The KSC Vocal Consort held its end-of-semester recital on Sunday, April 27 in the Alumni Recital Hall in the Redfern Arts Center.
The vocal consort is an audition-only small chamber vocal ensemble that focuses on music from the 1400s to the early 1800s, according to Director Morgan Bothwell.
Bothwell said the vocal consort members receive a level of leadership not usually seen in other ensembles.
“I’m treating them like young professionals,” Bothwell said. “I tell them what we need to do, what the plan is for the semester, essentially. And I say, ‘This is where we need to be by this date, let’s get there,’ and because each musician learns music at a different pace or practices at a different pace, that means different things to each singer.”
“All of them have been doing a wonderful job of communicating with each other about their needs musically and working on spots that tend to be weaker,” Bothwell added.
Bothwell said the recital will be a lecture recital rather than a typical performance.
“We’re focusing on time rather than composer,” he said. “We’re taking the audience through the centuries and focusing on the lecture portion of the recital as much as we are with the music itself.”
Bothwell said the students have prepared other work for the recital.
“They [students] made slides and presentations to go along, to give them context, to give the audience context about what is happening historically for these composers to be writing this way,” he said.
The recital covered five different eras of music: Early Renaissance, High Renaissance, Late Renaissance, Transitional and Early Baroque. It began with a rendition of “Ave Maria Stella” by Guillaume Dufay and ended with “Come again” by John Dowland.
Sophomore member Evalynn LaRose, a choral music education major, said vocal consort has helped her develop musical skills.
“It has definitely improved my sight singing skills,” LaRose said. “We’re expected to show up knowing our parts, and so you have to sit at a piano and you have to play your parts and sometimes you want to play your parts contrasting with others. So you have to play another part on the piano while still singing your part. So there’s a lot of different skills that go into that.”
LaRose said the research process for the recital was also interesting.
“He [Bothwell] wanted us to humanize the composers as much as we can,” she said. “[To] try and give them a little bit more character so that people could understand more about their life.”
LaRose said her favorite part of performing with the vocal consort is how supportive the other members are.
“It can get really intense and it’s really hard to last throughout the whole rehearsal,” she said. “Having everybody to talk to and share the hardship with is really special.”
Attendee Barb Coffman of Rindge, N.H. said she heard about the event from Bothwell, who also directs the Monadnock Chorus.
“I loved that the students stood up and were very well-spoken and they knew their stuff,” Coffman said. “It gave us information that I never knew before in a delightful way.”
Emily Sloane can be contacted at
esloane@kscequinox.com
