Category Archives: TFC

Oedipus Rex rehearsal with Maestro Levine

Posted on January 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

Last night was another shortened rehearsal for Oedipus Rex, as we took less than 50 minutes to run through all of our parts with Maestro James Levine (hereafter referred to affectionately as “Jimmy,” as most of us do).

Almost every other conductor we’ve sung for wants very hands-on experience directing the chorus and gives us very specific direction.  It’s usually welcomed, but it also sort of reminds me sadly of the classic office situation where executives approving something just have to make a few changes to make it feel like it’s theirs and to reassert their authority.  (I do it too, unconsciously, when I’m approving something for someone else… “In this copy, what if we change this word, and split this into two paragraphs…”).  Most conductors insist on these minor adjustments, sometimes inspired, sometimes shrug-inducing, that  satisfy some particular quirk of theirs but may or may not make the piece better.

It’s been a long time since I’ve sung for Jimmy, given his physical ailments that have kept him away from the podium for a few years.  But one thing hasn’t changed.  Jimmy is not a hands-on conductor during the piano rehearsal.  He’s there to watch and listen.  He lets John Oliver conduct us, and occasionally — I’d even say, rarely — interrupts to give us some sort of direction.

It is painfully easy to watch Jimmy during moments like these and conjure up the image of a special needs kid trying to keep up.  He is partially transfixed by the music, sometimes singing along with solo parts in an off-key warbling baritone, often rocking back and forth and constantly shifting position (to the point where I wonder if he has Parkinson’s), and always with a child-like smile on his face.  But it would be a mistake.  When he does give advice, it’s so quickly clear that he’s hearing about 50 more things than you or I will ever hear in the music.  Like when he slipped into a lecture about how it’s necessary to bring out the tension between the vocal harmonics and the sostenuto (the sustained, repeated timpani notes, which often is the only accompaniment.)

And yet, even with such limited involvement, we know he is capable of generating the most amazing concert performances.  Everyone gushed about how “transcendent” his Mahler’s 2nd performance was last October.  We saw a glimpse of this when he suddenly took over for John in the last part, reminding us of how to treat the final Vale, vale Oedipus. He reminded us that since “the end of each phrase as written is so sad,”  the character of the ending should be “the saddest thing you’ve ever heard.  We did it again, suddenly evoking a gentle pity that we found from ourselves more easily from the slower tempo he dictated and his (very brief!) hand movements as he led us through it.  Wow.  It will leave the audience breathless, that ending.

One funny moment: We were asking Jimmy about the character of the happy-go-lucky section which is at odds with the somber nature of the scene (blood gushing from Oedipus’s eyes after he pokes them out with the brooch from his hanged wife… not something you expect circus music from.)  Jimmy called it the “Tarantella from Hell,” and made an off-hand remark (I didn’t quite hear it) comparing it to all the Pops music we’d been singing this Christmas.  John took it a step further, pointing out how it was banal, cheap music for the mob — the spectacle for the masses — the stuff everyone wants to hear.  “You’re familiar with that by now, right?  Singing for the masses?”  Having each come off 7+ holiday pops performances… yes, we knew what he meant!

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First “real” Oedipus Rex rehearsal

Posted on January 3, 2011 | 1 comment

We have had an Oedipus Rex rehearsal at the end of November, but it really didn’t count. Last night was our first true rehearsal for Oedipus Rex, and it was everything I love about a TFC rehearsal: insightful, funny, helpful, rewarding, and short.

Insightful. During the rehearsal, John shared some snippets of background on Stravinsky that gave appropriate color.  He emphasized how Stravinsky saw himself as composing very mechanically and without emotion, as compared to contemporaries like Schoenberg.  All of those early 20th century composers were “running away from the 19th century” trying to find their own distinctive style and sound, and Stravinsky was no exception.  Practically speaking, it meant staccato notes were even shorter and more precise; cutoffs were as exact as possible; and duples and triplets, when those rhythms occurred, were as academic as possible.

