Two extraordinary treble choirs joined forces in a concert Monday at Holy Names University: Carmina Slovenica, from Slovenia, and the Piedmont Choir Ensemble from the Bay Area. Their collaboration, called Project Attacca and featuring mostly new music, had begun in June with workshops and rehearsals in Croatia, continued with performances in Croatia and Slovenia, and culminated in Monday's concert.
The combined choirs began with two pieces set to Latin texts, conducted, in turn, by the music directors of the two choirs, Karmina Šilec and Robert Geary. The three-part singing from this huge choir of trebles was splendid. Latin titles informed the listener acquainted with Latin that one piece was about depression and the other about confession, but with only one exception, the entire concert, sung and spoken in several languages, was performed sans translations for the audience.
As the concert progressed, the young singers showed themselves to be masters of complex rhythms, fine tuning in both tonal and dissonant repertoire, extended vocal techniques, dynamic variety, dance and gesture, and expressive communication (even if you didn't know what was being communicated). Their memorization and superb execution of both music and movement was an impressive achievement.
Singing and Dancing
Iz kamna v vodi, by Lojze Lebič, the American premiere of a three-treble arrangement by the composer, was performed by the combined choirs. It featured strong rhythmic patterns and a variety of vocal effects — whispering, speaking, vocal fry, occasionally singing — creating a general chaos punctuated by solo interjections.
Each choir also performed a group of pieces on its own, the Piedmonters in the first half of the concert and the Slovenians leading off the second. As the Piedmont Ensemble sang a Serbian song, Niska Banja (The baths of Niš), with a straight vibratoless Serbian sound, a group of singers danced in front (and in some verses acted mysteriously giggly and coy). Poulenc's Le petit garçon malade (The sick little boy) was sung in French with great expression — but of what?
A long melée by Kui Dong was titled Ludamus denuo (Let's play again). It included speaking, shouting, running about, fragments of language (for example, "say goodbye to lollipops and polliwogs"), a solo disquisition spoken in Spanish, and a trio of boy sopranos leading an extremely dissonant and lovely section. It was all effectively done, but the audience was left in the dark as to what was going on.
Singers from Carmina Slovenica
Sue Bohlin's arrangement of a sea chantey, I've been to Haarlem, ended with the entire choir rocking from side to side, a movement so effective it risked making an observer seasick. The chantey was sung in impeccable English, raising the possibility that these young people may have been singing impeccably in other languages, as well. Their French and Spanish sounded good to me, and the singing of Kinley Lange's Esto Les Digo (This I tell you) was a highlight of the program.
Carmina Slovenica sang six pieces, partly in single vowel combinations, partly seemingly in languages, and all choreographed. One by one, the singers entered singing a one-note drone. They grouped themselves on the floor, using abstract angular gestures and various body positions. Sometimes they knelt, sometimes they rose and moved about. Both utterance and movement had a minimalist feeling, with everything perfectly synchronized and seemingly unconnected to any verbal narrative.
The pieces flowed together so that it was hard to tell when one ended and another began, and for a largely non-Slovenian audience the effect was that of musical sound and dance unrelated to words. An organ drone supported one piece, and another, accompanied by four drums, was a spectacular display of complex rhythmic patterns executed by both the drummers and the clapping singer/speakers.
When the house lights came up, the program could be seen to include two Latin pieces, from Codex las Huelgas and Hildegard von Bingen, a couple of songs apparently in Slovenian, something called Sweet Tooths, and a final piece, Tullet by Tellu Virkkala (perhaps Finnish?), which featured a lot of alleluias plus exuberant dancing.
As the Alleluias rang out, the Piedmont Ensemble entered from the back of the house, along the side aisles. All then began to chant random vowel combinations, from the stage and the house, building up to shouting, then to a scream, then to a quiet humming. Those on stage wound into a spiral, and all joined in singing Ikikaiku (Eternal echoes) by Olli Kortegangas. The text is drawn from the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, and the song is tonal and beautiful.
Three religious songs in English, sung by the combined choirs and conducted by Karmina Šilec, ended the concert. A hymn, How can I keep from singing?, was arranged to include Amazing Grace (a versatile song itself; I've heard a Hindu chant morph into it). Can you hear me? featured three-part polyphony along with three-part polyphonic gestures. Praise His Holy Name, complete with clapped afterbeats, made a rousing gospel end. Geary conducted a welcome encore: All the singers in a repeat of the lovely Esto Les Digo.
Anna Carol Dudley is a singer, teacher, UC Berkeley faculty emerita, San Francisco State University lecturer emerita, and director emerita of the San Francisco Early Music Society's Baroque Music Workshop.
