Pacific Passions II – June 2023
Program notes by Sanford Dole
Welcome to the concluding concert of Bay Choral Guild’s 44th season! This program is a second look at the choral music created by living West Coast composers. Our first foray into presenting the music of our neighbors was our June 2011 concert Pacific Passions. It was so memorable that many of our members have requested that we repeat the format. All of the composers featured in that show were white males. Over the past 12 years times have changed. Younger voices have emerged, many of whom are people of color and/or women. As our society has come to recognize the importance of including a broader array of talents, it has become evident that they were there all along. We just needed to look for them.
As there are many excellent composers working today who happen to be white men, today’s program features a few of the same names that appeared in the 2011 edition. But it has been exciting to discover the newer, younger composers that have emerged in the past decade. In putting this show together I have made an effort to present a balance between old and new, male and female, white and non-white. We hope you enjoy learning about all of the creative artists in our midst, and celebrate with us the abundance of artistic excellence on the Left Coast.
The concert opens with an exciting work by Kevin Memley from Fresno. Back in 2011, we sang his Ave Maria—the first published work of a fresh, new voice. Since then, Kevin has gone on to a thriving career, receiving many commissions and performances internationally. Gloria in Excelsis Deo is a 2013 commission by the San Joaquin Chorale, also based in Fresno. Starting in a rollicking 7/8 meter, the piece has been described as “when Rutter meets Bernstein.”
Two younger voices from Los Angeles present a contrasting, more introverted approach to setting sacred texts. Born in Manilla, Philippines, Saunder Choi has become very active on the Los Angeles choral scene after attending USC. He is a member of The L.A. Choral Lab, Pacific Chorale, and the Contemporary Choral Collective of Los Angeles, among others, and has sung background vocals in several films. In both 2012 and 2015 he was a finalist for the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award. His compositions often tackle social justice issues and LGBTQ rights. Alleluia sets the “Praise God” text in a subdued manner, but with a beguiling harmonic flow.
Amy Gordon received a master’s degree in composition from Cal State Long Beach. Sub Tuum Praesidium is an ancient prayer to the Virgin Mary, the oldest known version of which is found on an Egyptian papyrus dating from the third century. Gordon sets the text in her unique style, influenced by the music of Debussy, Ravel, and Steve Reich. Her music has been described as “melodic and accessible, yet with surprising harmonic twists.” This work includes unexpected dynamic changes as well.
The central portion of the program shifts to secular texts about the joys of life and singing.
Karen P. Thomas has served since 1987 as the artistic director and conductor of Seattle Pro Musica, with whom she has produced 14 critically acclaimed commercial recordings. She has received both the Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence and the ASCAP-Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music. Her setting of the beloved Sara Teasdale poem Alchemy was a 2021 commission by a consortium of choruses to benefit the programs and services of Chorus America. The rising arpeggiation of the piano introduction sets up the first line of text, “I lift my heart as spring lifts up.”
Bay Area native Eric Tuan is the Artistic Director of Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir, founding director of Convivium, a Peninsula-based chamber choir, and Director of Music at Christ Episcopal Church, Los Altos. A graduate of Stanford, where he studied with Stephen Sano, he also completed a Master of Music in Choral Studies with Distinction at the University of Cambridge. He composed Unending Love in 2017 for the wedding of friends. The text is taken from an 1890 poem of the same name, originally written in Bengali, by Rabindranath Tagore. The piece sets two of the poem’s four stanzas for eight-part chorus in an English translation by William Radice.
Opus 7 Vocal Ensemble is the leading professional chamber choir in Seattle. They specialize in 19th- through 21st-century a cappella choral music. Since 1995, composer-in-residence John Muehleisen has composed nearly 25 works for this esteemed ensemble. Singing Together came about because of his close relationship to Opus 7 and friendship with its members. In 2016 one of those members, Jill Clymer, whose day job is Executive Director of Northwest Girlchoir, wanted to celebrate her 20-year tenure in Opus 7 by commissioning a new work. She writes that she wanted to thank the group for offering “reassurance and stability…through all that happens in life—marriage, kids, career, cancer. The poem ‘Singing Together’ poured out of me at a time of depression and struggle, when I turned to choir rehearsals as a place for mending, for rising above.”
Muehleisen was originally going to set only part of the poem, in combination with other texts. But when he began composing, he was so struck by the inspirational message of the poem he decided to use her words exclusively. He writes: “I sincerely hope that the setting paints a fitting musical picture of the wonderful images in Jill’s poem and that it captures the uplifting spirit of her text and the joy that comes from singing together.”
To conclude the first half of our program we feature the work of two more rising stars from Los Angeles.