Funny. John had his usual array of funny stories.  I loved his aside comment about being in charge of a boy choir once (and aging faster in those 2 years than any point of his life), as well as stories about his voice teacher who said he’d never be a singer but took him on anyway because of his musicality.  Dwight asked a question about whether we should be emphasizing the double L in ellum and John joked, “You know, that kept me up all night on New Year’s Eve,” and fired back with “What you’re doing sounds great” without really answering the question.  Ha!  Then, after practicing a section with crazy high speed runs, John started off his commentary with “there’s a C-natural…” and everyone burst out laughing because the notes are all so run together and approximated that there’s no way any of us freakin’ know where the C-natural is that he’s talking about.  He plowed on, “No, really, this is one people will be able to notice!”  (And he was right.)

Helpful. I may have the music memorized quite well, but there’s nothing like a live rehearsal to really lock in on a lot of the words.  John worked us hard on a few parts where the orchestra diverges from doubling us, to make sure those chromatic moments come through very clearly.  He emphasized the need to have a brighter sound, even a sharper sound, partially to cut through the characteristically heavy orchestration of Stravinsky, and partially to keep the harmonic motion as energetic as possible.  The before-and-after difference after mentioning this was quite noticeable, especially for the tenors who changed the character of one section from “sagging” to “interesting.”

Rewarding. I love walking away with new insights and a better understanding of the piece.  For instance, John at one point stopped drilling sections and warned us that it’s easy to shout while singing a piece like this, and in fact that’s what we were doing, was shouting.  He tried to explain this a few different ways: that voice teacher he spoke of before would say we were “singing on the capital and not on the interest.”  He encouraged us to get a better sound so that we would “avoid a hole in the tone” when singing against the weighty orchestration.  Nothing better than getting such hands-on feedback and then hearing the chorus as a whole adjust nicely to incorporate it.

Short.  I couldn’t believe it, but we walked out of there after only a little more than an hour of the three hours on the schedule.  I’m used to these ending early but this was great.  I attribute it to the fact that the chorus really sounded good, garnished a lot of compliments from John Oliver, and really didn’t need to work on a lot of the piece.  In other words, we did our homework well.

This is a busy week, with a piano rehearsal tonight with Maestro Levine, orchestra rehearsals Tuesday morning and all day Wednesday, and performances Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings.

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Oedipus Rex incoming

Posted on December 23, 2010 | 1 comment

Just before the Holiday Pops season began, we had our first run through rehearsal of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex. It was an unusual combination of dissatisfying, worrisome, and a savory whetting of the appetite for the piece.

This piece has an odd place in my heart, because it was the first time I ever sang with the BSO in Symphony Hall (despite having already been in the chorus for several years beforehand.)  I was given the green light to rejoin the full roster after a reaudition.  I found myself unceremoniously added as a last minute walkon to the Oedipus Rex roster.  I showed up to the first rehearsal having never heard the piece, as regulars on the roster had received music and a rehearsal recording about a month beforehand.  Not my preference for being introduced to a new piece!  It was a jumble of sight-reading notes and text and trying to keep up with John Oliver and the other choristers (who also may or may not have looked at the piece much  beforehand.)

The piece itself is more difficult to memorize than others we’ve performed.  The text is in Latin (thankfully… no crazy Russian from Les Noces) but not any standard liturgical Latin such as a Mass or a Requiem.  On top of that, there are many irregular repetitions of text, syncopations, and hemiolas which surprise the unwary.  Simply put, you just have to know it cold!

In any case, John Oliver was not available for this rehearsal so it was more of a read through than anything else.  Which is always a bit disappointing… while Martin is an excellent rehearsal pianist, it’s difficult to play AND conduct AND give corrective advice beyond notes and rhythms.  And that’s one of the reasons I like this chorus so much… less focus on learning notes, more focus on singing properly and capturing the essence of a piece.  It also was tough because any question about “where do you want us to breathe” and the like becomes “I don’t know what he’ll want, why don’t you wait for John at the next rehearsal.”  To be fair, though, for our first rehearsal, it was helpful to just get comfortable with the piece.

That’s partially what made the rehearsal worrisome… hoo boy, there’s a lot of text.  When I performed this with this chorus in 2006, we ended up actually using the scores on stage because our performance at the piano rehearsal was so mediocre and enough of us obviously didn’t know it well enough to be off book.  It was a tough decision and one that I think led to stricter rules coming down the next year about having a piece truly memorized.  So there’s a lot to chew on here.

