“Although
a composer at 30 is still considered young, a 30-year track record qualifies an
arts organization as an institution. So there’s an alluring piquancy in Chanticleer’s new commissioning
project, ‘Composers/Our Age’. To
celebrate its 30th anniversary, the estimable men’s chorus called on
three composers – born around the same time the group was founded –
to contribute pieces on subjects of their own choosing. The resulting program, introduced in
Berkeley’s First Congregational Church on Tuesday night, was enlivened not only
by a wide stylistic range but by the combination of youthful energy and
technical mastery on display.”
In the Q & A that follows, Christine Bullin, the President and General Director of Chanticleer,
discusses Chanticleer’s recent and current programs, the upcoming China tour,
and the group’s continuing commitment to educational outreach.
A
conversation with Chanticleer’s President and General Director, Christine
Bullin
Chanticleer recently finished performing, throughout the Bay Area, a
program of commissioned works called “Composers/Our Age”. The program features music by three
30-something composers – Mason Bates, Shawn Crouch, and Tarik O’Regan
– and it has been introduced in Chanticleer’s 31st season.
This program was a breath of fresh air that put the
spotlight entirely on these young composers. The pieces they wrote are very strong, and working with such
young composers is a charming experience because they have such an open concept
of what music is. For someone like
Mason Bates, music is just music. He’s not writing it for tenure, or to be self-consciously post-modern. His music is not all about labels. Each of the six movements in his new
piece for us, Sirens, is very
different – using elements of everything from jazz and blues to
electronica. He writes music that
is very audience-friendly.
Tell us about the other works.
Shawn Crouch’s piece, The
Garden of Paradise, is a departure for us, something of a “current events
piece” – like John Adam’s operas. Sean’s younger brother was recalled for a third tour in Iraq, and that
is what inspired his piece. The
text is based on poems by an Iraq War veteran, and singing about what’s
happening around us is important and exciting for us to do. I think it’s important for the group
and for the audience to hear music that has something to do with what’s
happening now.
Chanticleer’s Artistic Adviser, Joseph Jennings, thinks
Tarik O’Regan’s No Matter, which is
settings of texts by Samuel Beckett, is one of the most beautiful pieces the
group has ever sung. As music, it
is more intellectual than the other two pieces. Mason’s music is drawn from the world around him, and Sean
wrote about a subject he thought was important. With Mason, complexity in and of itself isn’t important
– his chief concern is the effect of the music on the audience. Tarik’s piece is more introverted and
complex – it’s very high for the sopranos. All three works on this program are extremely different in
style, intent, and atmosphere, and together they reflect the vitality of the
contemporary music scene.
Is it a challenge to get such new works programmed more than the few
times when they are premiered?
With the Crouch and Bates works, the movements are
performable as excerpts, and we plan to sing them on the road, and around the
world, next year. Chanticleer will
sing Shawn Crouch’s piece in St. Paul on April 23. Overall, it’s a very rewarding experience to raise money,
take risks, and wait and deal with deadlines in the hopes of receiving pieces
that will have legs. If we think a
piece is suitable we can perform it hundreds of times. In the first year we can do it 50 times
if it fits well. Few other
organizations can give so many subsequent performances. We’re also happy when other groups,
most of them not professional, take up these pieces and sing them. When you hit the jackpot, these pieces
can really get out there.
Chanticleer’s main touring program this season, “Wondrous Free”, is a
wide-ranging collection of American songs. The group is performing it at home in the States –
including in the Temple of Dendur at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on
April 15 – but also on tour in Asia and Europe.
“Wondrous Free”, which takes its name from a 1759 song by
Francis Hopkinson that is considered the first American song, is a very
enjoyable program – not at all pedantic and very entertaining. It’s an amalgam of all these different
influences that go into the American melting pot. When you propose this program abroad you get such
interesting reactions. The French
are just tickled that it’s very exotic, that all of these influences exist in a
single country. We don’t discriminate! The average American would find it hard
to describe what “American” music is, and this program is a fairly lighthearted
answer. The program will be done
this spring in China, where it’s called “Sounds of America”. A presenter in France has a series
called “Light and Shadow”, and I realized that this program works perfectly
with such a thematic concept – that it has plenty of light and
shadow. Remember, Stephen Foster
was writing in the depths of the Civil War. As Americans, we don’t tend to dwell on the shadows –
we tend to make light of them. As
Foster writes in one of his songs, “Hard times, come again no more!”
Chanticleer has toured Asia many times, but beginning May 1 [through May
10] it will give its first performances in China.
That’s true. We’ve been to Japan and Taiwan and Hong Kong and Singapore, but this is
our first time in China and it will be an extremely intense experience singing
there. There is already a great
deal of expectation for these concerts. In Shanghai, for example, the inexpensive seats are sold out and there
are banners on the streets. This
is intriguing, because there’s not a lot of choral music in China –
though there’s now a chorus at the Shanghai Conservatory. But choirs are developing across the
country. And the King’s Singers
have been successful there. When
we imagined this tour we imagined three cities, but now it involves five cities
and eight performances in ten days!
