S12 E39: Delaware State of the Arts - Delaware ChoralArts

Immerse yourself in the captivating world of choral music as we sit down with David Christopher, the Founder and Artistic Director of Delaware ChoralArts. This is a fascinating journey into the heart of an organization that's not just about music, but about building community and nurturing talents in Wilmington and beyond. Listen closely as David shares the unique dynamics of a chorus that can expand and contract depending on the performance, and get a taste of the audition process that aligns with their purpose of inclusivity and diversity.

We also give you an exclusive sneak peek into exciting performances on the horizon. From a thrilling collaboration with The Whitney Project and the Wilmington Children's Chorus to the Golden Harp performance featuring works of globally-acclaimed composers Malcolm Boyle, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Gweneth Walker, and Dan Forrest, there's a feast for your ears. This episode is a poignant narrative of how choral music in Delaware and beyond weaves people together in an extraordinary way. Music enthusiasts, this one's for you.

The Delaware Division of the Arts, a branch of the Delaware Department of State, is committed to supporting the arts and cultivating creativity to enhance the quality of life in Delaware. Together with its advisory body, the Delaware State Arts Council, the Division administers grants and programs that support arts programming, educate the public, increase awareness of the arts, and integrate the arts into all facets of Delaware life. Learn more at Arts.Delaware.Gov.

Delaware State of the Arts is a weekly podcast that presents interviews with arts organizations and leaders who contribute to the cultural vibrancy of communities throughout Delaware. Delaware State of the Arts is provided as a service of the Division of the Arts, in partnership with NEWSRADIO 1450 WILM and 1410 WDOV.

Transcript

Andy Truscott: 0:09

For Delaware State of the Arts. I'm Andy Truscott. My guest today is David Christopher, the founder, artistic director and conductor of Delaware Coral Arts in Wilmington, delaware. Delaware Coral Arts or DCA, serves the greater Wilmington community through excellent and inspiring performances of great choral literature. It supports its talented and dedicated membership with professional skill and leadership, nurturing the art of choral music through scholarships, commissions and showcases. Known for its expressive singing, diverse programming and beautiful choral sound, delaware Coral Arts has brought a rich palette of choral music to the region since its beginnings in 1984. David, as we kick off here, could you start by giving our listeners a bit of an overview of Delaware Coral Arts and its mission in the greater community?

David Christopher: 1:04

Well, delaware Coral Arts. Well, when it was formed, I was surprised by saying that I formed it in 1984. I was only about 14 at the time no, I'm kidding and I was with it for several years and moved away. Then I became the conductor again in 2005. So it's been around for quite a while and it's gone through a number of phases.

David Christopher: 1:31

So currently we are a chorus of about 50 singers I think 48 exactly in this concert and the chorus size expands and contracts depending on what we do. We do Carmina Verana. Suddenly we have 90 people that want to sing with us. If we do Monteverdi, we're down to 35. So we kind of roll with the punches. With that.

David Christopher: 1:56

We usually do a three concert season, one of them usually with orchestra. In this case. We have instrumental ensembles throughout the year. So we rehearse on Monday evenings. So if there are folks out there that would like to join a choral group, we rehearse at the Episcopal Church of St Andrew and Matthew and Wilmington and we have a fantastic collaborative pianist, rob Tenon, who's the music director of New Arc Methodist. And one final thing I'll say we are associated with the Episcopal Church of St Andrew and Matthew as an ensemble in residence at the church. It's kind of convenient because I'm the music director there as well. We kind of wedded the group to the church and the group in a loose way, but there's a lot of synergy between the two organizations.

Andy Truscott: 2:51

You had mentioned that the size of the group varies obviously based on the piece that you're performing. Talk to us about how individuals can indicate to you that they're interested in auditioning and kind of what you're looking for most as it relates to singers from the community.

David Christopher: 3:10

If someone is interested in singing, probably the easiest thing is to go to our website and look at the. I believe it's the auditions page. It's been called different things. It was sing with us for a while. I think it might say auditions now, but it has information about what is expected.

