Organ Bliss in Seattle

For me, one of the highlights of the annual Tallis Scholars Summer School in Seattle are the performances of Joseph Adam, the organist at St. James Cathedral. He and Peter Phillips have established a tradition whereby Joseph lets Peter pick what he would like to hear for the Postlude after we sing at the Mass on Wednesday night.

It's always great, but this year's choice was an absolutely mind-blowing tour de force. The prelude was very beautiful, and a piece I hadn't heard before - Scherzo, op. 2 by Maurice Duruflé. I've sung and heard a lot of Duruflé this year, as my New York choral director, Dr. Thea Kano, specializes in his music. So it was lovely to hear the Scherzo, which was exactly what I've come to expect from this composer - intensely personal, ethereal music written by an organist who was clearly influenced by Debussy.

The big payoff was a 25-minute Postlude, a stunning performance of Franz Liszt's Fantasia and Fugue on "Ad nos, ad salutarum undam." You can expect to be awed by any performance of Liszt keyboard music, and this didn't disappoint. The huge, sweeping performance on the double organs was so powerful that you could actually feel it - something akin to standing close to a helicopter landing!

Joseph is really a treasure. He sings with us, too, which makes our alto section that much better. His work is a unique and special part of the Seattle TSSS experience.

Silence

Dateline: Seattle. Tallis Scholars Summer School

We're wrapping up - checking out of rooms, returning music, exchanging addresses. It is going to be very hard to go back to my regular choir. I have loved working with such an accomplished group of singers...and what a joy to rehearse without all the parts being banged out on the piano.

I know it sounds crazy, but I loved the precision of the diction. The air was full of spittle as we enunciated the concentrated words of the Miserere....and 59 singers articulated two precisely placed "t"s in the phrase "et tibi dabo" from Tu Es Petrus.

After the concert last night, we walked back to the chapel to sing Compline for the last time. At the end, Andrew asked us to sing the 8-part Crucifixus again. It was far better than what we did in the concert - powerful and charged with emotion. Omar and I talked about it later, and he put it best: I left my heart there, with the Crucifixus.

I think we all did.

Tallis Scholars Summer School Gala Concert

Dateline: Seattle. Tallis Scholars Summer School

It's hard to give an actual review, since I was one of the performers. But I can say that the concert was very well received, we felt as though we did very well, and our tutors were smiling. It was actually easier to sing the new music that we've learned in the last few days than it was to sing the Mass, which we hadn't sung since Tuesday. It was solid, but I will admit to having a few "where are we again?" moments!

Paula (one of the sopranos who sang with us on "In Pace In Idipsum") and I were talking this morning about coming back next year. The best way to describe this remarkable week is that it's a once in a lifetime experience that you can repeat over again. I can't wait.

The Pilgrim's Progress

Dateline: Seattle. Tallis Tutors Summer School

At the beginning of the week, I was counting madly to find my entrances, just trying to stay alive in the flood of polyphonic sight singing. By mid- week, I was a better reader and counter than I’ve ever been before. Now, at the end of the week, I’m working on doing less counting and more listening. I am familiar with these compositions now, and if I listen to the singers around me and watch the conductor, I should know where to come in as part of the musical line moving forward.

This means, ironically, that I’m making more mistakes now than I was a few days ago, when I was counting every bar very precisely. But, I know that I am singing more musically. I’ll try to keep the mistakes to a minimum tonight!

Final Concert Tonight

Dateline: Seattle. Tallis Scholars Summer School

We've all been remarking that our sense of time is completely off this week. Often, when you're doing something really pleasurable, time just flies by. This is different. Although we all are certainly enjoying the experience, time moves very, very slowly. Perhaps because the days are so full, things that happened in the morning feel like days ago by the time we reach Compline in the evening.

So, as we come to Friday evening and our final performance, we're all feeling as though we have been here forever. And, although it seems impossible that we would have learned that huge folder full of music, we have. I am really looking forward to singing tonight.

