Bob Willard is one of the founding Board members of Voce. Bob recently told us the moving story of his very first experience hearing a live performance of the Brahms Requiem by the San Francisco Symphony under the baton of renowned conductor, Bruno Walter. Bob was just 15 years old and this was his first exposure to a live performance by a first-rate orchestra. The memory of this experience is even more special to Bob, and to his family, because his older brother, Dan, then a student at Stanford University, sang in the chorus.

Bob and his wife, Claire Bamberg, have chosen to commemorate this life-changing experience by making a generous gift to Voce in support of our performance and in memory of his big brother, Dan. Perhaps each of us has our own special connection to past performances of the Brahms Requiem, and we thank Bob for reminding us of the importance of the power of live performance and keeping this significant work in our hearts and minds.

A description of Bob’s first hearing of the Brahms in his own words:

” My first experience hearing the Brahms Requiem was, to put it in the current vernacular, awesome, overwhelming, moving, life changing.
Having performed it many times since, with great conductors, with great orchestras in great halls, and with not so great, but equally inspired, conductors in lessor venues, the Requiem has continued to inspire, calm and touch my soul.
When my heart needs to answer its call for peace, love, inspiration, I turn to music and often that deep sense of inner joy comes from the fourth movement of the Brahms Requiem.
“ Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen” ‘How lovely is thy Dwelling place O Lord of Hosts.’ Could it be any better? It demands to be sung and Brahms certainly got it right.
Sing it, you will feel better when you finish. I have and I will.

Mark Singleton, Artistic Director

Monday, May 16:  The Wonderful Mystery of the Love Song – Paul Fletcher, baritone

Why are so many, if not most, of our greatest songs love songs? What is it about love that seems to inspire more than its share of the best tunes? Is it simply that most of the greatest poetry appears to have been inspired by some aspect of love, and after all, great composers tend to set great poetry?

Singers, composers, musicologists and critics have long studied and observed how masterful and creative deployment of certain musical and literary elements make the great songwriters “great.” For example, a great song might combine a strong melodic response to the text (sometimes expansively, sometimes simply) with imaginative harmonic motion and subtle tension within a balanced form, seasoned with just enough twists and turns to keep it fresh after many hearings. For me, the best songs are well-crafted melodic gems, to be sure, but perhaps more significantly, they somehow go beyond the literal story or poem to express more than the words, the music or even great tunes by themselves can convey. In a great love song, all elements combine powerfully to emotionally reach those most acutely-felt depths within our hearts and souls, while at the same time giving us an opportunity to savor a particularly distilled and focused kind of beauty.

Ah, yes, there we come back to our frustratingly subjective wonder, beauty. Any definition of beauty or even of love that goes beyond the superficial will bring us to the realization that our opening question is really about more than just the artistic qualities or merits of the songs themselves. Why does love inspire such intense artistic response? Could it be the fact that love, in all its complexity, stirs our most complex and our most primal feelings, and connects them? Love combines the sensual with the emotional and the spiritual, evoking the full range of our humanity – infatuation, desire, hope, joy, bliss, compassion, companionship, self-sacrifice and gratitude as well as risk, disappointment, frustration, jealousy, possessiveness, pain, agony, loss, sorrow: our commonly shared humanity in our most vulnerable condition – and singing is perhaps our most vulnerable, personal and intrinsically human way of making music. Great love songs are, of course, an artistic and intellectual pleasure, but perhaps their special power lies in the fact that they help us to express our fully human nature – at once primal, passionate, emotional and spiritual.

So here’s to love, and to the wonderful mystery of the love song!

Paul Fletcher

 

Friday, May 6:  Choose Your Own Adventure

On May 22nd and May 23rd, the Voce Chamber Artists will be presenting “Choose Your Own Adventure.” This one hour show will feature Voce performers Salli-Jo Borden, Jack Anthony Pott and Paul Fletcher. You have heard this trio perform with our state’s top orchestras and ensembles. Come hear what they do best – perform their most beloved love songs, just for you.

 

In addition to our fine cast of soloists, Voce Chamber Artists will debut our newest acapella ensemble. Ehren Brown, conductor and tenor, has formed a new group who sing in a variety of styles – most notably, collegiate acapella. His experience in this genre is well known – he founded one of UConn’s most prestigious acapella ensembles: A Completely Different Note.

 

Dan Campolieta and Friends will be performing his jazz-influenced “Seven Sketches for Piano, Clarinet and Cello.” This work was debuted at a prior Voce Chamber Artist event – and, by popular demand, is on this program. Come see why Dan has emerged as one of the finest pianists and composers in our region. He will not disappoint.

 

What to expect: “Choose Your Own Adventure” is modeled after the children’s novels popularized in the 1980′s and 1990′s. This concert is a love story. As in life, this love story can play itself out in a variety of ways. From romantic beginnings to tragic endings, humorous moments to complicated bumps in the road- the audience will choose the path the concert program will take. At the conclusion of each set of music, the audience will choose the path for the next program set in our story.

 

Come hear some great music. Come be a part of the art. Come decide what will happen with our love story. Come “Choose Your Own Adventure!”

 

Sunday, April 17:  Voce Tenor Weaves Web of Mastery – and the Huskies Win, Again.

 

Many of you know our outstanding tenor, Ehren Brown, is a multi-talented young man.  Besides being our web master and a founding member of Voce, he happens to have a Master’s Degree in Choral Conducting from the University of Connecticut.  When you’re not hearing Ehren (he sings everywhere), you are watching what he does with outstanding ensembles throughout the Greater Hartford region.

