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The Kansas City Chorale opened their 30^th season Friday night with a spectacular concert at St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Parrish in Leawood, Kansas. Conductor Charles Bruffy explained to an eager audience that the evening’s concert was intended to transport listeners back in time—and transported we were. Bruffy and his group of enormously talented musicians perfectly programmed and performed the evening’s concert entitled, “Chant & Beyond.” The event presented chant-based vocal music spanning nine centuries.

Rather than the usual stand-and-sing approach to recital settings, the Kansas City Chorale included a hint of tasteful, medieval pageantry that permeated the hour-long performance. The ensemble appeared sparse at the top of the show as the singers “took stage” to perform Michael McGlynn’s arrangement of Christus resurgens. Soon after the choir began their opening drones and introductory melodies, the soprano section unexpectedly charged forward from the back of the sanctuary, ethereally coloring the piece with their pure, soaring vocal lines. In Hildegard von Bingen’s call-and-response style Sequentia de sancto Maximino, the Chorale made use of the magnificent space; sopranos and altos congregated down the length of the sanctuary’s aisle and paired responsorial verses with soloist Lindsey Lang, who aptly and skillfully intoned from the front of the church. Also with featured soli were Gabe Lewis O’Connor, Pamela Williamson, and Hugh Naughtin, who sang Guillaume Dufay’s Conditor alme siderum.

Instead of breaking the energy of the concert with short pauses between selections, singers moved to new mixed configurations while singing chants and, consequentially, introducing the tunes that were next in queue. Bruffy himself sang the transitional chant into Loquebantur variis linguis by Thomas Tallis—another responsorial selection with soloist Bryan Taylor confidently intoning the Latin text.

This shifting and chanting practice was most present in the three settings of the Kyrie elesion based on the medieval popular song “L’homme armé.” This jaunty, triple-metered song separated mass settings by Johannes Ockeghem, Cristobal de Morales, and Giacomo Carissimi. Though each piece had its own style, the Carissimi stood out as the gem of the set. The ensemble, now arranged into three separate, smaller choirs, sang Carissimi’s multitude of independent vocal lines with unfaltering uniformity of timbre and meticulousness of tone.

The second half of the concert was filled with modern compositions based on chant tunes and texts. The night was so well programmed that I did not even perceive the jump in centuries between the Renaissance Missa pange lingua of Josquin des Préz and the modern day Pange lingua of Paul Gibson. Imagine the surprise of hearing a simple, familiar chant line begin to unfold in new colors and tonalities, adventurous rhythms, and crunchy, sonorous harmonies, as the Renaissance became the twentieth century. The Veni creator spiritus by Johannes Nepomuk David and Maurice Duruflé’s Quatre motets sure des themes gregoriens showed off the ensembles flexibility—not only literally through their many quick vocal runs and melismas, but also in their ability to present entirely different stylistic periods with equal amounts of skill.

The apex of the evening was J. Edmond Hughes’s breathtaking setting of the Ave Maria. The work evolved precisely under the talent of Bruffy and his intuitive musicians. A long train of overlapping phrases were sculpted and molded out of the air. Following the liquid harmonies of the opening was a stunning aleatoric section. Each singer, by their own accord, sang a musical figure on the words “Ave Maria,” culminating in a lamentable, heart-wrenching crescendo. The work ended with one of the most delicate and awe-evoking “Amen” I have ever heard—it left me breathless and feeling fortunate to have encountered such a wonderful musical moment in my lifetime. Concluding the concert line-up was Jackson Berkey’s Ascendit Deus—a piece that ultimately brought us back to our modern world after traveling some distance though the history of music.

 The unity of this ensemble is impeccable. Though independent, individual polyphonic lines permeated the bulk of the concert’s music, the cohesion and homogeny of the ensemble was never compromised. Elements of pure tuning and pristine blend persisted the entire duration of the concert by way of the ensemble’s immensely talented singers. Bruffy’s role as conductor was not to simply be a man who kept a steady beat, but to be a man who gently lured the inherent pulchritude of these ancient melodies out of their dusty past into living, breathing pieces of art again—a role which he accomplished tenfold. By the end of the concert, I had stopped trying to analyze the pieces for their places in history, their shimmering chords, or their musical form—these structural elements all became secondary to a more import aspect. Instead of picking everything apart, I became aware of the universal truths these performers had all been preaching for the past hour—that, above all, the mystery and wonder of the human experience permeates through centuries and, remarkably, resonates still today with our technology-driven, twenty-first century lifestyles.

 REVIEW:
Kansas City Chorale
Chant & Beyond
Friday, October 15, 2011 (Reviewed)
St. Michael the Archangel
14201 Nall Ave, Leawood, KS
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Redemptorist Church
3333 Broadway, Kansas City, MO
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Ashbury Methodist Church
5400 W. 75^th St, Prairie Village, KS
For more information visit www.kcchorale.org

By Tom Marks

Classical Contributor

Tom Marks holds a degree in vocal performance (B.M., summa cum laude) from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and is currently pursing a degree in musicology (M.M.), also from the UMKC Conservatory. A graduate teaching assistant, Tom can generally be found
rummaging through books in the UMKC library, exploring potential research topics. In addition to researching music, Tom is an active vocal performer (baritone) and has appeared in various venues throughout the Kansas City area. Recently, Tom has appeared in productions of the Kansas City Metro Opera, Bay View Summer Music Festival in Bay View, Michigan, and UMKC’s choral, musical theater, and opera department.

Outside of the conservatory, Tom is a music intern at the Village Presbyterian Church where he performs solo and choral vocal music and, on occasion, conducts the Village choir. Tom also writes program notes for the Bach Aria Soloists 2011–12 concert series. Future aspirations include a Ph.D. in musicology with an emphasis in early music, particularly of the late Renaissance and early baroque periods.