The ‘I’ is a team player in a choir
By Donald Munro / The Fresno Bee
(Updated Sunday, March 13, 2005, 6:42 am)
Forget 30 minutes on the Stair-Master. For a real workout, try singing Mozart’s Coronation Mass.
It takes a lot of energy to belt out a full-length choral work.
I sang with the Fresno Choral Artists for a couple of seasons, and I still remember staggering home after a concert, flinging off my tux and collapsing on the couch to revel in the post-athletic ache of a job well done.
Granted my most dominant post-concert memory is probably the time I made it through Handel’s Messiah at the Tower Theatre while suffering a bronchial-asthmatic-congested-lung thingie that made it feel like I was bench-pressing a cathedral gargoyle every time I took a breath.
But the show goes on.
And I wouldn’t have traded that experience for anything. Choral singing isn’t about individuality; it’s about being in sync. It’s the closest I’ll ever get to being one of those fish that swim in ever-darting schools or geese that fly in perfect overhead formations. To be able to stand on risers behind a virtuoso orchestra and wait for the conductor to cue an entrance – and to feel my voice as one with 40 other people as we and the orchestra form a freight train of sound barreling straight at the audience – is unforgettable. The second-best thing is getting to listen to such a sound in a small, intimate setting.
You’ll have that chance with the Fresno Philharmonic’s second annual “Sacred Music in a Sacred Space” concert at the Shrine of St. Therese in the Tower District. With 635 seats, this wonderful venue is a far cry form the cavernous Saroyan. Sure, it’s impressive to face a 200-piece choir and full orchestra in the Saroyan – but you’ll be surprised how much more intense the musical impact can be with just 40 singers and 34 orchestra members in the cozy St. Therese with it’s resonant acoustics.
The orchestra will perform three Mozart works: the Coronation Mass; “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” (A Little Night Music), one of his most famous pieces; and the Sinfonia Concertante featuring concertmaster Barry Socher and principal violist Claudia Shiuh as soloists. Theodore Kuchar conducts.
David L. Hensley is in his first year as director of the Fresno Choral Artists, which he describes as an auditioned community group in which the singers have a strong sense of commitment to the music. The concert is a chance to perform what he calls a “chapel work” in a church environment instead of the big, boxy secular spaces in which our orchestras most often perform today.
Of the many masses that Mozart composed, the Coronation Mass, with a medium level of difficulty, is the most often performed, he says. (The prayers of the Catholic mass have been set to music literally thousands of times.) Though the Coronation Mass isn’t as tough as something like Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis or Verdi’s Requiem, it’s not exactly a case of “Come to Jesus” sung in whole notes, either, he adds.
Some choral directors, charged with the task of preparing their singers for a concert and then handing off the baton to the orchestra conductor, choose to sit backstage or in the audience for the actual performance. Not Hensley.
“I plan to stand up on the risers and sing tenor,” he says. “I want to call myself one of the group.”
I understand completely.
The columnist can be reached at dmunro@fresnobee.com or (559) 411-6373.