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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Performances Highlight Choral Directors Meeting

Travis Rivers Correspondent

Critic-at-large

Nobody knows exactly how many choirs there are in the Northwest. But it seemed that most of them were in Spokane last week.

Some 1,500 singers and more than 300 choral directors came here for the Northwest Chapter meeting of the American Choral Directors Association.

Such professional meetings involve the usual number of workshops and discussions, but the choral directors’ gathering here includes some glorious singing in public performances as well.

Some of the finest work was heard last week in three demanding 20th-century masterpieces by Stravinsky, Britten and Bernstein. But there were shorter works, too, that proved that modern composers still have an affection for choral sounds and that young singers (these were collegiate and school-age performers) can sing new music with a special flair.

The ACDA’s opening event Thursday featured a performance of Stravinsky’s “Symphony of Psalms” with singers from Eastern Washington University, Gonzaga University, Spokane Falls Community College and Whitworth College and members of the Spokane Symphony.

Guest conductor Vance George told the capacity audience at St. John’s Cathedral, “When the history books are written in the next century, I feel that the ‘Symphony of Psalms’ will go down as the great choral masterwork of the 20th century.”

George, fresh from having received a Grammy Award the week before for a recording he produced as director of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, led a concentrated performance of Stravinsky’s powerful 1930 work.

The choral sound in slower sections, such as the quietly repeated closing “Laudate,” was pure and beautiful.

The faster choral parts lacked the ideal hard-edged rhythmic bite, but even a professional chorus could not have achieved that with only two rehearsals, even with a conductor as fine as George. And he’s one of the best.

The concert at St. John’s also featured fine performances by the individual participating choirs led by their own conductors - Eastern’s Michael Elliot, Gonzaga’s Edward Schaefer, Spokane Falls’ Charles Zimmerman and Whitworth’s Randi Ellefson.

Particularly striking for me was Gonzaga’s performance of Hungarian composer Gyorgi Orban’s 1990 “Daemon inrepit callidus” with its threatening harmonies accompanying the devil at work in the world with seductive pleasures. And the noni-threatening, other-worldly harmonies of Stephen Chatman’s “Thou Whose Harmony Is Music of the Spheres,” and Eastern’s Chamber Choir with its floating oboe obbligato expertly played by Keith Thomas.

Fully as impressive was Friday’s performance by the Masterworks Chorale at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes. This 80-voice group was chosen from 14 college choirs in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Alaska.

Richard Sparks, of Pacific Lutheran University, led the group in an exquisitely sung performance of Britten’s cantata “Rejoice in the Lamb” and one of Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms” that bristled with vitality.

Special congratulations should go to Whitworth’s Ellefson, who organized the ADCA meeting.

The occasion served to remind all of us who listen with pleasure to the splendid symphony choruses here in Spokane, in Seattle, in San Francisco and in other cities across the country that those voices are trained in the rigors of choral discipline and the beauties of choral tone in high school and college.

, DataTimes