As a long time lover of choral music, it was such a joy to get to attend UBC Choir’s Stories concert last Friday, February 15th. The concert featured three of UBC’s Choral ensembles: University Singers, Choral Union, and UBC’s Chamber Choir.
As suggested by the theme, the concert featured works that tell some type of story in one way or another. The concert opened with a set by University Singers, conducted by Dr. Graeme Langager. They opened their set with Hosanna, to the Son of David, a madrigal by Thomas Weelkes. This piece starts with a Homophonic line and then quickly transitions into complex polyphony, a texture that was used until the end of the song. The piece was incredibly rhythmic and exciting, and definitely a great choice for the opening as it set the tone and energy perfectly for the rest of the concert.
Another particular performance that I enjoyed was Eric Whitacre’s Iconic Five Hebrew Love songs – composed to words written in Hebrew by his wife. The thing I love so much about this work is how beautifully it is composed: the word painting and the long melodic lines and the interaction between the choir and the violin and the piano – and UBC’s Choral Union executed it beautifully. The word painting is most evident in Eyze Sheleg (What Snow!): The choir sings “Bong” in unison before the voices come apart and each singer sings bong at their own time, creating the effect of snowflakes falling, while the soprano soloist sings a line that made me visualize a beam of light through the snow. Because of my familiarity with this piece, I did notice that there was a part missing in this performance (the soprano solo that happens after the choir comes in) and I can’t think of a reason why they might have taken it out of the performance. Despite that, I still thought it was one of the more beautiful renditions of Whitacre’s work and thoroughly enjoyed the performance.
Something interesting I noticed was that University Singers and Chamber Choir were much smaller choirs and sang more polyphonic pieces, while Choral Union, the biggest ensemble out of the three, mostly sang in homophony – which I thought was interesting. I can’t say if these choices have anything to do with the levels of the choir and the background the singers have, but I thought it was a particularly great choice considering the number of voices and the powerful effect that many people singing together homorhythmically can create. Another thing I found interesting was the drastic change of tambers between the choirs. Due to the fact that Choral Union was larger, the sound that they created together had significantly more reverb in the space. When they sang together it created this powerful effect that wasn’t necessarily just the volume of the sound, but a richness that could only be the result of that many different voices coming together. The smaller ensembles on the other hand (University Singers and Chamber Choir) had much cleaner, more precise and unified sounds. The dynamic contrasts were more present (I thought their piano dynamic was particularly impressive) and as a result they were able to sing polyphonic lines in a way that was much easier to follow due to the more unified, clean sounds each section had that made it sound like only 4 or 8 different voices were singing together as opposed to 30. It’s important to note as well that the pieces performed came from a variety of different styles and eras and all choirs did a great job of capturing the character of each song and telling each of those stories by changing the overall tone and colour of their voices for each of the different pieces.
One of the coolest things about this concert was when I realized why some experiences that come with live music can’t be recreated through a recording of the performance. Throughout the concert, the choirs stood in a variety of different standing arrangements, and in some of them, you could hear the spatial effects very clearly that drastically changed the listening experience. For example, there was a double choir piece: And So I Go On, Jake Runestad – a song about a loved one passing away, composed in such a way that one choir acts as the voice of the person who is gone and the other choir sings as the voice of the living person left behind). For this piece, the choir was standing such that the first choir stood on the left side and the second choir stood on the right side. This created both a visual effect as well as an audio effect that made the delivery of the message much more engaging and effective. This happened in a few of the other pieces as well when the choirs were standing in their various different standing arrangements (Mixed, SATB parts, etc.)
Overall, I can honestly say that this was one of my favourite choral concerts I have ever attended. The pieces that were chosen were all so beautiful and engaging and I found myself discovering new things about pieces I already knew and finding new pieces to fall in love with. The ensembles executed each piece with a lot of finesse and attention to detail – and I would definitely come to more of UBC Choirs concerts in the future.