Dale Trumbore has become a real favorite among our singers and a “go-to” composer when I’m putting programs together. In addition to a growing catalogue of wonderful works for all kinds of choruses, solo voices, and instrumental ensembles, she has also published many essays, short fiction, and a book titled Staying Composed: Overcoming Anxiety and Self-Doubt Within a Creative Life. In a program note for her piece she writes: “I have always loved when songs about happiness are set in a minor key; the harmonic language acknowledges that we can’t have joy without recognizing its opposite. Threads of Joy has similar undertones. Not just an exultation of happiness, it recognizes how we emerge from darkness and pain back into light, and the music captures this duality in ever-shifting, prismatic harmonies.”
Having just turned 40, Indian-American composer Reena Esmail is blazing an astounding career. With degrees in composition from Juilliard and Yale School of Music, she divides her attention evenly between orchestra, chamber, and choral work. Although she is a native of Los Angeles, she has embraced her Indian roots. She received a Fulbright-Nehru grant to study Hindustani music in India. Upon her return, she titled her doctoral thesis Finding Common Ground: Uniting Practices in Hindustani and Western Art Musicians. An example of her mission to synthesize these styles is embodied in the three-minute piece Tuttarana. She explains: “The title of this piece is a conglomeration of two words: the Italian word ‘tutti’ means ‘all’ or ‘everyone’, and the term ‘tarana’ designates a specific Hindustani (North Indian) musical form, whose closest Western counterpart is the ‘scat’ in jazz. Made up of rhythmic syllables, a tarana is the singer’s chance to display agility and dexterity. While a Hindustani tarana is a solo form, I wanted to bring the tarana into an ensemble setting.” It’s a wild ride, and brings a completely different aesthetic to a choral concert!
After intermission we return to sacred music in several different styles.
Zanaida Stewart Robles is an award-winning Black American composer, vocalist, and teacher. She proudly proclaims that she was born, raised, and educated in Southern California. A fierce advocate for diversity and inclusion in music education and performance, she has brought those ideals to work in the Los Angeles County School District as well as with Street Symphony, an organization that engages communities directly affected by homelessness and incarceration in Los Angeles County through performances, workshops, and teaching artistry. Dr. Robles is also a concert soprano soloist and studio vocalist whose credits include many film, television, and video games.
Veni, Sancte Spiritus was composed in 2012 under the guidance of Morton Lauridsen, her composition teacher at USC. It is based on an original love song, End of Time, written by Robles in 2001. She explains, “The harmonic treatment and syncopation are derived from popular music styles; pop, rock, etc. The compound meter, intricate piano lines, and choral voicings are elements that anchor the piece firmly in the classical choral tradition.”
One of the last students of legendary teacher Nadia Boulanger, David Conte is Chair of the Composition Department and Professor of Composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He is the composer of over 150 published works, including six operas, a musical, works for chorus, solo voice, orchestra, chamber music, organ, piano, guitar, and harp. Long a fixture on the Bay Area music scene, he is a personal friend and was one of my professors when I attended the San Francisco Conservatory. One of his earlier pieces, Ave Maria was commissioned by Chanticleer in 1992 and is dedicated to the composer’s mother. I remember hearing the premiere performance of it. Ave Maria was one of first new works that I introduced to St. Gregory’s Choir when I became Music Director there in 1993.
Now 80 years old, Morten Lauridsen is one of the deans of American choral music. A National Medal of Arts recipient (2007), he was composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Master Chorale (1994–2001) and has been a professor of composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music for more than 40 years. In 2006 he was named an ‘American Choral Master’ by the National Endowment for the Arts. His worldwide prominence for decades on choral concerts and more than 200 commercial recordings makes him an obvious choice for inclusion in this program, just as it was in the first Pacific Passions concert in 2011.
Ubi Caritas et Amor begins by declaiming the 10th-century plainchant on which it is based. From there the melodic shape of the plainchant becomes fodder for a motet that has been described as “reaching the deepest corners of the human spirit.” As the publisher describes it, “The chant is quoted intermittently through the piece, but always as a backdrop for Lauridsen’s own arching melodic lines and intensely beautiful harmonic clusters. The final restatement of the chant as the ‘Amen’ in the tenor brings closure to this work of unsurpassed beauty by a celebrated American composer.”
