Pacific Mozart Ensemble

This summer, after the incredibly busy 2006-7 PME season, most of us might have taken a break from rehearsals and singing, but a few of us had already committed to going once again to the Grand Teton Music Festival in Jackson, Wyoming. Last year, Lorna and Peggy (both with the summer off) were the only two members of the Pacific Mozart Ensemble joining folks from many other Bay Area Choruses, including the SF Opera Chorus, SF Symphony Chorus and SF Choral Society, in singing in Mahler's Symphony No. 3 to inaugurate the Grand Teton Festival Chorale (now known as the San Francisco Festival Chorale). That piece required only women and boys (the SF Boys Chorus) so it was a small-ish group. But this year, the 90 person mixed-voice chorus needed for Carl Orff's well known (and somewhat bawdy) masterpiece Carmina Burana included five Peemers (and one PME alum); Alexis, Antonia, Greg and Seth joined Lorna and Peggy. Says Peggy, "When I auditioned for last summer's concert, Ian Robertson, the director of the SF Boys Chorus, SF Opera Chorus, and now the SF Festival Chorus, did not seem to have much of a picture of the quality of PME's singers, and I hope that we are helping to change that. I'm pleased that all of us who auditioned got in this year."

Last year, Donald Runnicles, music director of the San Francisco Opera, took over as director of the Grand Tetons Music Festival, now in its 46th season, and vowed to really put it on the map. The festival has always attracted incredible musicians who want to keep working during the summer and have a bit of a vacation too! Many of these folks come back year after year to enjoy the Tetons, Yellowstone National Park and Jackson Hole, AND, of course, to play their hearts out. In his vision for the future, Maestro Runnicles plans to perform one symphonic work each summer that uses a chorus, and is developing the Festival Chorale with Ian for that purpose.

...O Fortuna...

No, it's wasn't one of the many commercials you've seen or heard, or a Harmony Sweepstakes entry, but the real thing in its entire bombastic glory! Goosebumps were growing by the thousands as we belted these words, standing behind the Chinese gong and following Maestro Runnicles' downbeats.

We found that the biggest challenge in singing Carmina Burana was not musical, but linguistic. The pronunciation is not Latin, although the words look like they are. We had to learn new rules and follow them… that and dynamics (sound familiar?). The women and boys had it easy compared to the men, who have a couple of extra movements and sing a tongue twisting drinking song, In Taberna Quando Sumus, that is about as easy as riding a bucking bronco. It's quite possible that Greg might still be recovering from that experience! "My pleasure and challenge this year was to sing soprano," said Peggy. "Last year I sang second alto, and this year, with no re-audition, I was assigned to sing second soprano" Who knew what Fortune's Wheel would land on? "It was fun, but tiring, because of my general lack of exercise in that tessitura. It did give me my "high note" fix for the year…and believe me…you can SING the high notes in this piece…LOUD, and know that the orchestra is still louder by far. Rehearsing, however, does not prepare one for the experience of singing this with an orchestra. It was exciting and dramatic, with huge contrasts in texture, orchestration, and mood… a very thrilling and satisfying evening of singing!"

Carmina is the perfect piece for the novice audience. Every performance saw the crowd pop up out of their seats, as if they'd been sitting on Jack-in-the-Box springs, and applaud insanely. After clapping through three bows at the end of each performance, they must have gone home with sore hands! We gave a free performance on Sunday, which was attended by those who generally would not be in a symphony audience and they loved it too. We had amazing soloists for this piece: Linda Mabbs produced the impossibly ethereal and floating soprano notes that are required for the Dulcissime and Setit Puella sections, but still remained solid and earthy for Amor Volat Undique and In Trutina. Lorna was particularly fond of the tenor soloist John Tessier, who sang the part of the Roasted Swan in the Olim Lacus Colueram with such ease and comfort, you'd have thought that those high D's were just the BEGINNING of his range. And Earle Patriarco (Alexis' personal favorite) was a wonderfully theatrical baritone who thrilled and impressed us with the depth and richness of his lower range, the brightness and security of his upper range, and the facility with which he went from one to the other at the drop of a hat. Plus, he was an all around cool guy who invited us to gather at his rented condo after the last performance!

Our daily rehearsal and performance schedule left lots of time to explore the area. Excursion vans were provided, and, with Greg at the wheel, our days were rounded out by swimming in the clear, cold lakes while looking up at the Teton peaks, hiking, and floating and rafting down the Snake River. Wildlife sightings were abundant- we saw a real live moose at Moose Junction, bald eagles, ospreys, antelope, a hungry coyote and a VERY hungry fox who pursued a VERY frightened deer right into the river. Nights were parties at our hotel and in taberna at the local watering holes like the Mangy Moose and The Cadillac Grille. Fine food (lissen' up singer-eaters!) was consumed at such establishments as the Alpenhof Bistro, Nora's Fish Creek Inn and Bubba's Bar-B-Que. We didn't make it to the Cowboy Bar for food or drink, but there's always next year!! (Alexis' souvenir cowboy hat is already asking about when it might be able return to its original stomping grounds…).

