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Kansas City's Online Journal of the Performing Arts

Krista Lang Blackwood's ensemble-of-eight, Octarium, presents a Listener's Choice concert on February 19th. KCM's Lee Hartman asked her about her musical background, Octarium's history, innovative programming, and using social media to further the ensemble's reach.

Lee Hartman: What's your musical background? Did you always want to have your own ensemble?

Krista Lang Blackwood: My journey into music is a rather circuitous one. I took piano when I was a kid because my mom made me but I didn't "fulfill my potential," in the immortal words of my piano teacher. I came back to the states [after being in Jamaica since age 9] in ninth grade and I needed a fine art to fulfill graduation requirements at my south Texas high school. I didn't want the frustration of learning yet another instrument. But I thought I could handle choir. I would just hide and sing quietly and get my credit.

So I joined choir my sophomore year in high school. I made All-Region choir that year, much to my surprise. Then, one day late in my sophomore year, I was hanging out in the choir room before school and I made a sound to make [my friends] laugh; a vocal, operatic sound. It was also very loud and caused my teacher, to fly out of her office in what looked like a rage. "WHO DID THAT?" she demanded. We all froze. I raised my hand. "AFTER SCHOOL, RIGHT HERE!" she stated emphatically and marched back into her office. I spent the whole day thinking I was in trouble but when I got to the choir room after school, Ms. Mulder gave me a voice lesson and told me I really had something.

Lacking any other real drive for my future, I applied for admission to the music education program at Texas Christian University, under the tutelage of Ruth Whitlock and Ron Shirey. I sang the alto solos in the big Messiah sing my junior year and I was hooked on classical performance. Several years later, I was doing a show with Opera Omaha, a Gilbert and Sullivan variety thing. I had several solo moments in the show and John Stephens noticed. We passed each other in a backstage hallway at some point and he gave me his card and said, "Call me. Good throat."

So I ended up at KU for my masters. I sang Xerxes and Iolanthe in my first year. I sang with Simon Carrington in my second year. I got a master’s in musicology too. I was filling out the papers for graduation when the secretary to the Dean of Fine Arts, one of those ladies who run the world, told me that I was two classes short of the class requirement for the doctorate. So I started my doctorate.

Just as my singing career was taking off, I found myself struggling with a condition that caused intermittent vocal paralysis. It's really hard to make a go at singing professionally if some mornings you wake up and cannot talk so I took a church job as the Director of Choirs at St. Andrew's Episcopal. This was the early 2000s, so churches still had budgets and my budget had money for 8 section leaders. So I stood outside Simon's choir room one afternoon and pointed at people I wanted to come sing for me. Since I paid well and these were poor college students, they did.

And out if this rose Octarium.

LH: Octarium has a different construction from most vocal groups. How did the format of the ensemble, 8 singers with no conductor, come to be?

KLB: The [section leaders] would sing alone without me waving my arms, while I was away rehearsing the other choirs. I confess that I wasn't worried about it at all. I knew they'd be fine. They were better than fine. Way better. There was a palpable excitement from those singers; the intense intimacy of sung cooperation, the likes of which very few of them had experienced before. With no one person in charge and waving, a singer has to tune in to every one else. To pay attention. To focus on themselves and how they fit within the musical moment but also on the music as a whole. It's a much more demanding way to sing but it is also much more rewarding. They felt that tingle. That spark.

So I stopped conducting them. The music got better and better. I thought, "Wow. People need to hear this. Lots of people need to hear this." Hence, Octarium.

LH: You have been praised for your innovative programming multiple times on KCMetropolis. How far out do you plan your season? Do you start with pieces or a concept?

KLB: Our first seasons were planned out in advance. I knew in our first season that I wanted to do an “Ode to Music” concert as our first concert because, to me, that is what Octarium is about. I also knew we would struggle to find an audience and tried to find a concert concept that I could tie into an established Kansas City happening. I settled on Shakespeare in the Park and we did a Shakespeare concert. Shakespeare in the Park allowed us to use their logo and did some promotion for us so the rep in that sense was driven by my wish to find an audience.

Now my singers live here and yon and we only get together for brief periods of time. This season, we rehearsed for a weekend in September for both our October and Holiday concerts. We have had two rehearsals for the concert this weekend. I plan the concerts in advance, distribute the music and they learn on their own. Because they have all sung together now for several years, I can trust that they'll come in to these too-short rehearsal periods and we'll be able to find the music quickly and be performance ready after only a few hours. Last season's “Masstiche” concert was a haul; we had four rehearsals; a total of 8 hours. And they pulled off “Masstiche” in that time. Pretty amazing.

I usually start out with a concept and then choose the pieces to fit. Because of our limited time together, we end up recycling music more than we would if we were funded in a way that we could always be together. A piece like Barber's Agnus Dei fits into several concepts. I used it in our “Essentials” concert and CD. I used it in “Masstiche.” And I used it in “Should Have Been Choral” because it is, after all, a vocal arrangement of an instrumental piece.

