Perfect Concert

 Last night I attended a perfect concert at St. Vincent's.  People who know me well will be surprised, perhaps, because I don't remember ever using the word perfect before to describe a choral concert.  But this one was--perfect.

I was a little worried about attending, because I walked out of the last concert at St. Vincent's because of bad programming resulting in acoustical mud, not really music.  But I shouldn't have worried.  These singers, The Gregorian Voices, sang the music written to be sung in this kind of acoustical space.  There was no mud, just glorious sound that materialized out of the air, out of the stonework, out of the stained glass.  

One might think that two hours of Gregorian chant, could get-- boring. This concert left us all wanting more.  They programmed chants in different keys, with exceptional dynamic ranges, and from different periods.  For good measure, they added pieces from the Eastern Orthodox ; those haunting Arabic influences send shivers down my spine.  I actually recognized one of their chants, Humbly I Adore Thee, Verity Unseen, from my days as a soloist in St. John's Episcopal back in Baltimore.  The words didn't come back to me right away, but come back they did.  They also had a magnificent arrangement of Andrew Lloyd Weber's "Pie Jesu," from his Requiem.  That's when I noticed that tears were dropping onto my purse.    As an encore, they performed an uncluttered arrangement of Amazing Grace. The English was pretty good for guys from Bulgaria! As badly as I wanted to sing along, I refrained, but I did mouth the words.

The church was darkened, they were dressed all in black, but not robed.  That added to the mystery and the beauty of the sound.  There were only 8 singers, and that was enough.  The young basso profundo looked to be 8 feet tall and his sound came from his feet, I do swear.  I thought of Ed Polochick and all the choral techniques he tried to drill into his singers, me included.  I didn't hear a single breath intake the entire evening, the sound was simply--there.  Obviously they did have to take breaths but the technique of entering dead center on the pitch rendered the musical line utterly seamless. 

I was reminded of the power of music to connect us:  as singers with the choirs long past who've sung the same pieces, with the composers who gifted us with beauty;  as singers with listeners, who communicate far more than the surface words; as listeners to one another and to something more powerful than we are, individually or collectively.  For me, choral music is both the portal to and the language of  the Divine.  

I could have listened to them all night long.  Or until my supply of tissues ran out.

You can listen here for yourself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ygv5E2Vii0