Singing in the Summer!

We’re about to begin the seventh season of The Michael O’Neal Summer Singers and our program this year is entitled Bach to Broadway.  Selections by Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Verdi, and Parry will comprise the first part of the concert, followed by songs from Man of La Mancha, West Side Story, The Phantom of the Opera, and Les Misérables.  The variety of musical pieces in this concert in some ways reminds me of the great variety of singers we have in Summer Singers.

The Summer Singers (MOSS), unlike the regular season MOS, is a completely non-auditioned chorus, and open to all interested singers.  The wide range of experience found in the individual singers in each summer’s chorus helps make the entire effort very gratifying to me.  I love taking people of various backgrounds and skill levels and helping them become a unified and sensitive musical ensemble.  In just a few days we’ll have over 150 singers joining together in the shared purpose of making music!  I can hardly wait!

Memorial Day and Appropriate Music

Memorial Day is fast approaching (May 30) and it brings to my mind musical selections that I feel are especially appropriate for our nation’s fallen.   As is the case with so many American holidays, the original purpose and intent of this day has often been lost as many of us use it simply as another holiday or time for recreation.  While there is nothing wrong with enjoying a day off, I believe it is helpful for us not to forget what this holiday really commemorates.  Begun as Decoration Day (a time to decorate the graves of those fallen in service to their country), it is now widely known as Memorial Day and it offers us a special time to remember those who have made that ultimate sacrifice.  While many Memorial Day concerts appear to be musically interchangeable with July 4th concerts, it seems to me we have a perfect opportunity on this day to feature music truly designed to pay tribute to persons who gave their lives for their country.

I’ll mention two instrumental pieces before I list several of my favorite choral selections.  There is the haunting “Hymn to the Fallen” from Private Ryan by John Williams and “Last Full Measure of Devotion” by Ian Frazier.  Mack Wilberg has composed a beautiful piece to a text by David Warner that speaks of calming strife after completion of war and urging reconciliation.  It is entitled “Let Peace Then Still the Strife.”  There is an exquisite TTBB setting of John McCrae’s WWI poem “In Flanders Field” by Stephen Chatmas that is enormously moving.  I consider the Vaughan Williams setting of “Dona Nobis Pacem” to be a choral gem.   Finally, I would submit as perhaps the greatest large work appropriate for a Memorial Day theme the “War Requiem” by Benjamin Britten.   Utilizing both traditional texts from the Latin Requiem and settings of Wilfred Owen poems from WWI, this choral/orchestral masterpiece is in my opinion one of the monuments of 20th century musical composition.  It was written for the reconsescration of England’s Coventry Cathedral in 1962, after the original 14th century structure was destroyed during WWII. 

So, I would suggest even as we sing all the great Patriotic selections this Memorial Day, e.g., “God Bless America,” “My Country ’tis of Thee,” “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” etc., we also remember who this holiday honors and listen to a selection or two that pays these individuals proper tribute.  Anyway, these are my thoughts on the subject.

Singing from the Heart

MOS just completed its 22nd Season with a program entitled Ballads, Blues, and Broadway (Songs from the Great American Songbook).  The concert was performed before a large and enthusiastic crowd whose enthusiasm was matched by the energy and exuberance of the singers.  It was an exhilarating evening of music making and left me considering what it is that helps create such a night.

In addition to the qualities of both the audience and singers mentioned above, I think the repertoire performed had a huge impact on everyone in attendance.   We regularly find profundity and meaning in the great works we sing, e.g., Brahms’s  Requiem, Rachmaninoff’s Vespers, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Orff’s Carmina Burana, and many more.  Still, there is something very immediate and personal that connects with us when we sing some of our finest popular music.  Included in our performance were such pieces as It Had to Be You, Unforgettable, My Romance, Embraceable You, Mood Indigo, and I’ll Be Seeing You.  When you combine those songs with an excellent chorus and a fantastic jazz trio (Tyrone Jackson on piano, Neal Starkey on bass, Marlon Patton on drums) you have the ingredients for something truly special.

One more thing I noticed about this program was that my singers seemed to be (even more than usual) singing from the heart.  This is, of course, difficult to define, but it’s one of those things that is easy to recognize when experienced.  I’m glad we could end our season with a program of great American popular music that was able to touch hearts and bring both smiles and tears to our faces.

The Great American Songbook

The Great American Songbook is a very loosely defined creation that attempts to represent some of the best songs of the 20^th Century.  Drawn primarily from the Broadway theatre, Hollywood musicals, and popular song, selections included in the Songbook are usually from the 1920s to the early 1960s, and are an important part of the repertoire of jazz musicians, who describe such songs simply as “jazz standards.”

Some of the composers and lyricists most commonly associated with the Great American Songbook are Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, and Duke Ellington.   Performers of the past and the present who have recognized the wealth of material found in the Songbook include such notables as Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Mel Torme, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Aretha Franklin, Rod Stewart, and Michael Feinstein.  

Most of the songs in the Great American Songbook are written in “verse-chorus” form.  The verse is a musical introduction that is typically of a free musical structure, with speech-like rhythms and a non-metrical delivery.  This leads to the chorus, which is recognized as the more central part of the song, sometimes even being the only part of the song that is performed.  The subject matter of most of the songs is love, in all its varieties.

Several of my all time favorites are “My Romance” by Rodgers and Hart, “Embraceable You” by George and Ira Gershwin, and “I’ll Be Seeing You” by Kahal and Fain.  What are your favorites?