Finally, though, it was gratifying to be with more than just a CD while singing the piece.  You get into the spirit of things much more when you’re actually in the rehearsal room and physically singing among the rest of the men, learning where the trouble spots are, and hearing how the blend is going to sound.  I’m really excited to revisit this piece again, and I hope it’s as rewarding as it was in 2006.

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Musings from the 2010 Holiday Pops season…

Posted on December 14, 2010 | 1 comment

Musings from this year’s Holiday Pops season…

There’s always a slight let down when John Oliver just does a quick run through at the rehearsals he attends.  I think a lot of chorus members wish he would more actively direct us in rehearsals as much as he used to in years past.  It’s certainly true that preparing for the Holiday Pops concert series is not particularly musically challenging, and that we like being given the benefit of the doubt that we can be good singers.  But we certainly appreciate it when he steps in to re-voice or re-balance a harmony.  Or when he offers us specific direction, either on technical matters like breath locations, dynamics, and proper breath support, or on interpretative matters such as a particular tone or character  required for a passage.  We don’t get as much of that for Pops as we might for, say, a Prelude concert featuring the chorus.  Even the best singers benefit from those adjustments.

On the flip side, the complaint often heard when Bill Cutter takes over a warmup is that he’s too anal with his adjustments and picks on everything we do.  Even though the end result is that he gives us those same tips and tricks that I think we appreciate from John.  The lesson?  People like to complain!  No surprise there… any group of people always have ideas about how things should be run.

In one of those warm up adjustments on Saturday, Bill told us to sing the Hallelujah Chorus “like it was the first time we’d sung it” instead of singing it “Pops style” by belting it out.  “Where’s the emphasis?  Ha-lle-LU-jah, not Hah! Le!  Lu! Yah!  The crescendo is built into the shape of the line.  Think about where you’re going.”  We rehearsed it and it sounded MUCH better.  Bill continued: “Now apply that to the Rutter and to ‘Light One Candle.'”  We did, and the look of appreciation on Keith Lockhart’s face was quite palpable.  In fact, he told our chorus manager afterwards to relay that “that was the best performance of ‘I Wish You Christmas’ so far this year.”  Warm fuzzies.

We used to get the Stink Eye from Keith all the time for bad mistakes.  I remember him once mouthing “What was THAT?” to us after a blown entrance, or him furiously beating time and tapping his eye to tell us to watch closer.  So far, haven’t seen that this year.  Either we’re doing better, or he’s mellowed.

One of my favorite Oliverisms made a repeat appearance at the tutti rehearsal.  “How many of you are piano players?”  Several proud chorus members raise their hands.  “That’s the problem.”  Then, amid slightly nervous chuckles, John explained that we were punching out all the notes, and he pantomimed a violinist using long bow strokes as he asked us to make the lines more connected.

And yes, that’s the same advice Bill gave us for the Hallelujah Chorus.   Usually as a chorus we’re good at taking direction the first time, but the blurring jaded nature of Pops concerts sometimes requires a few reminders.

I love the Pops.  It’s really quite a privilege to be part of the group, and I never forget that when I sit up there on the risers with the best seat in the house.  That said, the 7 required concerts can really wear you down.  I don’t understand how some people manage 9 or more concerts, but friends don’t understand how I can manage 7.  It’s still the toll you pay for the opportunity to “make real music” with the BSO during the winter and summer seasons.  Still, as we found out yesterday afternoon, there’s nothing preventing you from making real music with the Pops, too.  It’s all about the attitude, and making your smile on stage genuine instead of forced (or nonexistent.)

As a whole, we’re doing 37 concerts this year — I think that’s more than ever before.  The chorus manager sent us out 9 dates and told us we could choose to be excused from up to 2. More than a few chorus members did not read that email, and accidentally ended up doing all 9.  Once again, the power of opt-out vs. opt-in wins again.