David Christopher: 3:28

We do need people to be able to read music because basically we hand you this huge pile of music and then we have 12 rehearsals and do a concert. So it's not the kind of group where we spend months and months learning notes by ear. So you really do have to read pretty well. I'm also looking for people that can sing in tune and have a pleasant quality. This doesn't need to be a specific quality, Just needs to be pleasant.

David Christopher: 3:59

The other thing about Delaware Coral Arts is it's not just a group of people that sing. It really is a community. We have social events and we have a. Our community actually involves the people that come to our concerts. So when you get involved with us, it's not just show up and sing and that's it. There's more to it. So we also want people that want to become part of that community. I invite people. Sometimes before they audition, they can actually come and sit in on a rehearsal and try it out. I highly recommend that, Even if they audition. Sometimes I'll say why don't you come to one of our rehearsals, sit in, see what the rehearsal is like, what the group is like, and see if it's something that you can commit to? The one final thing I'll say is it is a group that requires a certain time commitment. Because we do minimal rehearsal, we need people to come all the time, unless they're for a sick or have a serious conflict. We're looking for a commitment there as well.

Andy Truscott: 5:06

As the artistic director, how do you go about choosing the pieces that you will present each year? Is that dependent on the course that you know already exists, or do you choose the pieces with the hopes that you'll attract singers from around the area based on the fact that you're doing these pieces?

David Christopher: 5:23

Well, I think the answer is yes. It's a really complicated thing to figure out what on earth to sing. Historically sung things like Messiah or Handel's, judas Maccabeus or Samson or Big Oratorio's, elijah Haydn's creation. That's what the group, historically, has loved to sing, but in the last decade or so we have tried to become more of a chorus. That's relevant, shall I say that's the right word, but it matters. What we do isn't just a fun exercise for us, but it matters to community and the singers. We want the music to be something that our singers want to sing. If it's not, they simply don't come first of all. So they want to sing mainly things like Kermina Barana, handel's, elijah, but they also want to sing works by new composers, by women composers, by black composers, and I think over a period of time they've come to trust me that if we settle on a piece, it's going to be something that they want to learn. So we consider all of that what people will come to hear what people want to sing. But then we also have other goals, like we have our.

David Christopher: 6:49

We recently formed a diversity and inclusion committee that has been working to try to strengthen our views and our understanding of that, and they weigh in on the selection of the record. We also have a programming committee that gets involved in this. That's a long process. I basically what I do is I basically make this humongous list of every work that I could conceivably think of that we might want to do this season, and I give it to these lovely people who take tons of time and they look at everything and we sort of boil it down to our six best choices and then we keep massaging it down till we actually come up with the program. And then some oftentimes we get it all set and something falls through and we have to go back to the drawing board. Real pleased with this season. I think it really is exactly the kind of season that we like to do and it's our budget and I think people are gonna be very excited to hear it.

Andy Truscott: 7:52

Can you talk about some of the notable partnerships or collaborations that Delaware Coral Arts has established in your long tenure of existence?

David Christopher: 8:03

Sure, well, I've been a musician in this community for at least 10 years, maybe 40. And so I have a lot of personal connections. But also the group itself has historically collaborated with other groups. So between those two things we often do like, for example, this season our first and last concert have groups that we're collaborating with. The Gliss String Quartet is part of our first concert and that's a.

David Christopher: 8:38

Lisa Vappel is our contractor, concert master or whenever we use instruments, and she has a string quartet called the Gliss String Quartet and that happens to be players. They're all players that I've worked with many times and it's not like a. They don't actually have a series of their own. They kind of it's an informal gathering of this quartet whenever needed, but it's a great group of. It's all female group fine players, so we love to perform together. Lisa's just a brilliant player and everybody that she brings in is as well.

