Reviews - Program Notes

San Francisco, 12 April 1998, program notes for the San Francisco Choral Society

"these C.P.E Bach works are gems which should be performed so well more often. Alternatingly Baroque and early classical, they clearly demonstrate the "lesser" Bach's key role in bridging the two eras. The "Magnificat" closed with a grand fugue whose main statement bears remarkable similarity to that of the "Kyrie" in Mozart's "Requiem," as pointed out in Laura Stanfield's generous and erudite program notes. "
(David Saslav, San Francisco Classical Voice)

Reviews - Choral Performances

Masur, BSO, and Marsalis 'All Rise' to the occasion
By Richard Dyer, Globe Staff, 12/4/2003
Boston Symphony Orchestra with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, John Oliver, director
Kurt Masur, guest conductor, with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra
At: Symphony Hall, last night (repeats tomorrow night and Saturday night)
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

"The blues," Wynton Marsalis told a group of enthralled high school students yesterday, "are not about being sad. Instead they are like a vaccine against the bad things that happen."

Last night the Boston Symphony Orchestra, joined by Marsalis's Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, gave the New England premiere of his blues oratorio, "All Rise." By the end an audience that needed to be won over was all but dancing in the aisles and gave the composer a thunderous standing ovation.

The 12 movements and two hours of "All Rise" record a spiritual journey, survey the ages of man and the history of African-Americans, and provide a collage of musical styles assimilated into the blues and growing out of it.

This is a tall order, and the flaws of the work are abundant and obvious. The piece is way too long, and Marsalis writes less well for symphony orchestra than for jazz ensemble. The work elaborates the history of jazz/symphonic fusion without greatly advancing it. Marsalis alternately shows off the jazz band and rotates the musical spotlight across the various sections of the orchestra. When the "opposing" forces play together, one of them is usually providing a backdrop for the other. Marsalis, ideally equipped to help lead American music into the 21st century, has instead chosen to recreate -- knowledgeably and elegantly -- the best American musical styles of 60 years ago.

But the flaws fade in the course of the performance because of the generosity and authenticity of feeling that pervades the music. The range is wide -- from a New Orleans funeral to a fugue, from an Ellingtonian trainride to a spiritual, from crisp Stravinskian rhythms to swing. There is something wonderful in every movement, and the cumulative impact is irresistible, all the way through to the built-in pop-song encore.

"All Rise" provides countless opportunities for chorus, instrumental and vocal soloists, orchestra, and jazz band to excel. Among the many heroes of the evening were former BSO tympanist Vic Firth, emerging from retirement because his successor is getting married this week; BSO tubist Mike Roylance preaching the sermon at the funeral; violinist Malcolm Lowe and cellist Martha Babcock in a love duet; the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, singing its heart out (and from memory); vocal soloists NaGuanda Miller, Cynthia Hardy, Robert Honeysucker, and especially Brian Robinson (amazing tenor and longtime member of the chorus -- a physician in "real" life). To this one should add all 15 improvising members of the fabulous Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, from its teenage pianist (Aaron Diehl) through Marsalis himself, whose solos were few but choice. The superb rhythm section was Carlos Henriquez (bass) and Herlin Riley (drums). And, of course, Kurt Masur, who seemed to be having the time of his life sharing with us a work that he commissioned.

"Go downtown!" one of the players called to a Lincoln Center trombonist before a major and magical solo, and that's where all the performers onstage last night went, taking us along with them.

Historical Articles

Choral History : They sing with the Boston Pops, and their voices are heard around the world
By John Budris, Globe Correspondent, 12/4/2003

John Oliver, the invisible hand behind the voices of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, surveys a silent Symphony Hall. Before a recent rehearsal, he leans over the edge of the empty stage like a diver before the leap. Oliver spies a pair of subscription seats in row three, which some 40 years ago was all that marked his little piece of the grand hall.

Today Oliver's musical territory spreads considerably wider. Since becoming the founding conductor of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus (TFC) in 1970, Oliver has shaped what began as 60 pick-up voices into a renowned chorus that is 250 members strong. ''At Monday and Tuesday night rehearsals, for me at least, we're the only chorus in the world,'' Oliver says.

Such voices are best both heard and seen. But that's not always the case for the Tanglewood group, which has been the official chorus of the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops orchestras for the past three decades.

When the New England Patriots played in the Super Bowl in January 2002, uniformed police and firefighters sang ''America the Beautiful'' at halftime as Keith Lockhart conducted the Pops. The stadium and television audiences had no idea that this patriotic chorale was actually lip-synched to the Tanglewood chorus, which recorded the song at Symphony Hall a week before. Many of us have heard the Tanglewood chorus already, whether in the haunting choral soundtrack of ''Saving Private Ryan'' or the voices in ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind.'' The group sang on Clint Eastwood's ''Mystic River'' soundtrack, recorded in the director's presence at Symphony Hall.