We all rolled our eyes this year upon initially getting the music — oh no, we’re doing ‘Must Be Santa’ again?  My opinion changed dramatically when I found out it was one of the songs my 5 year old was learning in Kindergarten.  So far, I’d say it’s one of the biggest hits on the program.

Likewise, there was initial groaning when we saw at the orchestra rehearsal that “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Bring Them Home” would be performed with a series of pictures and videos juxtaposing military personnel celebrating Christmas away from home or being reunited with their families.  It felt vaguely political and cheesy at first, but the images were so touching they brought tears to my eyes as I thought of my own family.  And it’s gotten a standing ovation for each of the three performances I’ve been in so far.

The lesson, of course, is that this is why I am not paid to determine Pops program content!

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Reviews of Stravinsky and Mozart (and Mahler)

Posted on July 20, 2010 | 1 comment

Reviews have trickled in for last weekend’s concert.  They’re not as harsh as I thought they would be, which just goes to show that it’s always easier to be hypercritical of one’s own performance.

Of the Stravinsky, Jeremy Eichler of the Boston Globe writes:

This was a surely paced, elegant performance with fine singing from the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, conveying by turns the restrained serenity and the disquieting mystery at the core of this music.

We’ll take it.  As for the Mozart, he does not criticize the soloists as I did, writing:

Thomas and a keenly responsive chorus brought out the pathos and dark drama of this work, particularly in the “Rex Tremendae,’’ “Confutatis,’’ and “Lacrimosa’’ movements. Soile Isokoski, Kristine Jepson, Russell Thomas, and Jordan Bisch were the capable soloists.

For my wife’s performance of the Mahler 3, he notes that “The American Boychoir and the women of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus turned in lively performances,” and offers minor criticism of the players.  (The orchestra on Saturday were Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, not the BSO as on Friday.  My wife thought they played with much more pathos though admittedly less technical merit… most notably when Maestro Thomas had to snap at an oboe player to get him to look up and pay attention to the tempo!)

The New York Times was complimentary but not as kind.  It praised Maestro Thomas for “keeping a firm grip on the young band” to produce “superbly balanced sonorities and stunning climaxes” in the Mahler 3 performance, though the reviewer caught that “Mr. Thomas was reduced at one point to snapping his fingers, evidently in response to a missed entrance in the wind section.”  About the chorus, James R. Oestreich had a lot to say after all:

The Tanglewood Festival Chorus, which John Oliver has developed into one of the nation’s outstanding choirs, and which also performs with the Boston Symphony at its home in Boston, is celebrating its 40th anniversary, and its program here with the orchestra on Friday night, Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms” and Mozart’s Requiem, was particularly apt. […]

It was especially good to hear the 125-strong Tanglewood choir at full voice in the Mozart (with an orchestra about half that size). Now that decorously small, historically sanctioned choruses have become the norm in Mozart, it is good to be reminded of the punch this music can pack in an appropriate setting like the outdoor Shed. (Shaw used a chorus of 200.) And the singing was simply terrific, in moments of meditative quiet as well as at full throttle.

As usual on Mr. Oliver’s tight ship, the chorus performed from memory. Mr. Levine, in his time as the orchestra’s music director, has dispensed with a further trademark: Mr. Oliver’s favored seating plan, a complex interweaving of high and low, male and female, voice types. Now it is the standard left-to-right lineup: sopranos, altos, tenors and basses.

The Stravinsky performance made a listener usually disinclined to second-guess Mr. Oliver wonder too about the wisdom of pointedly performing from memory. In the first two movements, somewhat diffuse in nature, attacks were often tentative, rhythms and pitches imprecise, despite the chorus’s recent experience with the work in Boston.

But by the third and final movement, with its repetitive textual and musical phraseology, the chorus was singing with its customary assurance and flair, with splendid results. Mr. Thomas’s incisive approach ideally suited Stravinsky’s guarded effusions, and the orchestra improbably carried it through on a soggy evening.

Quite a bit there!  I’ve never heard any reviewer point out that we no longer interleave the voices like we used to a few years ago.  I admit I prefer that “hashed chorus” greatly to what we do now, since it lets you hear what else is going on much better.  Supposedly conductors enjoy being able to cue the singers like they cue the cellos or the woodwinds or the brass.  But if we’re waiting for our cue, then we’re already screwed.