Notes from Rehearsal

Dateline: Seattle. Tallis Scholars Summer School

We've been working on a second arrangment of the Lotti piece, Crucifixus à 10 (ten separate voice parts). Peter Phillips was very excited - well, excited is not quite the word for this very measured and thoughtful man - but he was eager to hear us read through it. He had just found this version, had never heard it performed nor found a recording of it. So we sang it aloud, allowing everyone to hear it for the first time. Phillips decided that it is interesting enough to perform along with the 8-part version. "I think Lotti was having fun when he wrote this - it sounds like an experimental piece."

Yesterday, as we rehearsed it, Peter was conducting and tutor David Woodcock was observing and listening from a seat behind him. Finally, his face like a storm cloud, David strode to the podium and whispered furiously to Peter. Phillips turned to us and said "He's really cross. He doesn't like the crescendo/decrescendos in the brackets, nor the ritard marked at the cadence." Woodcock retorted "It goes against everything we have been saying all week. Where's the phrase going?!" Peter said plaintively, "Well, it's the only edition I could find, anywhere in the world."

I had not understood, before working with them, why this group calls themselves the Tallis Scholars. In fact, these kinds of passionate but good-hearted debates go on all the time, as they struggle to determine what is truly an "authentic" score as the composer would have written it, and which are "unauthentic" markings that have been added later, by editors. Several of the pieces we will be singing in the concert are editions edited by Peter Phillips or Andrew Carwood, who have researched the pieces and reached a determination of how they believe the score should read.

Twice today, Peter said "Well done." High praise. We're getting there.

The Sharing

Dateline: Seattle. Tallis Scholars Summer School

I had been feeling very nervous about the Sharing, where we all gathered in the Chapel and sang the "small group" pieces that we have been rehearsing on our own this week. I was worried that our two pieces were imperfect, not musical enough, not "ready for primetime."

In fact, there was a wide range of pieces, some much more difficult than others, some more polished than others. The room was unfailingly supportive. It truly was a non-judgmental "sharing" among people who have worked together all week and who appreciated each piece for the accomplishment it represented.

And "Duo Seraphim," which we just started rehearsing this afternoon, was very well-received. Click on this link to hear the performance. Duo Seraphim

I've had very different experiences in the past. The classical music world can be very competitive and terribly unkind, and this is a roomful of high achievers. I shouldn't have worried. The warm acceptance of all of us, warts and all, was wonderful.

I really hope that I can come back next year (and ideally, for years to come). This is a rare musical experience.

Random Bits Part 3

Dateline: Seattle. Tallis Scholars Summer School

• A Palestrina discussion, after a question from the 2nd Altos about whether they could move the syllable “num” to a different note, putting them in synch with the rest of the choir. Peter Phillips finally said, “Feel free to ignore that because I’m here now……” His voice trailed away as we all mentally finished the sentence, “….and he’s not.”

The printed music comes with little or no dynamic markings, and the performance notes I’ve marked in my copies say things like “gentle,” “suppressed excitement,” “very, very spacious,” or at one particularly big moment, “pile in like a rugby scrum.” This is something that Peter Phillips feels quite strongly about. In his words: I don’t like the rigid thinking that goes along with dynamics. You go suddenly into a 19th century sound world when you start thinking about the music that way.

• On our struggle to maintain the pitch as three separate units (the 5-part choir, the 4-part small group, and the men doing the chant) rehearsed the Miserere: I’m sorry about the pitch crisis that just infects this piece. When Mendelssohn heard it performed at the Vatican, he recorded the fact that the soprano was singing high “C”s, and he also noted that it sank a minor third – so we’re in good company.

Desert Island Disks

Dateline: Seattle. Tallis Scholars Summer School

We've had an informative lecture each afternoon from one of our tutors. Today was something different. Andrew Carwood and Janet Coxwell did a live version of the venerable BBC 4 Radio programme, Desert Island Disks. The format of the program is simple - the interviewer (played by Jan) asked the guest (played by Andrew) to imagine that they are going to be left on a desert island. The guest plays excerpts from the ten recordings he must have with him, as well as naming the book he would take (in addition to the Bible and complete works of Shakespeare, which are already magically on the island!), and a single inanimate, totally useless item.