David Christopher: 9:18

In the spring and that's gonna be a collaboration with the Whitney Project. Now, the Whitney Project is Jonathan Whitney's jazz ensemble. Jonathan Whitney is an artist in residence at the Episcopal Church of St Andrew Matthew, as is Delaware Quora Larks, so we have relationships on many levels. Plus, he and I are very good friends and we're always doing projects together. That was a no brainer when we needed a jazz group. We just go to Jonathan and it's actually not just like his jazz trio or quartet, this has like cellos and blutes and things in it as well. So it's sort of the Whitney Project expanded. So we're collaborating with them for the spring. We also often collaborate with the Wilmington Children's Chorus. Kimberly DuSette and Phil DuSette were on that. Usually once a year we do something collaborative with them. It's not actually on our season, but we are doing a spiritual concert with them. We'll be singing in the Wilmington Children's Chorus' Spirituals Concert, so we're also collaborating with them this year as well.

Andy Truscott: 10:30

I want to take just a minute here to remind our listeners that you're tuned into Delaware State of the Arts on News Radio 1450 WILM and 1410 WDOV. David, talk to us about what's coming this season. I know you've got a performance coming up here in just about a week called the Golden Harp at Grace United Methodist Church. Tell us what audiences can expect with that performance and then the rest of your season.

David Christopher: 10:57

So that's on Saturday, november 18th, at 7 pm. It's going to be at Grace United Methodist Church, which is one of our favorite places to sing. Audience likes to come too, because when you think of Grace Methodist Church you also think of all those parking lots all around it, so it's a very easy place to park and the acoustics are the best in town, I think. So that concert has four pieces on it. The first we open with this it's a big ol' Anglican tour de force called Thou O Goddard, praised in Zion by Malcolm Boyle, based on Psalms 65 and 67 and Isaiah 26. And it's like an eight minute piece that just lets out all the stops. So it's the kind of stuff that DCA loves to do, and hopefully that will get them warmed up for the Mozart Mesa Brevis in F. It's KB192, that's the second piece. Now. The first piece is just with organ, with Gabriel Benton will be playing the organ he's the organist at Grace and one of the finest keyboard players around and then the second, the Mozart Mesa Brevis, will have strings and organ. This is a 20, 20 minute piece, I guess maybe 25 minutes. That he wrote when he was just 18 years old, and it's one thing that's kind of notable about it. It's sometimes called the cradle mask because it uses a theme that he used. Well, the theme is, which is a theme he used in the Jupiter Symphony, so it's just immediately tends to sound familiar to people and they don't know why. I haven't done the piece in like 15 years, so I'm really thrilled to be doing it again and the soloists are from our staff singers. They're going to be stepping out and doing the solos for that.

David Christopher: 13:00

The third piece is called the Golden Heart and this is by Gwyneth Walker. One of the things I'm particularly interested in doing is more works by women composers, and I think they're just. Gwyneth Walker is an example of someone who I think needs to be performed a lot more. Her music is brilliant, it holds up against anybody else and it's got ideas that I keep thinking as we're rehearsing this. Could a European guy from the 17th and 18th century thought of anything like this, even contemporary? It's got such an interesting way that she crescendos and decrescendos through the phrases. It gives it like an aerodynamic quality, so she just has a great style.

David Christopher: 13:49

It was originally written for the Arkansas Chamber of Singers and with string quartet, so it was commissioned from her by them, and it uses the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore. I hope I said that, right, rabindranath. I think the accent's on the second syllable there. He was 1861 to 1941. And he was a Bengali poet, playwright, novelist, all kinds of things. He won a Nobel Prize and this work is from his. Gitanjali is the name of the bigger work. He translated it himself into English.

David Christopher: 14:28

It's a very interesting spiritual work. It sort of explores the beauty of the divine and the beauty of the soul within, and it sees the beloved as the creator or as a lover. So it's like poetry to God, basically, but not in a way that you would expect to hear it in church. The reason it's called the Golden Harp is because there is a line in the opening song it says I am here to sing these songs. That's the title of the piece, and when in the morning air the Golden Harp is tuned, and so that's where the Golden Harp comes from.