It was too much fun, and we are all hoping to go back next summer. We'll let you know when auditions happen. Just come; you won't regret it.

-Peggy Rock, Lorna Baird and Alexis Lane Jensen

Want more pics? You can view a slideshow of Alexis' photos here:
Grand Tetons & Yellowstone

Technorati : Carl Orff, Carmina Burana, Donald Runnicles, Grand Teton Music Festival, Grand Tetons

So what did Kymry & Becca do on their summer vacation? In July Kymry had the good fortune to accompany two choirs on back-to-back tours in Europe, and Becca came along for the journey. The Acalanes High School Chamber Singers performed in Lucerne and Paris, while WomenSing participated in a choral competition near Barcelona.

LUCERNE
Upon arrival in Switzerland we were treated to a welcome dinner, which included such traditional Swiss entertainments as polkas & waltzes on accordion, yodeling, and a big burly Alpine horn player named Urs. The Alpine horn is about 20 feet long, sort of a Swiss didgeridoo. Urs invited a parade of choristers onstage to play it, and Becca gave it her best toot. Apparently trombone embouchure is very useful in getting good long tones on the Alpine horn. Following this demonstration there was an archery contest, where would-be William Tells from the audience shot an apple-shaped plywood target with a crossbow. (A real apple atop the head of a lad would have been more true to the legend, but much more of a mess - one supposes there were no apples or young boys to spare that evening.)

While the kids were rehearsing for the final concert, we spent the afternoon touring around Lake Lucerne on the local ferry system. Here the true beauty of central Switzerland came to light. We saw small lakeside villages, chalets, waterfalls, and always looming above, the magnificent Alps. Imagine touring Tahoe without the south shore casinos and you get the idea.

A gregarious fellow from Kansas City named Eph Ely directed the final concert of the youth choral festival in Lucerne. His musical selections were a bit questionable, especially "Gospel America," a medley of My Country 'Tis of Thee, America the Beautiful, and the Battle Hymn of the Republic, all in a 12/8 gospel shuffle feel. But the kids certainly had fun singing, and you couldn't beat the beautiful KKL concert hall and the very fine local orchestra accompanying the massed choir. We were swept away by a particularly cheesy number called "The Awakening", by Joseph Martin - as interpreted by 300 voices, full brass, thundering timpani and cymbal crashes, it was wonderfully bombastic, like some latter-day Olympic fanfare. Kymry only wished he'd had a chance to play the Steinway piano onstage. It was strange to sit in the audience for this concert to be sure, but Becca had an even more surreal experience this entire trip as a singer traveling for three weeks with two choirs and not singing a note on stage.

PARIS
So with Lucerne wrapped up, we piled in the tour bus and drove to Paris. Our tour guide Patrick was a delight. He was witty, bright, and would spontaneously burst into song on the bus, serenading us on the P.A. with French songs and '80s new wave classics. But he was also constantly reading a volume of Rudolf Steiner philosophy - perhaps just to give him the appearance of not being a total hedonistic party animal. (It didn't seem to fool our teenage sopranos, who swooned over him like he was made of chloroform.) His age and origins remained obscure, but we learned a couple of things. Supposedly his home is Las Vegas, but as he makes his living as a tour guide for various performing arts groups, he's constantly on the road, keeps apartments in Atlanta and Brussels, and a Swiss bank account. Sounds like a pretty good life.

In Paris we performed at three incredible cathedrals. The first was a mass at Basilique Sainte Clotilde, near Blvd. Saint-Germain. It's most famous for having the organ that Cesar Franck inaugurated and performed on for over thirty years. Following his tenure, Gabriel Pierne and a number of other noted French organists have succeeded the post. The current organist played a very complex and demonically chromatic piece as the introit and recession for the mass. When Kymry asked the organist which piece he'd played, he shrugged and said, "I was improvising." We had assumed improvising on the pipe organ was a lost art, but certainly not in the hands of that guy. So when Kymry got the chance to play this beast, he couldn't pass it up, but was hardly qualified for the gig. "I'm a pianist, not an organist. I don't know how to work those buttons and stops, and I certainly can't play that huge pedalboard underneath with my feet. I got a bit of help from my demonic organ friend, but it was a bit like getting behind the wheel of a Ferrari and just driving to the corner grocery store. I never got past second gear, but it sure was fun."

Our next performance was at Notre Dame, surely a highlight of the trip. The choir rose to the occasion and even the crowd of tourists parading through the sanctuary quieted down for the hour and gave the kids a good round of applause. After singing corny massed-choir music in Lucerne with hundreds of teenagers, in Paris the Acalanes Chamber Singers finally had the opportunity to perform more subtle music on their own as a smaller 24-voice group. Their repertoire included Poulenc, Vittoria, Gabrieli, Duruflé, and a new arrangement of "Amazing Grace" by their conductor Bruce Lengacher. That evening we took a sunset boat cruise on the Seine, enjoying the gorgeous twilight and a couple of rainbows. We rounded off the night with an aerobic journey up the Eiffel Tower, climbing up nearly 700 steps to the second level.

