaster, program creator, sound and lighting technicians, hosts, stage manager, volunteer coordinator and volunteers who man the door and sell the albums,… I am sure that I am forgetting plenty of folks…it is an impressive commitment of time all spent to give our audience a brief experience that will move their soul and hopefully open their heart. I am convinced that humans need music and story as much as we need food and shelter.

So today I am a dishrag. The last two weeks I felt tight with worry, lost sleep, and fretted over not finding enough time to squeeze in extra practice so I could NAIL every moment. Was it worth it? You bet!

-Peggy Rock, Alto Section Leader

Technorati : Dave Brubeck, David Lang, Little Matchgirl Passion

Now we are on to the big recording project, Dave’s three movement work entitled Canticles (performed in our Winter ‘08 concert). We’re working in the St Albert Priory Chapel in Oakland. The space is beautiful, and almost completely hidden from the traffic in nearby Rockridge. As you can see, I became obsessed with one very cool stained glass window in the back of the Chapel. There is a scene on each side that involves the flames of hell. On the left we see devout, praying individuals ascending away from the flames. On the right we see the damned falling down in to the flames, eventually gobbled up by this crazy cool beast. I especially got into the flames. Ah, but enough about cool windows…

As usual, the chorus is rising to the challenge. This recording is probably the highest quality project we’ve self-produced. Often we produce recordings of our live performance. The live nature of those recordings allow for slight blemishes. In this case, we have to make sure everything is pristine without, of course, sacrificing the passion and intensity the piece requires. A tall task, especially on a Friday night after everyone has been working all week. Amazingly we got through a mountain of material in a very short time and it sounds great!

But enough of my prattling. Here’s a slide show of pics so far:
Brubeck Canticles Recording Pics

-Eric

Technorati : Dave Brubeck, St Albert Priory

October
Performances with Meredith Monk and her ensemble. The piece is Songs of Ascension. The stairs on a pyramid, the vaulted ceilings of a cathedral, the pilgrimage up a mountainside are all inspirations for this compelling new piece.

One performance will be at Stanford and the other set of benefit performances will be site-specific, at Ann Hamilton’s Tower on the beautiful Oliver Ranch in Geyserville! One of the rehearsals will be recorded for a commercial film!

For more photos of the tower, follow this link: Tower at Oliver Ranch

December
We will be collaborating again with the Grammy-nominated Quartet San Francisco on works of Dave Brubeck. We will sing the entire triptych, Canticles, along with several other Brubeck choral works including 2 with texts by Harlem Renaissance poet, Langston Hughes.

January
We will record a CD of the Brubeck works.

March
We will produce our annual fundraiser in a new venue, with a new format. This is your opportunity to present a solo based on a theme (to be announced).

June
Our brilliant Annual Jazz and Pop concert set, 3 performances of the best singing anywhere! Intriguing arrangements, amazing voices.

These are the events on our calendar. As you know, recently we’ve had some great opportunities that pop up during the season. Perhaps something life-changing will appear!

In any case, we have a fulfilling season ahead of us.

I look forward to seeing you soon!
Lynne

Technorati : Dave Brubeck, Langston Hughes, Meredith Monk, Oliver Ranch

I don’t know all the details, but I do know that this project is very important to him. We get little notes now and then (ok, Dick, gets little notes and shares them with us). As I understand it, we are trying to get this thing recorded so he can shop it around for a full-fledged release. Frankly I could care less about that. I’m just loving the experience. There’s a tight time crunch and the music is seriously non-trivial. That said, the quality of singers assembled and the sheer joy on Dicks face when it starts to come together are making the process itself a blast. I know that when we are done we’ll have something we can be proud of, and I know Dave (he let’s me call him that) will be pleased.

So far we’re about half way through. We’ve had two sessions at Skyline in the big room. We’re running a working experiment playing with the texture of the piece through selective doubling. That means ~25 singers are all jacked into the headphones. We sing through a section once, then sing along with the tracks we just made. That’s a lot of singers singing and listening at the same time. Logistical nightmare you say? Well, I think it’s only been a nightmare for the ones making it happen (John soldering headphone boxes late into the night, Bryan listening to 25 different people ask for their own headphone mix). For the rest of us it’s been easy peasy. The whole thing is paying off though. We got one of those notes from Dave last night. Dick sent him a rough mix of our first couple of pages and he loved it! Tomorrow we’re back on and I can’t wait.

For now here’s a mess of pics from the 1st couple of days.

-Eric

Technorati : Dave Brubeck, Skyline Studios

So last night Dave dropped by with his wife and producer to see how we’re doing. To set the scene I have to mention that the piece is freakin’ hard. It’s got some really unforgiving passages that test the stamina of the group, some poly-tonal stuff that challenges our ear and goes really really high. The poor Sopranos are way in the top of their range for most of the piece. That said, there are some very cool moments and we worked really hard to get them right. Over the last week there have been 3 extra note rehearsals, a lot of woodshedding and a bit of handwringing.

The result? See for yourself! Dave was very happy. There were some awesome moments when we’d hit a section and he’d throw back his head letting out a little whoop! Boy was that rewarding. Even the normally gruff Russell was appreciative. I believe he actually gave some praise to the Altos. Lynne was working her ass off but I think Dick was in heaven. It’s one thing to meet a musical hero. It’s another thing to actually work with said hero on their music. All in all it was a successful night (topped off with a little B-day cake for yours truly)

Here are the pics from last night
-Eric

Technorati : Dave Brubeck, Mozart