Last weekend, the KSC Music Department Faculty and Guest Artist Recital Series welcomed Connecticut-based professional choir and chamber orchestra CONCORA to the Redfern Arts Center to perform a program about climate change.
On Sunday, Oct. 4, CONCORA collaborated with the KSC Concert Choir to perform an oratorio entitled, “A Passion for the Planet.” The performance incorporated several components, including CONCORA’s professional choir and chamber orchestra, the KSC Concert Choir plus several community choir singers from the Monadnock region. Additionally, there was an accompanying film that played during the concert to assist with the storytelling of the piece.
As with all of this year’s Faculty and Guest Artist Recital Series events, the concert was sponsored through grant funding by Douglas Cuddle Toys and Choral Arts New England.
Chair of the Music Department and Director of the KSC Concert Choir, Dr. Sandra Howard, explained that the featured oratorio will have a premiere performance in several New England states. The Oct. 4 performance served as the New Hampshire premiere of the program, which the KSC Concert Choir was invited to collaborate on.
Howard said that Geoffrey Hudson, the Massachusetts-based composer who created the oratorio, came to visit the KSC Concert Choir a week before the performance to hold a workshop with the students.
“He talked a bit about his process and some of the meaning of the text, and he helped guide us on some musical elements of how we could perform it better,” said Howard. “That was really helpful and really special for our students to meet the composer of this fairly new work.”
Howard described the opportunity for KSC students to sing alongside a professional choir and chamber orchestra as a “step up.”
“As an educator, I’m always looking for ways for our singers to meet with professionals in the field, learn from professionals of the field, and in this case they’re going to be singing side by side with professional musicians, which some of our students are aspiring to do for their career,” said Howard.
Additionally, Howard said that CONCORA, directed by Chris Shepard, has a “positive reputation for singing a variety of choral repertoire at a very high level.”
“The singers in CONCORA are paid to be there, but they also have their professional jobs, whether it’s teaching or singing,” she said. “These singers are coming from all across New England and they’re the highest level in their field.”
Senior Cailyn Gorman, who sings as an alto in the KSC Concert Choir, said she was excited to perform with the group as she is also from Connecticut and knows some of the choir members. “I’m very excited and I think it’s a really great opportunity for a lot of people to get to experience something like this and sing with professionals that are doing what we love to do,” said Gorman.
She added that the collaborative aspect of this concert in particular was something she was most excited about heading into the performance. “I love collaborating because that’s what music is,” she said. “It’s all about the sharing and finding the commonality between what we love.”
According to Howard, the performance’s multi-faceted approach featuring several different groups of performers onstage could be interpreted as a representation of the work’s theme of unity. “The idea of us having so many different stakeholders performing together is that representation that we all live on Earth together, so we all should try to come together and help find a solution,” she said. “The oratorio brings people through some of the reality of climate change, some love of nature, a bit of despair and then it brings it back together with taking some kind of positive action, so it’s a bit of an emotional rollercoaster.”
With all of the different elements of the performance coming together, Howard said she hoped attendees would have a fulfilling multimedia experience during the concert and that she expected a diverse audience base for the event. “We may have our typical concert-goers…And for people who maybe are less familiar with the performing arts but they have a particular connection to the climate change advocacy initiatives, I think the text and the messaging is really going to connect for them,” said Howard.
Gorman also said she thought the story being told through the concert was “very cool” and important for audience members to hear.
“It’s reality. It’s what’s happening in the world and I feel like a lot of people just brush past that and don’t really focus on that part of the world. We’re all focused on politics a lot, which is very important, but we also have to focus on the environmental impact that we’re making on the world,” said Gorman. “I hope that the audience really listens to the words that we’re singing…and I hope that they don’t take for granted what we have that the world has given us.”
Senior Elijah Hashem said he attended the concert to support his friends that were performing as members of the KSC Concert Choir. Despite feeling like there was room for some lyric-related improvements, he said that the concert was “really good” overall and that the performance’s message about climate change stuck with him.
“I feel like there were some things text-setting wise that could have been done better. Everything was very literal in the words, and that’s not a bad thing, but I feel like you lose a little bit of the meaning of it,” said Hashem. “Overall, it’s a really good message and I definitely come away thinking, ‘Wow, everything sucks.’”
The KSC Music Department will now look forward to its calendar of remaining events in October, including the Voice Faculty Recital on Oct. 18 and an Orchestra and Concert Choir concert on Oct. 26 that will commemorate the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
Justin Dearborn can be contacted at
jdearborn@kscequinox.com
