Rocking the Cradle

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With Thanksgiving a hazy memory, the first few weekends of December arrive with a whiteout blizzard of Christmas concerts from choruses large and small, professional and amateur. The air is still and chill all of a sudden, and you can feel genuine euphoria about town as the sounds of familiar carols deck the halls — even Bing Crosby’s White Christmas sounds novel and cheery. Several long weeks later, it will be another, less cheerful story.

Clerestory

Photo by Justin Montigne

So the idea of a Christmas concert from Clerestory, one of the Bay Area’s newer all-male professional chamber choirs — we’re so sophisticated here we can brag that we have more than one — instills some trepidation. Visions of candlelight processions and hoary holiday chestnuts fill my head — not that there’s any problem with that, but this time of year I’ll take my choral music free of fa la las. But my fears were abated on Saturday night at Berkeley’s First Congregational Church, where about 75 people braved the chill for the first of what can only become a holiday tradition for the eight-man chorus.

Elements included the required procession, though sans candlelight, to medieval chant like the hypnotically repeating, intertwining motives in O Virgo Splendens (O resplendent Virgin). And the concert ended with a medley of feel-good arrangements of such Christmas standards as O Little Town of Bethlehem and God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (by Vaughan Williams, Rutter, and others, rather than the traditional carol versions). But in between lay the Christmas goose we all came for — a wide range of Renaissance works (Johannes Ockeghem, Tomás Luis de Victoria, Guillaume Costeley, Richard Pygott) and 20th-century selections (Herbert Howells, William Walton, Benjamin Britten, Hugo Distler).

More With Less

A concert of so many short choral pieces can’t be adequately, or interestingly, covered in every detail, so some generalizations are in order. Clerestory, which I’ve heard several times in its brief history, is a chorus of maximum talent and polish. It is quite simply one of the highest-caliber singing groups in the Bay Area, and this would be satisfying to say if it weren’t so little-known. But it is sadly true that being exceptional isn’t good enough to ensure adequate financial compensation, as the Bay Area’s rich profusion of high-caliber, and fiscally tenuous, professional choirs will attest.

Many members of the ensemble are ex-Chanticleer singers, so audiences can expect exceedingly high vocal standards. The chorus can deliver an endless legato, seamless blend, impeccable phrasing, careful dynamics, and solid rhythmic articulation, all without slipping into either a kind of mindless, marshmallow sound or else a bland level of metronomic perfection common in certain more-renowned choral ensembles that tour and record widely in the early music field. The programming is first-rate, with sterling choices, effective pacing, and coherent organization.

The theme of Saturday’s program was “Beside the Cradle,” and the featured music was chosen well to match the stages of the Christmas story. Sing Lullaby by Howells, a soft, lulling piece about the baby Jesus that spotlighted the English late-Romantic composer’s characteristic lyricism and compact harmonies, was underlaid with a solid bass grounding. Britten’s familiar Hymn to the Virgin was still and beautiful, although diction here and elsewhere was only intermittently consistent and the soprano soloist was unusually overpowered by the rest of the ensemble.

J.S. Bach’s Ich steh’ an diener Krippe hier (Beside thy cradle here I stand) displayed a full, balanced tone, as the chorus alternately caressed notes and delivered lilting, undulating phrasings. The anonymous English Renaissance motet Hail Mary, Full of Grace, a staple of early music Christmas programs, was secure in its three-voice alternations. Walton’s Make We Joy Now in This Fest achieved remarkable blend and a pealing quality on “Make we joy.”

Heilige Familie (Holy family), by the 20th-century German composer Hugo Distler, was all full-bodied excellence in its low, packed chords and cascading lines. And in Behold the Lamb, Clerestory founder and composer Jesse Antin displayed remarkable skill at crafting lush, ardent harmonies of a neopolyphonic character so well-suited to the ensemble’s repertoire.

Singers of Note

Clifton Massey was a standout soloist, with a strikingly clear and affecting alto voice in Antin’s composition, as well as in the otherwise sappy arrangement of the Wexford Carol by John Rutter. Kevin Baum had a full, resonant tone in his solos in the Rutter arrangement, as well as in the Gloucestershire Wassail, arranged by Vaughan Williams.

Less effective, and somewhat surprisingly so for a chorus with such early music skills, were the Ave Maria by Victoria and the Quid Petis, o Fili? (What seekest Thou, O my Son?) by Pygott. In the double-choir Victoria, the blend that had been achieved so well at other times didn’t lock in. Voices stood out more, even though the sense of ensemble was visibly present as singers consistently looked out of their scores at each other. And in the Pygott, despite wonderfully plangent harmonies in a remarkable example of musical baby talk, the lines didn’t always move or blend cleanly.

These were minor quibbles, however, in an otherwise fine and memorable performance. Where Clerestory goes from here is the Bay Area’s immanent joy in discovering.

Mickey Butts (www.mickeybutts.com) is executive director and editor of San Francisco Classical Voice. His writing has appeared in Salon, Food & Wine, Portfolio.com, The Industry Standard, Wired, Parenting, Sunset, The Nation, and The San Francisco Chronicle. As a professional singer, he has performed with such groups as Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Mark Morris Dance Group, Artists' Vocal Ensemble (AVE), and Pacific Collegium.