There are also some other special reasons this China trip is
significant.
Well, San Francisco has an extremely important sister-city
relationship with Shanghai. And it’s
also the 30th anniversary of Isaac Stern’s historic visit to the
Shanghai Conservatory, which was chronicled in the film From Mao to Mozart – 1979 was when that happened. The visits of artists and musicians
were a big part of the opening of China, and China understands that cultural
exchange is an accompaniment to diplomatic communication. We’ll be offering two programs there,
including From the Path of Beauty, a work we commissioned from Chen Yi and
perform with the Shanghai Quartet. Weigang Li, the founder of the Shanghai Quartet, was at the Shanghai
Conservatory when Isaac Stern came. He went on to became one of the first Chinese musicians to come to San
Francisco as the door opened. He
learned about string quartets in San Francisco, and then went back to Shanghai
and founded this one. The
commercial relationship that exists between China and the U.S. is huge, and
cultural exchanges paved the way. But when the going gets sticky, as it might again, the real
people-to-people exchanges need to go on.
Chanticleer has had a very ambitious education program over the years
and spends a lot of time in schools working with young singers. Tell us about some of the activities
you’ll be doing in the coming weeks.
In Hibbing, Minnesota – that out of the way place
where Fargo was filmed – we’ll
be doing our Youth Choral festival that we do around the country every
year. Minnesota is important to us
because of our long ties to Minnesota Public Radio, but also because it is choral
“ground zero” in the United States. Choral activity is huge there. We invited the Hibbing High School to work with us a few years ago. And now they‘ve invited us and we’ve
decided to do it. Some of our
education initiatives are funded by the NEA [National Endowment for the Arts],
and our ongoing goal is to hook up with the people who are the “energy points”
in our field, especially the choral directors with zeal. And that’s how these festivals happen. It’s all about these people and their
willingness to step out. In ways,
our educational program is our best-kept secret: people hear what we do in this
area but they probably don’t realize how much time and attention we devote to
it. And we don’t do this
grudgingly.
Since choirs are all about the interaction of individual singers, this
would seem like an inescapable mission for a leading ensemble such as
Chanticleer.
Choral art is a populist one, the one classical art form
that everyone can participate in and that so many do. These people are the hardcore of our fan base and audience. It’s a fan base that is very
sophisticated. They read music and
they do what we do. Chanticleer’s
singers come out of choruses and have respect for them. It’s a democratic art form, and anyone
can make music if they can listen to someone tell them when to breathe and
don’t have a tin ear!
You’re hoping to put your education program into the national spotlight
next season with many special new initiatives.
That’s true. Education is the DNA of Chanticleer: this is our world and we want to
give back to it. This is the way
we encourage our future audiences. All the Chanticleer singers have choir directors who were influential in
their lives. The members of the
group have plenty of time to perform, so they are happy to take time for
this. The effort they put into
these choral days is incredibly generous, both full of enthusiasm and
seriousness of purpose. These
events help kids see things they haven’t seen before and give them a sense of
standards to aspire to. Next year
we’re going to spend a lot of time working with kids, headlining three regional
American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) conferences and Youth Choral
Festivals around the country, and putting on our own National Youth Choral
Festival in San Francisco with twelve invited choirs from the Bay Area and
around the country. We’re going to
make a big deal of it. There are
so few collective activities in America and singing in a chorus is one of
them. It teaches you to do things
with other people, something we’re doing less and less. In a chorus you collaborate willingly
and submit your own self to something larger. No one expects these kids to become professional musicians
– though some may – but they’ll become interested audience members
and good citizens. It’s all about
willingly doing a pleasurable thing with other people.
Chanticleer: upcoming engagements
In the U.S.
April 15
Educational Residency, Long Island University
Brookville, NY
April 15
Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, NY
April 17
Educational Residency
Morrow, GA
April 17
Spivey Hall – Clayton State University
Morrow, GA
April 18
Spivey Hall – Clayton State University
Morrow, GA
April 19
Trinity United Methodist Church
Huntsville, AL
April 21
Youth Choral Festival
Hibbing, MN
April 22
Educational Residency – Apollo Senior High
School
St. Cloud, MN
April 23
Ordway Center
St. Paul, MN
April 24
Concordia Memorial Auditorium
Moorhead, MN
On tour in China
May 1
Suzhou Grand Theater
Suzhou, China
May 2
Shanghai Concert Hall
Shanghai, China
May 3
Shanghai Concert Hall
Shanghai, China
May 4
Private Event, Shanghai Conservatory
Shanghai, China
May 5
National Grand Theater
Beijing, China
May 6
National Grand Theater
Beijing, China
May 8
Shenzhen Concert Hall
Shenzhen, China
May 9
Educational Residency
Hong Kong, China
May 10
Sha Tin Town Hall
Hong Kong, China
Back in the U.S.
May 17
Modesto Junior College Main Auditorium
Modesto, CA
May 18
Educational Residency
Modesto, CA
May 19
Educational Residency
Santa Monica, CA
May 19
The Broad Stage
Santa Monica, CA
www.chanticleer.org
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