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Mixing theatre with a variety of twentieth-century choral music, Charles Bruffy and the Kansas City Chorale presented their Shakespeare in Song program to an audience of about two hundred last Saturday at Ward Parkway’s Country Club Christian Church. Built around the language of William Shakespeare, verse and prose from the Bard’s plays and sonnets served as the text for all twenty choral pieces.

Partnering with members of the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival, four distinguished local actors took part in the concert, presenting readings and brief scenes from which the song lyrics were drawn, including scenes from The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, and Macbeth among others. In between each number, Robert Brand, Merle Moores, John Rensenhouse, and Cinnamon Schultz popped in front of the choir recreating the moments from the next scene to be presented in song as Charles Bruffy grabbed his music stand and stepped off to the side. The program was unified and well-rehearsed, shifting easily from theatre to song.

The most interesting piece on the program was arguably “When Daffodils Begin to Peer,” the closer of the first half. Composer Matthew Harris, who featured heavily in the program, took pastoral descriptions from this scene in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and ran with it, coming up with an unabashedly Country Western/Shakespeare motif. Featured soloist Elaine Carpenter channeled her best Tammy Wynette to great effect.

Several of Harris’ other selections impressed with their strong, poppy hooks. Though the song felt far too brief, the lilting melody of “Tell Me Where is Fancy Bred” was truly arresting in the second stanza. Tenor Frank Fleschner delivered a bright, high, poppy solo in Harris’ “O Mistress Mine!” over warm cinematic choral harmonies. “When That I Was and a Little Tiny Boy” began with a darker, more serious tone. Yet again, the piece achieved a catchy buildup with a repetitive soprano hook on the lyrics “For the Rain,” under which the choir provided a satisfying forward motion to the piece. 

A boisterous, drunken monologue by actor John Rensenhouse provided a fuller context to the Harris selection “I Shall No More to Sea” for which the complete lyrics were “I shall no more to sea, to sea / Here shall I die ashore—”. The piece was striking and beautiful in its economy, summoning sea shanties with open fifth harmonies that alternated with more modernistic, lush sonorities.

Several notable moments in the program belonged to the actors. Before Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Over Hill, Over Dale,” Robert Brand and Cinnamon Schultz delivered a memorable scene introducing Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Later, Schultz provided excellent physical comedy prior to “When Daffodils Begin to Peer,” oddly posing Bruffy in front of the choir as the choir director displayed his own comic timing, staring bewildered at the audience. Merle Moores’ moment came between Mäntyjärvi’s “Come Away, Death” and Emma Lou Diemer’s “O Mistress Mine!” when she stood out in a fun ensemble scene of inebriation from Twelfth Night. 

Overall, the chorale achieved a fairly even, balanced sound throughout. Jaakko Mäntyjärvi’s “Lullaby” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream featured several nice moments for the bass section, however, at other times in the program, the bass section was lacking in richness and power. Performance-wise, my biggest criticism concerns the chorale’s ‘s’ sounds, which were occasionally over-pronounced and often un-synchronized, creating unnecessarily long hisses in the delivery of the text.

Mäntyjärvi’s “Double, Double, Toil and Trouble” served as the fun, up-tempo closer to the program. The piece featured serpentine chromatics, as did all four of the Mäntyjärvi selections, as well as some vocal glissando/cackles and a propulsive rhythm. The chorale adroitly delivered the tongue-twisting text and ended the piece with a hearty stomp on the final line, “Open, locks, whoever knocks!”

REVIEW
Kansas City Chorale
Shakespeare in Song
Saturday, May 14, 2011 (Reviewed)
Country Club Christian Church
6101 Ward Pkwy, Kansas City, MO
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Asbury United Methodist Church
5400 W 75th St, Prairie Village, KS
For more information, visit www.kcchorale.org.

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.