massed choir day

I drove up to the St. Paul campus of the University of Saint Thomas yesterday to listen to their combined choirs rehearse "Orange-Mounts of More Soft Ascent" from my Color Madrigals set. The Concert Choir performed it in Orchestra Hall last October and the choir department decided to use it as one of the massed pieces for their upcoming concert. The rehearsal was in their beautiful chapel.
















They graciously afforded me 15 minutes or so to work with the choir and, although I hadn't had any caffeine that afternoon, Nathan Knoll told me that I "went off like an A bomb" as soon as I hit the podium. I'll take that as the compliment it was intended as, sir. I can't wait to hear them in performance!

Then it was time to head south to hear Matt Culloton and the massed choirs of the Missota Conference perform "The Boy Who Picked Up His Feet to Fly". The concert was held at New Prague High School (Minnesotans pronounce it closer to "prey-g" for some odd reason that I've never understood) and featured somewhere close to 400 singers shaking the rafters on one of my oldest pieces.

The smaller Select Choir performed a pristine rendition of Abbie's "Journey Home" as well so we drove down to the concert together on a composer road trip. There was also a Massed Band (40 trumpets, anyone?) and a Select Band that performed equally well and, after everyone was through with their respective sets, all the singers joined forces with the smaller wind ensemble for a rollicking good "God Bless America."
















Hearing "Boy" performed again so well was an interesting experience. The text is reminiscent of Shel Silverstein's poetry and, as such, is over-the-top whimsical. Because of this, I never took the music I had written to it very seriously and had always just listed it in my brain as nothing more than a piece that I wrote when I was 20. However, having looked over the score and listened to it again for the first time in a long while, I think I may have sold it a bit short. There are things in that work that I'm still very much interested in (patterns and how they interact with different chords, for instance) as well as some ballsy stuff that only a 20-year-old composer with very little experience would ever think to do (i.e. having the piano play 4 entire octaves of an F major scale at the end while the choir just oohs).

In any case, it was a blast to hear it again with so many singers and Matt Culloton--yet again--proves that he understands how my music "works". I am incredibly lucky to have him in my proverbial corner.

In other news, I'm kitten sitting for a friend today. Meet Dori. She's staying for a few hours today and is the first feline to set foot in my apartment since I had Max a few years ago.