GO
Advanced Search

News | Tuning the Voice for Disney Hall

December 1, 2003

On Saturday, September 20, the Master Chorale took the Walt Disney Concert Hall for a “test drive.” We want to share with you the excitement and enthusiasm some of our Chorale members experienced after singing in the new concert hall for the first time. Stay tuned in coming issues for more opportunities to meet more of our singers.

Andy Brown (tenor & Master Chorale Community Programs Manager): Please introduce yourselves and tell us how long you’ve been a member of the Master Chorale.

Alice Kirwin Murray (alto): This will be my fourth season, I believe, in the Chorale. Paul Salamunovich was the conductor my first season here.

George Sterne (tenor): My first concert was at the Hollywood Bowl in June of 1982 for the Stravinsky Festival, and the conductor was Roger Wagner.

Barbara Wilson (alto): I was Barbara Vance when I first joined the group singing with Roger Wagner. My first concert was the Stravinsky Mass during which the rehearsals were conducted by Stravinsky and held at UCLA when I was a student there. We sang at UCLA and at Roger’s First Church downtown.

Aaron Cain (bass): This is going to be my fifth season with the Chorale. My first concert was Mahler’s Second Symphony at the Hollywood Bowl.

Grant Gershon (conductor): My first concert was September 29, 2001. I seem to be the junior member of this contingent!

Samela Beasom (soprano): This is my twentieth season. I took a year off last year so that I could come back for the big splash in the new hall. I don’t remember what I sang at my first concert, but I know it was in 1983.

Andy: Well, we’ve just sung in the concert hall for the very first time. What are your thoughts? How do you feel about singing in the hall, and are you looking forward to the year ahead?

Alice: It’s so great to hear my colleagues; really. I mean to hear the other people around you. It’s overwhelming in its intimacy. You just hear the voices in a really new way.

George: I’m completely jazzed about this hall. I think it ranks among one of the best halls I’ve ever been in, including the Mozartaeum in Saltzburg, or the Ordway Theatre in Saint Paul, Minnesota. This may very well become one of the major venues of the country. And the sound is amazing. To my ear, they’ve done everything right, everywhere, including BP Hall.
Barbara: Well, this is the third major auditorium that I’ve sung in with this group, starting with the old Philharmonic Auditorium across from Pershing Square, with the dustmites falling from the ceiling, and going down the little spiral staircase to get below the stage. It was terrifically scary there. But this is the grandest of all the local auditoriums I’ve ever sung in with this group and I’m very proud to be here.

Aaron: The marriage of form and function make this place extraordinary. I mean it’s clear that the efforts of so many people came together to make this space really gorgeous and also acoustically magnificent and pretty much “holy.” But, actually all I kept thinking about while I was singing was all the work we have ahead of us because it’s very, very challenging being this exposed. If we’re a good choir now, this hall is going to make us twenty times better. It poses a lot of challenges and I am thrilled by that. I heard things I’d never heard before and I thought, ”wow we’ve got our work cut out for us.”

Grant: I’m struck as well by the marriage of the warmth and the transparency of the sound. You usually have one or the other, but not both. And I think it amplifies anything that’s beautifully sung and gives the sound an incredible blossom and sheen. At the same time, the transparency exposes in a very clear way any inadequacies. So the gauntlet is really thrown down for us.

Samela: Yes, I agree, this place is not only beautiful, but it’s stunning in its sound. We were lucky enough that Grant let us, during this little practice rehearsal, run around and go to different places. And I tell you… there’s not a bad seat in this house. It’s gorgeous. Sitting behind the choir was fabulous. Way up in the balcony, you will be so happy if you come. Experiment with your seating if you can. It’s thrilling to hear the singers, and the clarity is amazing. And please bring your cough drops and try not to whisper too much in the audience (laughing); we’ll hear you!

Barbara: The discipline this demands of us is awesome. …It’s just the awesome sound of the intimacy, you feel like you’re the only one singing, but I can hear everybody else, and the sound is just the most awesome thing.

Andy: On a different note, what is it that attracted you to choral music from the beginning?

Alice: Well, actually this space points it out. Singing of course is a gas, but singing with other voices, especially a cappella. As somebody once said, “To feel my notes rub up against somebody else’s notes,” if you will. There is nothing more exciting for a singer than to blend with other singers in a space like this. And the audience is going be able to feel that. We’re going to be so intimate, so up close and personal with audience members. They will beamst in the middle of that thrill, that’s what does it for me. There’s a real excitement to singing with other singers.

George: Well, I’ve been singing choral music since I was 11 years old. I did my first national tour with a boy’s chorus at age 12 and it got in my blood for a lot of reasons at that time. The music itself has always uplifted my soul in ways that other types of music don’t. Even opera — I sing a lot in the opera chorus, but choral music is really my first love. And I always enjoyed touring, being on the road, giving concerts and the camaraderie that one experiences by singing together in a group. Especially when members of the group are together for long periods of time and you really get to know them personally and artistically.