 

 

The Vernon Chorale presented its annual spring concert in style last night at St. Bernard’s Church in downtown Rockville.  They brought a date – the University of Connecticut Concert Choir under the direction of Michelle Holt.  The combined choirs, over 60 voices strong, sounded as one choir.  The striking timbre of voices, at times youthful and at times profound, delivered rousing Mozart – all evening long.

 

Many of you know of the National Champion UConn Huskies.  Last night we heard a new breed of young champions.  Sure UConn has outstanding sports teams – and make no mistake, this pleases me.  But UConn has also maintained a nationally recognized School of Fine Arts.  Those of us who are alumni are most proud to call Storrs home.  Last night, Michelle Holt and our singing teams did us proud.  Go Huskies.

 

 

All in all, this was an event.  Entitled “A Mozart Festival,” the occasion was altogether festive.  The excitement of the singers was met by the enthusiasm of the audience.  After the first movement of the first piece, a young toddler let us know of his feelings by shouting, “Yay!”  Truer words could not have been said.  It’s how I felt – and I am guessing that everyone felt the same way.

 

 

Yay for The Vernon Chorale:  vernonchorale.org

Yay for The University of Connecticut Concert Choir:  www.music.uconn.edu

Yay for Michelle and Ehren

 

 

Mark

Monday, April 12:  Back in black – and singing with swagger

Question:

Will there really be a “Morning”?
Is there such a thing as “Day”?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?

Has it feet like Water lilies?
Has it feathers like a Bird?
Is it brought from famous countries
Of which I have never heard?

Oh some Scholar! Oh some Sailor!
Oh some Wise Men from the skies!
Please to tell a little Pilgrim
Where the place called “Morning” lies!

– Emily Dickinson

Dear Emily and Dan,

Thank you for asking.  Yes, there will be a morning.  It is now.  What we wished for in darkness, we see from the mountain – plain as day.

Dr. Peter Bagley is a scholar in choral music and gifted conductor.  He recently did a conducting residency in Chicago.  While he was there, I had the chance to ask him a tough question: what was the mission of his conducting, his teaching and his performance.  His answer:  “Be in the moment.”

It struck me because it requires us to accept our power and our vulnerability.  It’s what it means to be alive and go live with your product. One never knows what’s going to happen in any given performance or on any given Sunday – and that’s a powerful, exciting and vulnerable feeling.  Just ask athletes.  For many of us, it’s why we do what we do.  And when a concert comes together as it did last night, it’s a stuff that’s good for the soul, the sound and the world.

Voce has the right stuff – and the soul and that sound.  It means the world to me.  I was proud to be a part of that moment last night – and am proud to be a part of many more moments we will share.  Voce is back in black – and is flying into the morning with a new swagger.

So what’s next?  Now we sail into our next adventure – and we want you to join us on this pilgrimage.  Let us know what you thought of “Singers’ Choice” on our feedback page – and stay tuned for movement two of Dreamscape, “Choose Your Own Adventure.”

sincerely,

Mark

Monday, April 11:  The Indiana Jones of music

What do the National Men’s Honor Choir, CONCORA, The Woodland Scholars, The Vernon Chorale and the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Chorus share in common?  They have all commissioned works from nationally known composer, Jason McCoy.

Jason wasn’t always nationally known.  Just last March his career took off in a major way.  As the recipient of a major commission from the American Choral Directors Association, Jason was a composer-in-residence for the National Men’s Honor Choir.

The National Men’s Honor choir, which was 280 voices strong, commissioned a men’s version of “Come, Ye Thankful People, Come” – a tune that has become a favorite for many.  The SATB version of the piece has already found a home in Connecticut – and tonight it will find a home with Voce.

In addition to composing, Jason is a professional Ethnomusicologist – which is why I call him the “Indiana Jones” of music.  When you travel with Jason – well…you are in for a lifetime of memories.

Two years ago, I went with Jason and his wife Kristin to Uganda and Rwanda.  We had quite a time – and met wonderful people and heard wonderful music.  We also almost lost our lives in a rafting trip down the Nile.  That’s for another story – suffice it to say, “Come, Ye Thankful People, Come” has meaning on several levels for me.  I’m done with whitewater rafting.

Jason spends his summers in Rwanda where he studies music, dance and culture at the University of Rwanda, Butare.  This year he is likely to meet and interview Simon Bikindi – the only man to be convicted of war crimes because of  his music.  Learn more about Jason’s adventurous spirit at  www.jasonmccoy.org

Friday, April 8:  The 4-11 on Jeffery Van’s “A Procession Winding Around Me”

We are fortunate to have some outstanding instrumentalists on this concert.  In addition to Kathy Schiano on cello and Jared Gardner on double bass, Daniel Hartington will be joining us on the guitar for Jeffrey Van’s “A Procession Winding Around Me.”

Jack Anthony Pott, principal tenor, selected Jeffery Van’s piece for our “Singer’s Choice” concert – and I am grateful that he did.  So is Daniel, who is featured throughout the piece.  I had never heard the work before Jack brought it to my attention.  It is a distinctive four-movement work for classical guitar utilizing Walt Whitman texts that are near and dear to many.

Daniel and I were discussing the work last Wednesday and he had some remarkable insights into the piece.  I recently asked him what he thought of the work in general – and here is his response…

I have been in love with this piece of music
since I first heard it about four years ago.
I distinctly remember the first time I heard
the opening of the final movement and the
overwhelming feeling I had when the choir
entered after the guitar's chords.  It is
among the most beautiful moments in music
and is contained within a work that is so full
of character and energy.  Since then, I have
joined the large group of guitarists with an
affinity for this music and am very excited
to perform a portion of it with a group like
Voce, and I look forward to some day performing
the work in it's entirety.

For more information about Daniel, please visit www.danielhartington.com

See you on 4-11.  Mark