Life is usually seen as a circle, it doesn’t matter what tradition you come from. For its upcoming live performance sequence, Vancouver’s Reprise Choir is collaborating with pupil singers and musicians from Vancouver College of Arts and Lecturers to current “Circlesong,” a contemporary choral piece that explores the cycle of life by way of Indigenous texts.
Subsequent week’s three concert events would be the Pacific Northwest premiere of “Circlesong,” with phrases coming from many various tribal and Indigenous sources, and music by choral composer Bob Chilcotte.
“It is a beautiful and holistic thing,” VSAA choir director Joel Thoreson mentioned.
He hatched the concept of instructing his college students Chilcotte’s formidable however achievable choral work after he first heard it and was mesmerized.
“It is a striking piece of music and it’s full of beautiful ideas,” Thoreson mentioned.
If You Go
What: Reprise Choir and Vancouver College of Arts and Lecturers current “Circlesong” by composer Bob Chilcotte
When: 7 p.m. March 19 at VSAA (that includes VSAA singers), 3101 Principal St., Vancouver; 7 p.m. March 22 and three p.m. March 23 (with out VSAA singers) at Vancouver First United Methodist Church, 401 East thirty third St., Vancouver
Admission: $20 donation advised
Data: reprisechoirsings.org
These concepts originate with Native North American peoples and writers. It could have been very best if the underlying music — the automobile delivering these concepts — had been written by a Native composer too, Thoreson mentioned. However there simply aren’t many Native sources of choral music that’s proper for high-schoolers, he mentioned.
“Circlesong” composer Bob Chilcotte, a famend identify in up to date choral music, is white and British. That’s fairly faraway from tribal America.
“And we run into a million problems there,” Thoreson mentioned. “I sat with this whole idea for a long time.”
Thoreson was eager to keep away from misusing Native texts, concepts or beliefs, or doing something inappropriate. However he determined to go forward with what he knew can be a rewarding problem for his college students.
“ ‘Circlesong’ is sharing and celebrating universal ideas,” he mentioned. “It’s not trying to mimic Native music in any way. It’s not saying all Native Americans believe this or do this. It’s not trying to represent any culture. It’s taking little ideas from all these different cultures. They all celebrate life’s journey in these different ways.”
“Circlesong” takes the listener by way of delivery, youth, rising up, falling in love, the trials of center age and the arrival of loss of life, Thoreson mentioned. The lyrics are poems from Chinook, Seminole, Pueblo, Yaqui and plenty of different Native sources.
Thoreson mentioned he didn’t notice till he began engaged on the undertaking together with his choral college students that a few them have Indigenous roots and had been delighted by the piece.
The identical goes for Reprise Choir, which agreed to be VSAA’s accomplice within the undertaking. Co-director April Duvic mentioned she was stunned to be taught that two singers in her choir have Native heritage.
“I think it’s great,” mentioned Reprise tenor Dakota Luu, a Vancouver resident with roots within the Tanana Athabascan folks of inside Alaska. “It’s all about the beauty of the music and the emotions of the original texts.”
Satirically, Luu mentioned he’s enthusiastic concerning the very factor Thoreson was anxious about: representing Native beliefs in a normal method.
“No one is dressing up in Native garb or pretending to be something they’re not, but it definitely gives me a feeling of representation,” he mentioned. “Native Americans in North America — we’re an important minority and we’re underrepresented in the world today. So anytime a big piece like this can be shared with the community, I feel like people will get a lot out of it.”
11-part concord
Reprise is a 35-voice choir that provides only one annual live performance sequence every year in March. That’s as a result of the group contains many choir administrators and music educators who keep a lot busy rehearsing their very own teams all year long. Reprise launched in 2017 after Duvic and co-director Janet Reiter-Galbraith each retired as co-directors of choral music at Clark Faculty, however needed to proceed working with nice singers, together with a lot of their former college students.
To satisfy the calls for of “Circlesong,” Duvic mentioned, Reprise has added a “treble ensemble” — 9 way-high voices — to its base group of 35. In the meantime, Thoreson mentioned, he’s acquired a combined group of as much as 60 VSAA highschool and eighth-grade singers who’re having fun with the problem and scope of rehearsing a unified, 40-minute piece of music.
“My kids don’t usually get to experience that musically. They usually sing three-minute pieces and they do a short set and they’re done,” he mentioned. “This really takes you someplace musically. I remember my first time playing a really large work and it was like, ‘Whoa, you can do this?’”
While you’re working with almost 100 voices, it’s doable to unfold out from normal five- or six-part concord to harmonies with as many as 11 elements, Reiter-Galbraith mentioned.
The Wednesday evening debut live performance will see all singers taking the VSAA stage, plus two grand pianos performed by Duvic and Reiter-Galbraith, plus a big pupil percussion ensemble, that includes 4 timpani, marimba, drums and hand percussion. That’s almost 100 performers in all, making what’s positive to be an enormous and mulilayered sound.
“This is a complex work,” Duvic mentioned.
If that many harmonies is what you crave, don’t miss the Wednesday evening live performance at VSAA, as a result of that’s the one one with pupil singers. The Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon concert events at Vancouver First United Methodist Church will retain Reprise’s treble ensemble, pianos and pupil percussion part, however not the VSAA combined choir. (It might be a smaller efficiency, Duvic mentioned, however in rehearsal the stage at First United nonetheless felt filled with expertise.)
To spherical out the 40-minute “Circlesong” for the complete live performance, Duvic mentioned, a number of extra items had been added to the beginning of the live performance, together with poetry by former U.S. Poet Laureate Pleasure Harjo. The Touring Day Society, an interfaith, inter-tribal Native drum group, will open all three concert events.