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10.28.2001 00:14
Wachner returns to lead Providence Singers
By CHANNING GRAY
Journal Arts Writer
When Julian Wachner agreed to take over the choral program at Montreal's McGill University this past summer, he had some tough decisions to make about his ties to area vocal ensembles. Would he keep his two Boston choirs or continue to head up the Providence Singers?
In the end, Providence won out.
Wachner, who'll be leading the Singers in Mozart's
Requiem
Saturday at Veterans Memorial Auditorium, plans to conduct at least two, maybe three of the Singers' four programs in coming seasons. The decision to remain in Providence, where he's been for the past five years, was based on the Singers' progress and the group's promise for future endeavors.
"The growth the Providence Singers has exhibited is unprecedented in my experience," said the 32-year-old composer, conductor and organist. "But there's also a personal connection. It feels like family."
Wachner, who had been considered as the successor to Christopher Hogwood at Boston's prestigious Handel & Haydn Society, said he hopes to hire an assistant conductor to take over much of the preparation for Singers concerts. He would then travel from Montreal for "heavy-duty, retreat-style" rehearsal sessions, which are currently held at two or three venues around the state.
Shaping up
The Singers, now celebrating their 30th season, were in need of a lot of fine-tuning when Wachner took over in the fall of 1996. The group's programs were intriguing, often including scores by contemporary composers. But it lacked discipline and polish.
Wachner, then organist and choral director at Boston University's Marsh Chapel, began by working on details. Joint efforts with the Brown Chorus and his own Back Bay Chorale in Boston followed, plus performances featuring Mendelssohn's
Elijah,
Brahms's
A German Requiem
and other masterworks. The Singers began to sound like a new group.
Wachner, in Boston not long ago for a concert, said he was "blown away" by the results of a recent rehearsal.
"They sound like a million bucks," he said.
The makeup of the Singers has shifted from mostly Sunday singers from Providence's East Side to trained voices and public school music teachers from around the state, according to Wachner.
That combo sounds so good, Wachner is considering taking the members on tour, perhaps even recording with them. Recording projects come his way by virtue of Wachner being both a composer (he's written 55 pieces) and conductor.
He's also talking with Rhode Island Philharmonic conductor Larry Rachleff about possible collaborative ventures. Because the orchestra is not affiliated with a chorus at the moment, it has not been able to undertake core repertoire such as Beethoven's Ninth or Mahler's
Resurrection
Symphony.
"This is a group that could be a major force," Wachner said, "not only in New England, but the United States. I really see our artistic success running parallel with that of the Rhode Island Philharmonic."
A fitting
Requiem
Even though Saturday's season-opener was planned more than a year ago, it seems as though it could have been put together in response to the events of Sept. 11.
Mozart's heartfelt
Requiem,
a work made popular in the film
Amadeus,
forms the centerpiece of the evening. The
Requiem
contains some of Mozart's most powerful writing, but it also lives on because of its curious mythology, the story of how a masked man commissioned the composer to write the piece. Was that perhaps Death urging Mozart to create his own funeral music?
Mozart, in fact, died while penning the Lacrymosa of the Mass, leaving much of the score an unfinished sketch. Saturday, the Singers will be performing the version completed by Mozart's assistant Franz Xaver Sussmayr.
The evening opens with a new work by Wachner and the world premiere of work commissioned by the Singers, Carlyle Sharpe's
Proud Music of the Storm,
a 25-minute score that paints the history of man in sound.
Sharpe, who characterizes his music as "neo-impressionist," which is to say it harks back to the tonal palette of Debussy and Ravel, wrote most of the
Proud Music
last summer in a 10-day burst of inspiration, letting Walt Whitman's Civil War-era verse serve as a sort of road map.
What Sharpe ended up with was a score that represents some of history's most hopeful times, along with its most desperate. Some of those moments, said Sharpe, hit a "little too close to home," with lines that seem to parallel the tragic feelings following the terrorist attacks of last month.
Even if he'd known about the World Trade Center, said Sharpe on the phone from Springfield, Mo., where he teaches at Drury University, he couldn't have written more fitting music.
Saturday's concert takes place at 8 p.m. at Veterans Memorial Auditorium, Avenue of the Arts, Providence. Tickets are $35, $25 and $5 for student rush 15 minutes before the performance. Call (888) 579-4800.
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