The next day the choir took a trip to Versailles. We didn't have enough time to get inside the palace but we did explore the expansive gardens and grounds surrounding the buildings. Unfortunately the two of us spent a little more time wandering around than we should have, and we walked back to our meeting point only to find the tour bus pulling away. Luckily Becca managed to flag it down!! We went on to visit and perform at Chartres, the final concert of the tour for Acalanes. On the bus ride home, Patrick had people come up and sing karaoke into the bus mic. Becca sang "Case of You", and Lindsay, an Acalanes alum and Joni Mitchell fan, sang the second verse. The women's vocal octet at Acalanes has learned some of Solstice's repertoire, and Becca was excited to sing a couple songs with them on the ride back to the hotel.

Later that night we took some of the kids out to the Moulin Rouge cabaret. It was an incredibly cheesy floor show - très fromageur, oui! - with prerecorded music (canned can-cans?) and lip-syncing, but there was no denying the terrific feather-boa costumes (or lack thereof) nor the endless flow of champagne at our table. The next morning we groggily said our goodbyes to Bruce and the Acalanes kids and spent a few nights on our own in Paris. We rented an apartment in Montmartre, just upstairs from Picasso's first flat in Paris - fairly modest but with a million-dollar view - and enjoyed exploring the steep cobblestone streets and stairways of Erik Satie's old neighborhood.

SPAIN
After a lengthy journey through the public transit system of Paris to Charles de Gaulle airport, we hopped on a short flight to Barcelona, where we were greeted by WomenSing and whisked away to Girona. After the gloomy weather in Switzerland and France, the summer splendor of Spain's Mediterranean coast was a welcome change. We visited the Salvador Dalí museum in Figueres, a beguiling combination of art museum, amusement park, and self-aggrandizing memorial. We also visited some ancient Roman ruins at Empuries, but the clear blue Mediterranean was calling us so a few of us ditched the tour party in favor of more hedonistic pursuits.

WomenSing's first performance was at the Romanesque monastery of St. Pere de Rodes, by far the most striking concert setting on our entire trip. The monastery was built on a high bluff overlooking the Mediterranean, and the chapel had a wonderfully austere, simple stone interior with a glorious acoustic. Best of all for Kymry, they'd rented an amazing Petrof grand piano for the occasion. It had amazing clarity of tone, and three extra keys at the bottom down to low F. How they got that huge piano up that windy mountain road all the way to the monastery we'll never know, but Kymry couldn't tear himself away from the piano after the concert was over. It was a nice surprise to have an instrument of such high quality in so remote a location.

The real surprise, though, was in store for us once we arrived in Barcelona. We opened our hotel room door to find a veritable cavern of domestic comforts laid out before us. There was a jacuzzi, two TVs, a frightfully out-of-tune upright piano, a king bed, and - best of all - a balcony overlooking the Ramblas, Barcelona's main strolling boulevard. Let's just say it was rather larger than our cottage back home in Berkeley. There was nothing for it but to fill up the vast abyss by inviting all of WomenSing over the next day for a little cocktail party and piano sing-along. There were requests for Becca to sing, and one of the partygoers even asked her to record an album called "Hooked on Becca."

The choral competition was in the small mountain village of Cantonigròs, a couple hours north of Barcelona. The festival took place on a large field, with performances held in a tent. WomenSing competed in two categories, women's choirs and folk music. There were many amazing groups from all over the world, though the choirs from central/northern Europe seemed to be in a class all their own. A very polished choir from Norway took first prize for women's groups. For the folk category, most choirs dressed up in traditional peasant outfits, which, combined with reedy instruments and the hayseed setting made the whole event feel a bit like a Renaissance Faire. WomenSing sang an arrangement of "Amazing Grace" and a gospel song called "Thou My Everlasting Portion," and their folk outfit was matching red choir robes, as if they were some sort of gospel choir. Can I get an "Oh-No-You-Did'n!". It was hard to say what the judges thought of that. WomenSing didn't place in either of the competitions, but they did sing beautifully. It was Kymry's swan song with this ensemble and he was happy to see them perform at such a high level and end his four-year tenure with the chorus on such a high note.

So WomenSing packed their bags and headed back to Barcelona for the long flight home, while we remained in town a few extra days to enjoy the Barcelona scene. We arrived at our apartment to find much of the city at a standstill due to a power outage. Traffic was a free-for-all at most intersections and many stores just shut their tills and opened their doors to the warm summer air. It didn't seem to faze the locals, who kept about their business as usual. It was wonderful to see families strolling along the Ramblas every night, and enjoying relaxed evening meals. We visited the many beautiful structures of Gaudí scattered throughout the city, including Park Güell and the enormous Sagrada Familia cathedral, which like the Gothic cathedrals of old is still under construction more than a century after the first stone was laid. There were some memorable buskers as well: the guy at Park Güell who played Vivaldi on the button accordion (beautifully!), and the oboe player on Passeig de Gràcia who did a very poor rendition of "My Way." We spent our last day at the beach in Barcelona, happily floating in the blue Mediterranean. A relaxing end to an epic trip!

-Kymry E and Becca B

See the full slide show (173 pics!) here: Europe July 2007

Technorati : Acalanes High School, WomenSing