Barbara: I remember the first time I sang in an a cappella choir was my senior year in high school with a very fine conductor who was also the director of my church. It wasn’t until about three or four years later that I was introduced to Roger Wagner and that’s what really sold me. Intimacy and the ability to blend your voice with other voices and not stick out like a sore thumb. That takes a lot of patience and training. You have to listen. That’s the best part of it, you really listen to everybody else, to match your voice with theirs. That’s the challenge.

Aaron: It really is that same thing when you do listen and when you are tuned in to everyone else. I mean, I think that I love choral music more than any other kind because I’m addicted. I’m addicted to the impossible. I mean, when you have so many people thinking with one mind, and there’s so many different training techniques and so many different approaches to singing, all thinking with that one mind and just having that perfectly unified sound, the world just turns perfect for a few seconds and this is, of course, impossible. So, I just love that challenge of getting that to happen, because when it does, everyone here, everyone on stage and probably a few blocks outside can feel it. And there’s really nothing like it.

Grant: Well, the experience that changed my life was when I was a freshman in high school. I had an opportunity to sing in a performance of the Mozart Requiem. I had been primarily a pianist up until then and then I had this experience of making music in a community and of feeling the power of hundreds of people with a common goal in mind and reaching out and above, above ourselves. It’s just staggering. And the power of the human voice to touch us in the deepest way continues to be for me beamrvel. And that’s what choral music does so well, I think, is that it reaches us in those deep ways that words alone can’t begin to touch.

Samela: I can’t imagine a life without singing and choral music. I’ve been doing it since I was probably eight or nine. My father was a conductor, so I grew up with it in the house…I was introduced to Roger Wagner when I was about 13 and I saw his tour group in San Francisco and I thought to myself, “I’m gonna be in that group,” (laughs) and I was. I didn’t remember that I was to do that, but I ended up doing that, and it was wonderful. Then singing with the Chorale and singing with the symphony is the high point. But I know when I wanted to be a singer, actually, was when I was about 13 and singing renaissance music. I thought “I’ve got to do this or else I’ll die” (laughs).

Andy: To wrap it all up, what is it about choral music that’s different from any other art form? What is it about choral music that excites people?

Alice: Well, we’ve touched on it somewhat — there’s the community aspect of it. As far as many people coming together, pulling their forces together to do this unified thing. There is such a sense memory for a lot of people. I mean, many people have a background with it whether they’ve pursued it professionally — most of us got our start as kids — singing in a church choir, or whatever it was. My Dad was a cantor and I got to sing with the church choir. Butamst everybody has some sort of connection with it somewhere in their life… But, you know Aaron talked about the impossibility aspect of it. I think there is that “thing” that everybody sitting in the audience feels like maybe they could do that. There is that little bit of a yearning to participate and, by singing, there you are, and I think everybody has some sort of connection with it somewhere along the way. Everybody I know does.

George: Well, I think that choral music is similar to instrumental music in that the forces involved can be very disparate, and [have] two different effects. You can have huge forces doing a Berlioz Requiem as we will be doing later in the season with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and you can have smaller forces doing so called chamber music, madrigals or pieces like the Perotin Viderunt Omnes which we will be doing later in the Master Chorale season. The difference between instrumental music and choral music, though, is that I believe that the soul comes through in the voice in a way that it does not come through – or it comes through a little more obliquely through an instrument, but it is right there and it’s bare and it’s raw and it’s beautiful.

Barbara: There are two things about singing in a choir — obviously good musicians, the best, I’m very proud to be in this group. Roger Wagner used to say “you can have the most beautiful voice in the world, the grandest most famous voice in the world but, if you cannot portray the meaning of the story you’re singing, you have no business singing.” That’s one thing that I’ve learned and the enjoyment of being in a group that sings together, works together, is more fun than standing alone and singing on the stage. It’s great joy and great sorrow, great excitement can be better appreciated when you’re sharing it with your friends.

Aaron: I think that George hits the nail on the head. Not to cast any aspersions upon our brothers and sisters the instrumentalists, but an instrument stands between amsician and an audience. Choral singing is more immediate and more intimate because the only thing between your soul and the audience is about two centimeters of tissue, instead of a grand piano, instead of a double bass, you know, instead of a tympani drum. And just the lines of communications, I think, are more direct — are more free, and frankly, there are words involved. There’s words, there’s poetry, there’s phrasing, the beauty of instrumentalists is that they can pour a lot of that into an instrumental performance, but, I think that choral music is just accessible. Anyone can come to it and anyone can instantly feel a connection with something. I just think it’samre direct communication between our hearts and other hearts.

Grant: In addition to what everybody else has said, which is so “on-the-mark,” I think we have a great advantage over our brother and sister instrumentalists in the repertoire that we have. We’re able to draw on over a thousand years of western civilization, in what we do. All the way back from Gregorian chant through the middle ages and the renaissance, the voice wasamst the exclusive medium of artistic communication and sound. And then, as well as the fact that so many composers, when they write for the chorus, are writing at the absolute “top-of-their-game,” “ from Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Stravinsky through John Adams and on to the present day. Great composers seem to be incredibly inspired when they write for chorus, so we’ve got an amazing range of great repertoire to choose from.

Samela: I really don’t know what else to add. You know, the human voice really draws people in, and I think in every culture of every time period of the human, singing is so much a part of us and it really draws us in.