This reviewer called out our tentative attacks, and I agree we had some.  I’m betting we didn’t all have this as solidly memorized as we have other concerts.  But there was a curious lack of cues from Maestro Thomas compared to his explicit conducting during the choir and orchestra rehearsals, and I think it threw us a bit.  I also disagree with the reviewer: I think the first movement of the Stravinsky was pretty solid, the second had some flaws (our laudate dominum refrains were not together), and the third was where I felt we were really sort of out there.  Still I wouldn’t castigate the memorization philosophy for these faults.

A third review appeared in the Times Union newspaper, though Priscilla McLean spent a good part of the article discussing  the history of the pieces.  About the performers herself, she mentioned:

Stravinsky’s orchestration excludes violins, violas and clarinets, but is otherwise complete, allowing the upper voices in the chorus to be clearly heard while becoming part of the orchestral palette. This was carried off by the voices and instruments flawlessly.

The “Psalms” seems a more dire, solemn piece than, surprisingly, Mozart’s “Requiem,” and the third movement of the Stravinsky is a hymn of praise, but sounding more dirge-like than joyous. The contrast of the chorus singing long narrow phrases over the busy orchestra, which had more complex contrapuntal and rhythmic lines, made for interesting listening, with excellent tempi and fine balance between the different groups.

[…] The sections that are Mozart’s shine with clarity and variety, and a strange joy. Of the four vocal soloists, the soprano Soile Isokoski had the purest sound[…]

The most poignant and hauntingly powerful section was the Lacrimosa, with the chorus and an ominously beating timpani. […]

Michael Tilson Thomas, the BSO, chorus, and soloists were consistently first-rate. It is a joy to attend Tanglewood and hear such wonderful quality performance.

I’m surprised that the Berkshire Eagle didn’t put out a review or that I didn’t find any more online.  If I do, I’ll add them here.

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My review of our Stravinsky and Mozart performance

Posted on July 17, 2010 | Leave a comment

If you compare last night’s performance to other performances of the Mozart Requiem I’ve been in or listened to, it was top-notch–well, except for that one blemish.  But if you compare it to what our chorus is capable of, I feel that we didn’t reach our potential for artistic excellence in that performance.   It really felt that both the Mozart and the Stravinsky Symphony of Psalms were pieces that we just sort of sleepwalked our way through, relying on our collective musical instincts.

And you know what?  I lay a big part of the blame for this on conductor Michael Tilson Thomas.   Honestly, I think he was sick… or maybe one of his dogs died… or maybe he read the Eagle review from last week criticizing him for being too wild on the podium.  Whatever the reason, the animated, smile-and-a-wink, conductor from our rehearsals–the one who knew exactly what he wanted to get–wasn’t present last night.  The wildly gesticulating, flamboyant crowd pleaser of the Mahler performance last week was subdued and even a little careless.  The result is we weren’t nearly as engaged as a chorus as we could have been.  Oh, there were a few moments where you could see the playful spark come back into his eyes and he started cuing instruments and getting us into it.  We were even starting to get into a rhythm with the Mozart until… it happened.

The Sanctus movement is one of three movements where the singing starts immediately.  No introduction.  No tempo indication to speak of.  Just a big downbeat and boom! we’re in.  We did the Dies Irae fine because we were locked in on him waiting for it.  We started with our Domine Jesu without issue, because he gave us a look and mouthed the word Domine reminding us to come in quietly.  But the Sanctus? He looked at us, smiled a bit, got prepared, and then looked down and gave sort of a quiet half-cue.  The entire chorus (except for two superstar sopanos) collectively went, “Uh, what?”  The timpani came in, and the orchestra strings sort of quickly made it in a bit late.  The rest of us… well… we started singing on the second measure.  Oops.  A slip-up like that really rattles both the conductor and the chorus and I never felt as locked in for the rest of the piece.

Coupled with that, everyone seemed to agree that the soloists were nothing special.  They all did their jobs, and wonderfully so, but there was nothing about their presentation, their singing style, or their interpretation that will leave a lasting impression, and there was nothing noteworthy about their voices.