We learned a lot about Andrew and his journey to where he is today, and the end was quite bittersweet, as he is leaving the group to take the post at St. Paul's.

Andrew Carwood addresses the group. (Photo by Bill Pannill)

The exercise got me thinking about my own choices. My ten disks would be:

1. Monserrat Caballé 's recording of Puccini's Tosca, so that I'd have the heartbreaking aria "Visi D'arte."

2. The Fauré Requiem. The imploring lines of "In Paradisum" are so powerful. Can't sing it without crying.

3. Traffic’s 1972 album John Barleycorn Must Die so that I can dance to “Glad.”

4. The Who: The Ultimate Collection so that I can sing “Who Are You?” when I want to get my circulation going.

5. Benjamin Britten The Ceremony of Carols. I love the mix of Medieval and Contemporary in this cycle.

6. Mendelssohn Elijah. What great drama in this oratorio! And, I love to sing the a cappella SSA trio “Lift Thine Eyes.” Guess I'll have to do one part at a time on the desert island.

7. Stravinsky Oedipus Rex. I know this isn’t his most brilliant work, but what a dark, moody, brooding choral piece. Love it.

8. Chopin Nocturnes, as recorded by Artur Rubenstein. Sometimes you just need to weep, and this will do it.

9. Leonard Bernstein’s Chicester Psalms. For me, Bernstein is the quintessential American sound (and will endure better than Aaron Copland, whom I also love, on my desert island).

10. The Theme from Peter Gunn, by Henri Mancini. Absolutely killer. One of my favorite pieces of music to drive by. This masterpiece was our inspiration for the theme song of The Upside Down Show, a preschool television series that just won the Emmy for best title sequence.

My Book: Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson. This remarkable book has been described a transcendent novel about fathers and sons, loneliness and love, faith and family. I see it as an exploration of what it means to be in a state of grace. Every word is chosen with care – worth reading and re-reading.

An inanimate, absolutely useless object: A tiny Miraculous Medal, given to me by my grandmother. The edges are beveled in alternating directions so that the metal glints in the light. When I was little, I thought the Blessed Virgin was surrounded by jewels.

A Gathering of Different Lights

Dateline: Seattle. Tallis Scholars Summer School

When we gather to sing Compline at the end of each evening, we sing in the Chapel of St. Ignatius, a unique space designed by architect Steven Holl. His guiding idea for the design of the chapel was “A gathering of different lights."



He has also described it as “seven bottles of light in a stone box.” Fortunately, it sounds as good as it looks.

Small Groups and "The Sharing"

Dateline: Seattle. Tallis Scholars Summer School

Tonight is the “Sharing,” in which all the small ensembles which have been forming all week will sing for each other. I am in two of these groups, one a mixed (SATB) group doing ‘s “Ave Regina Coelorum,” and I also formed an all-female, SSA group (that’s my passion – I sing a cappella with two good friends back at home). The SSA group is doing Orlando di Lasso’s “In Pace In Idipsum” (In Peace I will Sleep) and because the text is about sleeping peacefully knowing that the Lord protects us, we’ve been invited to sing at Compline (the chanted Evensong) tonight. Jan coached us last evening, and was a tremendous help in shaping the lines of this hushed, gentle piece.

At the last moment this afternoon, our SSA group was asked to join another group of four women who had been working on Victoria's "Duo Seraphim," and felt they needed more voices. So, with just two rehearsals before and after dinner, we will sing that, too.

Last evening, a tenor came up to me and said “If I come back next year, I’d like to sing in one of your small groups.” Flattered, I thought that perhaps he liked my singing, or had heard that we are making beautiful music. Instead, he added, “I hear your groups are really well-organized.” Ah, well. Props for being a good producer.
Figures…….

Janet Coxwell: Bright Vowels, “Brighter” Warm-Ups!