''Considering films and the many recordings made by the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops, the TFC is among the world's most listened to choruses, and in New England the most beloved,'' says Keith Lockhart, who will conduct the group in about 30 Holiday Pops concerts beginning Tuesday. ''It's axiomatic at

Symphony Hall that if you want the audience to love you, get the TFC involved.'' Many of the 250-plus members shape their lives, careers, family duties, and vacations around their addiction to singing behind the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops orchestras, both in Boston during the concert season and summers in residence at Tanglewood. Aside from the satisfaction of making spectacular music, none is paid a dime.

''After food and sex, singing with the TFC is my other priority,'' says one 20-year veteran soprano. Her priorities reverse, she adds, during concert times.

Members come from all over New England, sometimes bunking with friends and relatives during rehearsals and concerts. The youngest member was a 17-year-old high school student who made the long schlep by boat and car from Martha's Vineyard. A senior mezzo-soprano, one of three original members from 1970 still singing with the group, says she is ''far too close to 80 for comfort.''

''I've tried to force myself to retire, but singing is more than just what I do: It's who I've become,'' says Maisy Bennett, a veteran of an estimated 900 performances in her 33 years onstage. Joan Sherman, who like Bennett sang under John Oliver's direction with the Framingham Chorus before the Tanglewood chorus was born in 1970, accepts the inevitable. ''Some of us just can't go on forever, especially for sopranos,'' she says, tapping at her vocal chords.

Longevity, however, is no guarantee for a place in the choir. ''A merciless meritocracy,'' is how another original member describes the process behind maintaining the chorus's quality. ''It has to be that way, the music must always be first and foremost,'' says bass Stephen Owades, who sat out a few years when he was having problems with his voice.

Oliver reevaluates each chorus member at least every three years and conducts semiannual open auditions each fall and spring. ''In the last 10 years especially, it's astonishing how consistent the chorus has become, and I attribute that to the great musical intelligence of our singers, which is what I look for,'' says Oliver. Most come with years of instrumental training in addition to vocal expertise, Oliver says. ''The younger people are generally more highly trained than in the past and bring a kind of vitality and enthusiasm, and that part of the recipe is invaluable.'' By the first rehearsal of a piece, many are ''off book,'' the notes already committed to memory.

''We don't drill notes in rehearsal, which is not the case with some professional, paid choruses,'' says Oliver. ''So I start with people who are very intelligent and motivated and come with a relationship with the music already -- their own relationship.''

With rare exceptions, the chorus sings all performances strictly from memory. Including six programs with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Holiday Pops, Tanglewood in summer, special run-outs to Carnegie Hall and other guest appearances, the group will perform some 70 times this year. And for each member, it's all a labor of love. They even pay for their own Boston parking.

''What further distinguishes us from a paid chorus is we are here solely because we want to be here,'' says Don Sturdy, another senior member. ''The chance to sing for the world's greatest conductors -- Steinberg, Bernstein, Davis, Ozawa, Haitink, and now Levine -- that's major motivation.''

Each season varies, but Oliver auditions at least 150 prospective members every year, usually accepting less than 10 percent. About an equal percentage is pruned away, sometimes when the enormous time commitment for rehearsals, performances, and memorization of music collides with daily life.

Some members have been recruited in unconventional ways. The weekend before a successful surgery for kidney cancer, mezzo-soprano Barbara Naidich-Ehrmann spotted her surgeon in the first balcony as she took her place on the stage. Before entering the operating room two days later, she began to cajole him into an audition. Both doctor and patient now share a riser at Symphony Hall.

Bass Tom Wang drafted his two tenor sons, Andrew and Joseph. Soprano and New England Conservatory graduate student Laura Grande went the other direction, prevailing upon her father, Leon, a high school music teacher, to audition.

More than half of the roster has performed for more than a decade. Marriages have failed within its ranks; new nuptials have bloomed. For 20 years tenor David Norris has towed his camera, as if documenting his relatives' recitals. ''We are very much like a big family,'' says tenor Kurt Walker, who along with his wife, Jennifer, has sung since 1997. ''I am convinced that she went into labor with our twins onstage at Symphony Hall.''

With so many voices, chorus manager Felicia Burrey often prompts the singing of ''Happy Birthday'' as a four-part prelude to many rehearsals. Deaths, too, have come -- few with more shared sorrow than that of Ted Hennessey, husband of soprano Melanie Salisbury, who died on American Airlines Flight 11 on Sept. 11, 2001. More than 100 chorus members, conducted by John Oliver, sang at his memorial service.

''The chorus makes that community connection because they are a part of that community, all working, all taking care of families,'' says Lockhart. ''And that makes their contribution as volunteers all the more inspiring. Great orchestras cannot survive without that kind of total dedication.''