David Christopher: 15:10

So, and then we close the concert with a piece by Dan Forrest, who is a really popular composer now. It's a piece called Like Beyond Shadow that he wrote in 2021. But it was based on everything that happened in 2020, which, as we know, that was the pandemic. Many of us had a terrible time with that. There was a tumultuous election that year. Things have never been the same since that, and so that inspired him. He was Paul Wigmore. Paul Wigmore is an English writer. The text invokes light, joy, love, peace and hope. It really is, and it's with strings, piano and chorus, so it's a very ethereal, moving piece. Dan Forrest we did a piece by his Ubalate Deo, which he wrote in 2016, and we did it in 2018. So this is our second Dan Forrest piece. So that's our fall concert, november 18th.

Andy Truscott: 16:16

Talk to me about the February performance of I Believe, which is going to have two performances one at Newark United Methodist Church and one at the Presbyterian Church of Dover.

David Christopher: 16:25

We're actually really excited to be doing Newark and Dover. So we've been thinking for a while we've got to get out of Wellington and perform throughout the state more. So Newark and Dover are where these concerts will be. The concert is centered around a piece called Credo, which I believe, and it's written by Margaret Bonds. The musical piece was written by Margaret Bonds, american composer, one of the first Black composers to gain recognition in the United States. She's known very well for her spiritual arrangements. Most notably, he's got the whole world in his hands. The famous arrangement that everyone does is by Margaret Bonds. She was very influenced by Florence Price, another African-American composer, who's recently got a lot of press and her works have been revived. And she worked closely with Langston Hughes.

David Christopher: 17:23

But this work is WEB Du Bois. Now he was much earlier. He was 1868 to 1963. So he wrote the text of the work in 1904. And in 1904, he wrote this work. It's considered a prose poem and it proclaimed his philosophy on racial equality. The work is nine movements and each movement is one of the pieces that he laid out his personal beliefs towards racial equality. The first one is God, then the Negro race, then pride, service the devil, the prince of peace, liberty for all men, the training of children and patience. So these were the things that were part of his credo.

David Christopher: 18:16

I want to read a quote from one of my friends in Philadelphia. Veronica Chapman Smith is a soprano and I've performed with her a number of times. She says it is a piece of music that, not only through the text but also through the musical language, tells a story that has unfortunately not been heard on a regular basis within the traditional concert hall. And this is a piece that we did last year for our spring concert, and it received such an interesting response. People were a lot of people were surprised that they liked it. They were impressed with how powerful the music was and how the music, the words, seemed to make more sense because of the way that she said it. So we decided that we would revive it and share it with our Newark and Dover friends.

David Christopher: 19:11

It's one of the final pieces that Bons wrote before she died, actually, and following that concert we're going to have a live panel discussion, both of them, both in Newark and Dover. It's going to be led by the soprano soloist. Her name is Jasmine Salabarios, who's actually from Dover, but she's going to be singing and leading this panel of people that she puts together from Dover, and we're going to be talking about looking at 1904, 1965, and 2023, and how this work is relevant for all three times. So we think it's going to be a very interesting discussion. So we really want it to be. You know, we love singing the piece, but it needs to be more about more than just the piece. It's really a very relevant piece.

Andy Truscott: 20:04

David, as we wrap up a little bit, can you talk to us about what message or inspiration you want to convey to listeners about the beauty and significance of choral music in Delaware and beyond?

David Christopher: 20:18

There's all kinds of levels that we have to find in the music that won't find themselves.

David Christopher: 20:24

You know, the composers have interpreted the text for us and we spent a lot of time talking about this, and I think it's one of the things that makes their performances unique. The other thing that I think is interesting about that is by focusing on these musical ideas we don't really ever talk about, tend to talk about blending so much, because what we find is people with different voices and different timbres, different, you know, different mindsets, even if we share the same musical ideas, it tends to just blend and it comes together in a way that it's a phenomenon really, so that by the time we get to the end maybe I'll say a few things like this chord is out of tune, let's try to fix that, and you know the vowel quality here is off, but if we have the same musical mind, the voices tend to blend and the people feel connected in a way that they can't feel any other way. So I think that this really is important to the members of the group as well.

Andy Truscott: 21:30

It's hard to put into words beyond that, david, thank you so much for joining me today. If you're interested in learning more about Delaware Coral Arts, I encourage you to visit their website at DelawareCoralArtsorg.