Dateline: Seattle. Tallis Scholars Summer School

Jan has started us off at 9:00 every morning with a warm-up that includes not only stretching and vocalizing, but also dancing….this morning we were grooving to the Scissor Sisters. Nothing like a little disco to get your body into gear! Her energy and enthusiasm are infectious, and since she’s a singer who clearly knows what shes doing, it seems crazy not to jump in and dance along.

She has been giving individual voice lessons all week, and also has been coaching the choir as a whole. Her particular challenge has been to get us to sing “bright vowels.” We’re getting better, though shaking off years of American training in "proper" vowels sounds is quite a task.

More Random Bits

Dateline: Seattle. Tallis Scholars Summer School

• Peter Phillips conducted the rehearsals this morning, as we worked on new music including Palestrina's "Tu est Petris" ("You are Peter and upon this rock....."). We were reading through and he stopped us, saying "Basses, you are leading us into a new section of the text and I can't understand you. The words here are important - et portae inferi non praevalebunt (and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it). Cheerful voice from the bass section: "Gates of Hell coming right up, sir."

• (Pleadingly) "Sopranos, there was a sound in the middle of my daylight moment....."

Minor Regret

Dateline:Seattle. Tallis Scholars Summer School

I had hoped there would be more interaction between the “young” (under 25) students and the rest of us. When I’ve been able to grab one-on-one moments I’ve enjoyed each of them, and they are certainly holding their own as members of the choir. I understand how difficult it is - they’re feeling the hip peer pressure – that they’ll somehow be uncool if they’re seen consorting with us old folks. And, I think we (the older ones) could have reached out more.

It’s a missed opportunity, because there are some fascinating people here this week – a Law Professor from Columbia University, an astrophysicist who just spent 2.5 months living at the South Pole installing a new telescope, a physician who specializes in high risk pregnancies, an engineer who is filing for a patent on a wind turbine that he has invented…..the list goes on and on, through all sorts of fascinating people at the top of their professions.

It’s not surprising, when you think about it. I mean, how many people would choose to spend 13 hours a day sight reading 8-part, polyphonic, sacred music, in Latin? It’s a unique group of people who seek out intense creative challenges, not only for this “vacation,” but also in the work that they do.

Special Moments from the Palestrina Mass

Dateline: Seattle. Tallis Scholars Summer School

The day that we sang Palestrina's Missa Laudate Dominum was the Feast Day of St. Ignatius Loyola. The Priest declined to give a homily, saying that he would let the music of Palestrina speak instead. He told us briefly that St. Ignatius traveled to Rome shortly after his ordination, and said Mass in the Sistine Chapel. One of the choir boys would have been Palestrina, who was 10 or 12 years old at the time. And in subsequent decades, Loyola certainly would have known and heard the work of the great polyphonic composer, Palestrina.

Knowing this made singing the work, in this beautiful cathedral and on this specific day, even more special.

One of my fellow altos, Joseph Adam, is also the organist at the cathedral. He played a spectacular postlude, Widor's "Allegro maestoso" from his Symphony #6 in G Minor. Dark, rolling fireworks....a fantastic ending to the evening.

Singing at the Cathedral

Dateline: Seattle. Tallis Scholars Summer School

Oh my goodness – what a building to sing in! Our sixty voices, a cappella, ringing out in that space were simply breathtaking, if I do say so myself. ☺

We did very well last night. Not perfect, of course, but we did a good job considering that we’ve only been singing this Mass for 3 days, and we performed Palestrina’s Motet on the same theme after having first seen it yesterday morning!

I am a believer in singing out, doing everything you can to make the words come alive in performance. This is a little scary when you don't know the music terribly well, but I decided to just go for it. I missed some spots, but nothing major. Walking back from the cathedral, I was talking with Denise, a soprano who is doing this workshop for the fourth time. She concurred. "Even the best singers around you are going to miss an entrance. You need to be brave and sing that entrance, even if others around you are not." She's right - although sometimes the people around you are not singing because you are coming in at the wrong place!