Lest I sound too negative, I’d like to report that I felt we conveyed a lot of the detailed direction that MTT gave us for both pieces in our extensive rehearsals.  While I don’t have anything with which to compare our Symphony of Psalms performance except our practice recording, I feel we delivered a solid effort and that anyone familiar with the piece would have been pleased with what they heard.  And the Mozart, according to knowledgeable and trustworthy listeners, was a top-tier performance, missed entrance notwithstanding.  Again, I just wish I could have walked off the stage saying “YEAH!  We nailed that!”  Again, sort of like the Mahler last week, which by almost all accounts was a concert both the performers and the audience will remember years from now.

We’ll see what the “real” critics say… after all,  I’m just a bass.

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Tomorrow: Stravinsky and Mozart

Posted on July 16, 2010 | 1 comment

It’s all over but the actual singing.  Over 6 hours of, well, fairly brutal rehearsals later, with our brains stuffed full of notes and tiny adjustments, we’re ready for another great Tanglewood performance tomorrow night on stage in the Shed.  If you can’t be there in person, you can hear it in Boston on 99.5 FM, or streaming online.  Our concert starts at 8:30pm on Friday, July 16.

Why were the rehearsals brutal?  It wasn’t just the heat.  It was that Maestro Michael Tilson Thomas (“MTT”) is a nerd of a conductor (and I say that as a compliment.)  In other words, he is a technician as much as an artist.  As such, he is questioning and doubling back over almost every entrance, every nuance, every layer of sound.  He’s completely hands-on with the orchestra:  “Add a diminuendo in measure 6.  Make measure 15 poco meno forte so that we can hear the alto’s low notes.  Let’s go back and try the beginning again… no wait, stop, it doesn’t have the right character, make it warmer.  Let’s try it again.”  These are the things he will say in the course of a few minutes.  Repeat over two 2-3 hour rehearsals today, after 2+ hours with just him and the chorus yesterday .   We’d do a movement from start to finish, and then he’d tell us it was really great.  REALLY great.  Except… well, there’s just a few minor things to touch up…. and then we painstakingly go back through (forward or backward) and pick it apart.

So it can be a bit maddening, and sometimes you’re not really sure whatever adjustment he’s making is really going to have any effect in the long run.  But you have to admire his persistence.  He knows what he wants and he will interrupt and make us sing it again until we nail the particular character he’s looking for.  It’s nice to have such attention to detail and if we remember half of the things he’s told us we’ll have an excellent performance.  Nevertheless, it can be frustrating to keep starting and stopping and never really get a sense for the larger arc of the piece.

The Stravinsky Symphony of Psalms makes a lot more sense to us now than it did when we were learning it by the book and the recording.  Relationships between notes, rhythms, values, and tempos are a lot clearer.  The character of the piece shines through and we’re communicating it more efficiently.  Many choristers already sang this a few years ago but it didn’t have MTT’s touch.  (And did I mention he’s “hands on”?)  The pleading of the first movement, followed by the reflective second movement, and then the joyous dancing of prayers answered in the third — all should be captured well in our performance.

The Mozart Requiem has been a bit of an adventure as well.  Most of us think we know it pretty well, having sung it a few times either with the TFC or other choruses.  But MTT is looking for some specifics that I certainly hadn’t heard before, and they definitely make it better.  Subtle interplays between alto-bass and soprano-tenor dynamic and rhythmic counterpoints, where one group swells while another fades. A prayerful, solemn character added to some of the quieter parts that have often just been belted out in other choruses.  Some phrasing choices I hadn’t heard before.  The end result is a Mozart Requiem that is decidedly his own.

I hope the soloists are up to the task — the men are described as “up and coming” in their bios, and although they all have the pedigrees and the operatic voices, they didn’t seem to carry as well in the Shed during rehearsal.  But of course I was just spoiled by Stephanie Blythe singing Mahler’s 2nd last weekend, and her voice could fill up the entire western half of the state if she wanted it to.

Hope you hear it!

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Reviews of Mahler 2nd

Posted on July 14, 2010 | Leave a comment

The reviews are in!  And they’re pretty darn glowing.  Well, mostly.