LH: Octarium is at the forefront of effective social media usage by arts groups in Kansas City. You have your blog, Xtranormal video, Twitter, Facebook, etc. How does this online presence feed Octarium’s artistic vision?

KLB: I'm so glad you think we're at the forefront of social media because I often don't have any idea what I'm doing. I really didn't want to take the social media plunge. But my singers are young and hip and they made me do it. Octarium's artistic vision is to create stellar choral music but also make that stellar choral music relevant. Social media allows our music to be more accessible to someone who isn't necessarily plugged into classical chamber music. iTunes and other online digital distributors have allowed Octarium's recordings to go everywhere. When I started Octarium in 2003, the website was the first thing I allowed myself to spend money on. I envisioned it not just as a marketing tool, but as a teaching tool. Texts, translations, programs and notes; all on the website.

The Xtranormal video is a funny story (watch it here). I sat down on a Thursday afternoon and spit it out in an hour. Initially I just did it for the singers but as it was taking shape I thought, "I should really post this online." On a lark, I sent it to Thomas Cott, who sends out a daily email centered on issues in the music industry. He picked it up and then it spread from there. It has around 60,000 views now and has plugged Octarium, and myself, into the discussion of nonprofit arts funding, something that is extremely relevant at the moment.

LH: Your upcoming concert is "Listener's Choice." What was it like for you to release some of the artistic control? How did this project come about?

KLB: "Listener's Choice" was an idea to give our audience more ownership. It's also a way for us to recycle music we've already performed, thus allowing us to do more concerts; we don't have the money or the rehearsal time to do too many all-new-repertoire concerts in a season, unfortunately. Only two people suggested music that wasn't already in our repertoire. The rest were selections I could mostly predict—music that sells online,  music that people mention to me after concerts,  music that people email to request—a Greatest Hits concert with input from the people who listen to us about what those Greatest Hits actually are.

LH: Has there been a particular moment in Octarium's history, musically or otherwise, of which you are most proud?

KLB: In our second season, 2004 –05, we were invited to sing at the national ACDA convention in Los Angeles. "Invited" meaning "pay your own way and we'll let you sing three concerts." And what did I decide they would sing? Britten's Hymn to St. Cecilia and Pfautsch's Triptych. Not easy stuff. One of our concerts was at 8:30 in the morning or something ungodly like that. They sang Hymn to St. Cecilia before 9. The space was generous and they sang extremely well. But they had to sing again that afternoon in a huge venue, Cathedral of our Lady of the Angels, a huge cavern of a space that a group much larger than ours had struggled to fill in the one concert I had attended there. The buzz from our morning performance had permeated the convention and the place was packed. We had never sung for more than 150 people gathered in our whole existence. There were over 1,000 people in this huge, cavernous space. Those singers walked out and did it; they were brilliant. Their sound filled the space and the huge audience was so still, so rapt, that one could hear a pin drop. Renee Stanley wrote about the experience, "I didn’t feel my legs once through the whole thing. It felt like the 8 of us against the whole world. And we won. It rocked."

We've had other brilliant moments like that one. But because this happened in our second season, it was a moment that solidified that what we were doing was worth doing. And that we should keep doing it, regardless of the struggle to fund it, the struggle to manage it, the struggle to keep it alive. The struggles are worth it because we'll keep getting musical moments like this one. We just have to keep singing.

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Octarium performs its "Listener's Choice" Concert on February 19th at St. Elizabeth Catholic Church.  For tickets and more information visit http://www.octarium.org.

By Lee Hartman

Editor-in-Chief; Traditional and New Classical Contributor

Lee Hartman holds degrees from the University of Missouri-Kansas City (D.M.A., M.M.) and the University of Delaware (B.M.). At the University of Delaware, he received a Dean's Scholar position enabling him to pursue an individually designed academic program combining music education and composition. At the University of Missouri-Kansas City he served for three years as the Assistant Director to Musica Nova, the conservatory's new music ensemble, while teaching a variety of composition classes.

In 2007 he was invited to both the Iceland Academy of the Arts in Reykjavík, Iceland and the Sichuan Conservatory in Chengdu, China to give lectures and master classes in composition. In the summer of 2009, Hartman served as an orchestra manager for the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble and Aspen Opera Theater Center for various performances. He serves on the National Executive Committee of the Society of Composers, Inc. as Submissions Coordinator. His primary composition instructors include James Mobberley, Chen Yi, Zhou Long, Paul Rudy, John Beall, and Jennifer Margaret Barker. He currently teaches music theory at the University of Central Missouri and general music classes at Park University having previously taught at UD (2007–08) and UMKC (2006–07).

His compositions can be found at http://www.leehartmanmusic.com

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