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The Simon Carrington Chamber Singers spent last week diligently putting together a program of diverse choral repertory appropriately billed as Juxtapositions. The ensemble has limited preparation time together as the director and its members are found scattered across the globe most of the year, engaged in other musical commitments. Yet despite a condensed rehearsal schedule, the group offered an enjoyable and for the most part well-executed program to an audience of five hundred at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral on Friday evening. 

Though the program was a diverse blend of old and new as the billing Juxtapositions would imply, it was in three modern pieces where the choir most excelled. Local composer Jean Belmont’s The Day is Done was a lovely, yet somewhat wordy, setting of Longfellow. However, the structure pushed through the text effectively without sagging in momentum. Carrington sharply grasped Belmont’s inspiration and brought it across to the audience.

Another Kansas City area composer [and, full disclosure, KCMetropolis.org contributor], Nicholas S. Omiccioli offered his own modern setting of a classic text in A Song of Joys, based on a poem by Walt Whitman. A spirited opening gave way to a beautiful slow middle section. Harmonies were lush throughout with a particularly lovely cluster in the women’s voice parts. The piece built up momentum again for a joyous end.

Bernard Hughes’ Revelation Window was featured as the winning composition of a competition held by the Simon Carrington Chamber Singers this year. The piece was “wordless,” using various syllables and sounds as “textures” and “blocks of color” as Carrington put it. The song was beautifully modern in its composition, with organ-like textures and rich sonorities, yet served as a meditation on the historical cathedral in Manchester, UK, and its stained glass windows. Though the piece was wordless, the sounds were not without meaning. There were several repeated sounds throughout which caught my ear, one sounded like the word “light” and another “luz” (which means “light” in Spanish)—quite appropriate “words” for a piece about cathedral windows.

Another favorite selection of the evening was the Romantic era Ave Maria of Liszt. It was one of the better common repertory pieces of the evening, with respect to phrasing and structural pacing. The “Amen” coda was quite beautiful and the piece was the nicest of the seven selections featuring liturgical Latin texts.

The latter part of the program featured two selections by a high school master class ensemble which spent the week in a workshop with Carrington. In William Hawley’s “Vita de la mia vita” from Six Madrigals I was impressed with a strong performance by the young singers who demonstrated a nice attention to detail.

In Péter Louis Van Dijk’s Horizons, the Chamber Singers and high school singers combined forces. The Afrikaans composer’s song depicting the world of the Bushmen prior to colonialism was bittersweet and striking. An alto ostinato was accompanied by a cacophony of snaps, claps, and vocal effects. The piece also featured several adept solos amid African folk harmonies and bell-rhythm effects.

The program wasn’t without its missteps of course. A Taverner selection near the beginning, Dum transisset Sabbatum, had some pitch issues in the soprano which finally settled in the next selection, David Lang’s again. Poulence’s Quatre motets pour le temps de pénitence were a nice inclusion with their French sensibilities and unexpected harmonic progressions. However, there was too much plodding through the syllabic text of “Vinea mea electa” and not enough shaping of lines. The two competing texts Britten’s “Rosa Mystica” from AMDG were for the most part indecipherable, basically canceling each other out.

However, the program finished on a strong note with Joseph Jennings arrangement of the spiritual Keep Your Hand on the Plow. The selection was a nice closer despite the arrangement’s several half-step transpositions (a dreaded technique employed when a song has nothing else new to say). Soprano Ida Nicolosi delivered on a high energy solo in the spirited program finale. 

REVIEW:
Simon Carrington Chamber Singers
Juxtapositions
Friday, June 10, 2011 (Reviewed)
Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral
415 W 13th St, Kansas City, MO
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Grace Episcopal Cathedral
701 SW 8th Ave, Topeka, KS
For more information, visit www.simoncarringtonchambersingers.com. 

Top Photo: Simon Carrington Chamber Singers 2011 (Photo by Anna Jaffe)

By Topher Levin

Classical Editor and Contributor

Christopher (Topher) Levin is a composer, pianist, music theorist, and music blogger based in Kansas City, MO. His compositions have been performed at music festivals across the US and in Europe. He has spent two summers in Paris, France studying music at the Ecole Normale de Musique through the EAMA program. His trio for clarinet, piano, and percussion is published in the SCI Journal of Scores.

Topher holds degrees from the University of Missouri-Kansas City (M.M.) in music theory and (M.M.) in composition and from James Madison University in Virginia (B.M.) in composition. Primary composition teachers have included John S. Hilliard, Paul Rudy, Zhou Long, James Mobberley, Chen Yi, Claude Baker, Narcis Bonet, Michel Merlet, and João Pedro Oliveira. His piano teachers have included Patricia Brady and Karen Kushner. Topher maintains a piano studio of 22 students.

Having recently completed a Master's thesis on the beautiful complexities of Chinary Ung's trio, Spiral I, Topher turned his writing attention to the more informal blogging medium. He has taken to it quite well, sharing posts on strange and wonderful music and art found across the web with a modest but growing number of blog followers. He looks forward to writing for KCM and sharing with its readers the stories of all the amazing musicians performing in Kansas City.