Jeremy Eichler of the Boston Globe praised Michael Tilson Thomas for his ability to draw different emotional contexts out of the various movements.  About us, he wrote:

Mahler’s finale is one of the most memorable in his oeuvre, full of hair-raising music depicting the end of days, but also containing some of his most spellbindingly quiet passages, as in the hushed first entrances of the enormous chorus. The TFC here sounded magnificent, as it did singing at full throttle.

Lloyd Schwartz of the Boston Phoenix spent most of his digital ink talking about the intricacies of the performance, with more (well-deserved) praise for Stephanie Blythe’s voice than for the chorus itself.

Clarence Fanto of  Berkshire Living was more effusive, saying it was no surprise that MTT’s interpretation would be a “magnificent, insightful, thoughtful and viscerally thrilling performance.”

Superlatives abound whenever John Oliver’s chorus performs; the singers’ hushed entrance in the final movement (mysterious, very slow and a triple-pianissimo as Mahler instructed) was as delicate yet well-articulated as imaginable. When Tilson Thomas urged them on to sing triple-forte for the final lines of Mahler’s text (“Die shall I in order to live…”), their exclamation of joyous redemption lifted the rafters skyward.

The performance was so tightly focused and unblemished technically — even the off-stage brasses and the distant marching band — that an instant CD or MP3 download could be released with no touchups required. Some of us would gladly pay for the privilege of owning a memento of this memorable event.

Well, then!

Meanwhile, the more austere Berkshire Eagle was very harshly critical, calling the performance a “bumpy ride” and “idiosyncratic.”  The writer acknowledge MTT’s style as closer to Bernstein’s, but derided him for lacking Bernstein’s “structural coherence and molded sound.”  It sounds like Andrew Pincus was lashing out for the absence of James Levine, blaming the performance on “a visiting conductor” and comparing MTT’s “swirling, stabbing demands” unfavorably to “Levine’s more measured, though no less visceral, approach.”  Time to get over it, people!  We may not see James “J.D. Drew” Levine again.  About us, he acknowledged:

From its hushed first entry – one of the most stunning moments in all music – the Tanglewood Festival Chorus rose to almighty thunder in the concluding ode.

And because Tanglewood is regarded as a New York activity as much as a Boston one (you should’ve heard the concert-goer who told me afterwards that the performance was “auw’asum“), the New York Times weighed in too. Anthony Tommasini wrote a lot about the absence of James Levine, but he also delved into the performance.  He praised MTT for bringing “lucid textures and structural coherence” to the otherwise disparate movements of the work.  About us, he gave a passing of-course-they-were-good nod of appreciation:

[MTT] drew brilliant playing from the orchestra, magisterial singing from the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and inspired performances from the two vocal soloists […]  In the “Resurrection” poem by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, with Mahler’s added verses, the always impressive Tanglewood Festival Chorus (directed by John Oliver) sang with robust sound and sensitivity.

A New York Times blog post by Daniel Wakin included snippets of an interview with MTT about how he chose to interpret the piece, but the interesting thing there are the comments by the musical literati.  Some called MTT’s Mahler “the best there is” and others condemned him for making changes to the composer’s notes or called his conducting style superficial and showy.

Quite a roundup.  My thoughts on the performance will follow in the next post.

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Cacophony of Psalms: First rehearsal

Posted on June 29, 2010 | 1 comment

The first true rehearsal for the Cacophony of Psalms felt great.  Okay, it’s called Symphony of Psalms, technically, and I’m actually starting to enjoy the piece as I delve further and further into it.  But this is another one of those boy is the audience screwed if they’re hearing it for the first time sort of pieces.  You know… the songs that, once properly studied, I really begin to enjoy… but it takes several listening sessions to get comfortable with the… call it the sonority.

Here’s the first movement, in all its mechanical WTF-is-going-on glory:

There are 2nd and 3rd movement recordings here and here as well, if you make it through that one.  The whole piece is only about 20 minutes.

