Rehearsal and Concert observation
As part of the University of Minnesota’s Women’s chorus, I participated in the ACDA of Minnesota’s fall choir festival at St. John’s University in Collegeville. This experience was a great observation and participation experience. I was a part of mass choir rehearsals and then we watched all the individual schools perform two songs from their repertoire.
There were two conductors that stuck out to me from the performances, Dr. Christopher Aspaas from St. Olaf College and Lawrence Burnett from Carleton College. Dr. Aspaas was one of the best conductors I have ever seen. His stage presence was so confident and so exciting. From his demeanor and facial expressions, I could tell that he loved being there conducting. He was able to hold the attention of every one of his choir members. He conducted a men’s chorus composed of freshmen and sophomores. His gesture was so clear and fluid. He was so easy to follow and was so enjoyable to watch. Like I said before, he had great eye contact with his choir which shows his confidence and also his knowledge of the music. The first piece they performed was “Give Me Jesus” which he had arranged for them. The arrangement was beautiful; everyone listening hung on every note that was sung. He used varying techniques of unison to parts in a homophonic texture as well as contrapuntal sections. This added variety to the verses as well as added intrigue.
The other director I noted was Lawrence Burnett from Carleton. His style was very difficult to follow. I think it was because of his constant rubato. Because he had a capella pieces for his choirs, he was able to manipulate the tempo, but it was not done as tastefully as I would have liked. I think part of my distaste was the fact that his women’s chorus sung 6 carols by Benjamin Britten. The first carol was done very well, but each of the succeeding carols was only ok. I think he could have narrowed his selection so that they could be done well rather than 5 mediocre carols. Another difficulty in the women’s performance was the number of performers. I understand that this is not always in the control of the conductor because there are enrollment factors out of his control. But, I think this supports what I said about having less that is done well rather than more that is mediocre. There was a harp accompaniment which was a beautiful idea, but because of the intonation and insecurity of the singers, there was not a good blend.
Now about the rehearsal, we had 5 different conductors for the selections we sang and each had their own style. Although I did not care for Mr. Burnett’s choir, I did like his approach in the rehearsal. He conducted the piece “No Time” arranged by Susan Brumfield. He began his rehearsal time by giving us history of the piece. I liked this, because the piece is not so difficult musically, but conveying the message takes specific knowledge. The song is ultimately referring to heaven which is something to look forward to and a pressing goal. Another part of the meaning is the travelling west that the early settlers did. Mr. Burnett was able to convey his passion about the song and we were able to convey this simple message with emotion and feeling rather than just singing the notes.
As a whole, the conductors were extremely enthusiastic about being in front of the large mass of singers. I was impressed by the planning that was evident when they took the podium. I would say most of the songs were successes, but one that we had trouble with was Psalm of Praise. This was conducted by Mary Kay Geston of Northwestern College. She did not have the presence needed to capture our attention for whatever reason. She could have been the least prepared and she seemed to have too big of a chunk of material to cover in the amount of time she had to rehearse with us. I will credit her with the fact that she was given the most difficult piece to perform in the setting. The concert was in the Abbey there which is acoustically live and with all the reverberations the dense text and fast tempo was not communicated. In the performance she was not leading us. She was set on her tempo which is usually the job of the conductor, but in this extreme case she should have settled for the tempo we were singing. I think that her beat pattern was also unclear, so we were not able to follow her.