The alto section propels the drive to the climax in the Benedictus with a series of running quavers (the British term for eighth notes). If I do say so, we kicked butt on our quavers - solid as a rock.

David Woodcock conducted tonight (I was surprised – I guess Peter Phillips will do the “big” concert on Friday). He was very good, and inspired confidence – all we had to do was keep your eyes on him to know we were in the right place. He made a bold move, changing the tempo and picking up speed during the “Hosannas” at the end of the Sanctus, and we were right with him.

Our tutors had smiles on their faces, and that’s what meant the most to me.

First Public Performance Tonight

Dateline: Seattle. Tallis Scholars Summer School

We're singing the Palestrina Mass tonight at St. James Cathedral, so that will be our focus in rehearsal today. We haven't even sung the Credo yet. I would guess that will be first up in rehearsal this morning.

It was interesting, yesterday, running through other segments (Kyrie, Gloria, etc) that we already "know." We've had so little rehearsal time and covered so much new music (at least compared to what I'm used to) that it almost felt as though we were doing new pieces rather than ones we have already worked on. This will be the biggest challenge for me, I think - singing out confidently in performance when I'm still very reliant on the score to simply find the notes and rhythm. Fortunately, there are many singers here who are much more experienced than me, and I know they will carry us through. Still, there are only six of us in the First Alto section, so you can't exactly disappear into the crowd!

David Woodcock is our rehearsal conductor, and Peter Phillips has been sitting quietly behind him during these rehearsals. You almost forget that he is there until he hears something that he is unhappy with. Then, Phillips stands very quietly and gradually makes his way to the podium, very slowly as we keep rehearsing. Though we do our best to keep singing away and fix whatever we're struggling with, once he's on his feet it won't be long until he takes over to work on a point that he finds particularly important.

It will certainly be interesting, tonight, to be singing in a totally different venue (cathedral acoustics, rather than the dead room we've been rehearsing in at the University), with a new conductor (Peter Phillips will conduct in concert). We have one hour of rehearsal in the Cathedral before the Mass, so I guess we'll figure out the transition then.

Antonio Lotti's Crucifixus à 8 Voix

Dateline: Seattle. Tallis Scholars Summer School

This is another amazing piece of choral music that I have only heard on recordings, and never thought I would have the opportunity to sing. It was composed around 1718, decades later than the Palestrina works we've been singing, and I must say, it was a pleasure to dig into the lush dissonances in this piece.

We're working terribly hard, and the concentration required to keep sight-reading all this new repertoire a cappella is really draining. Despite how tired my brain is, I find myself in a continual state of exhilaration. One transcendent musical experience after another.

And, Kathleen (my choir director) will be happy to hear that my sight-reading, and in particular my counting, get better every minute. Improve or die!

Random Moments from Tallis Tutor Sessions

Dateline: Seattle: Tallis Scholars Summer School

• After working for ten minutes on a single phrase ("et tibi da bo," meaning "and I will give unto you"), Tutor David Woodcock finally seemed satisfied. "That is absolutely....." (loaded pause) "......nearly very good."


• "Polyphony requires that the quavers be strictly in rhythm, absolutely together." This is British for talking about eighth notes. "Crotchets" are quarter notes. We're in another world here, and we're spending a lot of time on our quavers.


• Peter Phillips worked with us on a Gesualdo motet for an hour after dinner last night, 'just for fun." Actually, sight-reading Gesualdo a cappella is kind of fun - the kind of satisfaction you get from finding your way through a very dark forest. At one point, Phillips cautioned: "Tenors, you're flat. Singing out of tune in Gesualdo is a dangerous game."

Mt. Rainier Rises Above Seattle University

Dateline: Seattle: Tallis Scholars Summer School

We've had gorgeous weather, atypical for Seattle, all week. The days are crisp and sunny - cool enough for a jacket in the morning and evening, getting up into the seventies during the day.

As Seattle natives are wont to say when they have clear weather: "Oh, look - the mountains are out!"