It was comforting to have John Oliver tell us that he was specifically looking for a mécanique style coming from the chorus to emulate the helter-skelter clock mechanism of the piano and accompanying instruments.  Time values snap into place with little or no rubato.  He doesn’t want anyone gliding between notes.  (One great Oliverism: in a later movement, the tenors move from an e-natural to an e-flat over a few beats, and John cautioned them: “That’s an express… it’s not a local train. You shouldn’t be making five stops along the way… go right from one note to the other.”)

I really appreciated John being so involved in the rehearsal–this is not a piece that can be done on autopilot nor one he can leave to the conductor to make adjustments.  He had insightful comments such as “you’re on the right note but your color is wrong.”  He warned some of us that we weren’t at the center of a pitch where we needed to hold a dissonance against the other parts.  He stopped us a few times to ask for a more focused, brighter vowel so we’d cut through the orchestration.  At one point he told us it was okay to open up and just make a very raw sound, because “the brass are so loud there they’ll cover it all up.”  Finally, at one point during a held long note on a diminuendo, he cautioned that many of us were “parking” on the note–we couldn’t just get softer and stop, we needed to finish the whole phrase and that meant a continuous decrescendo throughout the note.  “Don’t give up on it.”

John spent a little extra time with us basses on a few parts, such as making sure we landed on our opening G in the YouTube clip I’ve linked.  Though, as any time the director singles out a section to work with, you find yourself wondering after each comment, “Is he talking about ME?  Or the people next to me?  I *think* I was singing that right… hmmmm.”  I’ve been in at least one chorus where the conductor literally would keep breaking down a section into smaller and smaller parts (“just the back row… just you five people…”) until he found out who was screwing up.  Fortunately, John trusts us enough to figure it out.  It’s a powerful feeling… being surrounded by other very competent singers and working together to go beyond the notes and make something beautiful.  Well…. beautiful in its awe-inspiring mechanical spookiness, at least!

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Being Selected to Be Visible

Posted on June 15, 2010 | 2 comments

A 12-member TFC chorus had the distinct pleasure of singing the National Anthem with the Boston Pops for Game 5 of the Celtics this week.  Take a look:

A brief discussion broke out on some of our internal mailing lists and various Facebook pages, because these are the same 12 people who sang the national anthem at a Red Sox game.  In general, it’s clear that there is an “A-list” of singers who are invited more often to participate in television appearances and other special events (like when James Taylor needed some backup singers for his Tanglewood concert, recently.)

First of all, frankly speaking, those A-list singers are absolutely some of our best singers and they totally deserve to get the nod.  Secondly, everyone is VERY happy that the TFC was represented at the Celtics game, and vicariously thrilled for the 12 people who got to sing.  I don’t think anyone wishes them ill.  But, given the type-A extroverted go-get-’em personalities that almost by necessity make up the chorus, one can’t help but wish that they’d “spread the love around” and allow other singers a chance to make these appearances.

The way that chorus members are selected for rosters and gigs has always been (and will continue to be) a mysterious process.  Musical abilities come into play: your singing ability, the characteristics of your voice,  how you blend with others who might be chosen, and the work that’s being sung.  Dependability enters into it too: are you on time or frequently late?  Have you backed out of any performances at the last minute?  Did you still need your music when we were supposed to be off-book?  Chorus members joke that they only pick beautiful people to be on camera; doubtful, but certainly more energetic, emotive singers probably add a little something.  And I’m sure devotion to the chorus enters into it: some people have considerable seniority over others, some people have served on the Chorus Committee, some people have volunteered for extra Holiday Pops concerts or other tasks.  It all adds up to a decision that is handed down from the director and the chorus manager.

I’m Just Another Bass, and don’t expect to be selected for these sorts of things.  My voice is good but not operatic or dominating; I still need to work on the mechanics of my voice so that I sing more efficiently and more consistently.  But I think I know the role I’ve carved out in the chorus.  I’m great at hitting very low notes like in the Mahler 2nd.  I’m dependable and reliable.  And, I’ve been successful as a late addition to a roster when someone cancels out — I’ve jumped in with a few weeks to go and memorized very painful text (Oedipus Rex and its very nonstandard Latin comes to mind).  My goal isn’t to sing at the Celtics game.  My goal is to be good enough, in all the categories I listed, to be considered to sing at the Celtics game!

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