Finally, we present an encore of one of my pieces in an updated version. Glory to God for All Things began as the final movement of an extended work for chorus and piano, The Fabric of Peace: A Choral Celebration. It was commissioned by the Oakland Symphony Chorus and premiered in 2008 in celebration of their 50th anniversary. Bay Choral Guild presented the entire work on its June 2010 concerts, but it has not been performed since. In programming today’s concert, I needed a strong closer with piano accompaniment and decided to give Glory to God for All Things another hearing. I’ve changed music notation software since 2008 and needed to create a new score. In the process of that I made some minor changes to the structure of the piece and other small edits. This 12-minute opus sets a portion of the Akathist of Thanksgiving, a complete liturgy of prayers and responses for the Orthodox Church. The text was found among the effects of Archpriest Gregory Petrov upon his death in a prison camp in 1940. The title is from the last words of St. John Chrysostom as he was dying in exile. The work is a song of praise from amidst the most terrible sufferings, attributed to Metropolitan Tryphon of Turkestan (Prince Boris Petrovich), an Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, who died in 1934. I dedicate this performance to all the citizens of Ukraine who have been enduring great suffering in the past year. We pray that the brutal incursion of their territories comes to a conclusion and that the intruders make a complete retreat soon.
Thank you for attending our concert and being loyal supporters of Bay Choral Guild! We wish you a happy and safe summer full of joy and refreshing activities. Most especially we look forward to seeing you again next season when our programs feature “Majestic Masses,” “Icons of the Baroque,” and “American Journey.” For more information, see the inside cover of this program booklet. We would also love to involve more singers in our group. If you or someone you know is looking to join a choir, please consider BCG. Contact [email protected] to schedule an audition.
As there are many excellent composers working today who happen to be white men, today’s program features a few of the same names that appeared in the 2011 edition. But it has been exciting to discover the newer, younger composers that have emerged in the past decade. In putting this show together I have made an effort to present a balance between old and new, male and female, white and non-white. We hope you enjoy learning about all of the creative artists in our midst, and celebrate with us the abundance of artistic excellence on the Left Coast.
The concert opens with an exciting work by Kevin Memley from Fresno. Back in 2011, we sang his Ave Maria—the first published work of a fresh, new voice. Since then, Kevin has gone on to a thriving career, receiving many commissions and performances internationally. Gloria in Excelsis Deo is a 2013 commission by the San Joaquin Chorale, also based in Fresno. Starting in a rollicking 7/8 meter, the piece has been described as “when Rutter meets Bernstein.”
Two younger voices from Los Angeles present a contrasting, more introverted approach to setting sacred texts. Born in Manilla, Philippines, Saunder Choi has become very active on the Los Angeles choral scene after attending USC. He is a member of The L.A. Choral Lab, Pacific Chorale, and the Contemporary Choral Collective of Los Angeles, among others, and has sung background vocals in several films. In both 2012 and 2015 he was a finalist for the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award. His compositions often tackle social justice issues and LGBTQ rights. Alleluia sets the “Praise God” text in a subdued manner, but with a beguiling harmonic flow.
Amy Gordon received a master’s degree in composition from Cal State Long Beach. Sub Tuum Praesidium is an ancient prayer to the Virgin Mary, the oldest known version of which is found on an Egyptian papyrus dating from the third century. Gordon sets the text in her unique style, influenced by the music of Debussy, Ravel, and Steve Reich. Her music has been described as “melodic and accessible, yet with surprising harmonic twists.” This work includes unexpected dynamic changes as well.
The central portion of the program shifts to secular texts about the joys of life and singing.
Karen P. Thomas has served since 1987 as the artistic director and conductor of Seattle Pro Musica, with whom she has produced 14 critically acclaimed commercial recordings. She has received both the Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence and the ASCAP-Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music. Her setting of the beloved Sara Teasdale poem Alchemy was a 2021 commission by a consortium of choruses to benefit the programs and services of Chorus America. The rising arpeggiation of the piano introduction sets up the first line of text, “I lift my heart as spring lifts up.”
Bay Area native Eric Tuan is the Artistic Director of Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir, founding director of Convivium, a Peninsula-based chamber choir, and Director of Music at Christ Episcopal Church, Los Altos. A graduate of Stanford, where he studied with Stephen Sano, he also completed a Master of Music in Choral Studies with Distinction at the University of Cambridge. He composed Unending Love in 2017 for the wedding of friends. The text is taken from an 1890 poem of the same name, originally written in Bengali, by Rabindranath Tagore. The piece sets two of the poem’s four stanzas for eight-part chorus in an English translation by William Radice.
Opus 7 Vocal Ensemble is the leading professional chamber choir in Seattle. They specialize in 19th- through 21st-century a cappella choral music. Since 1995, composer-in-residence John Muehleisen has composed nearly 25 works for this esteemed ensemble. Singing Together came about because of his close relationship to Opus 7 and friendship with its members. In 2016 one of those members, Jill Clymer, whose day job is Executive Director of Northwest Girlchoir, wanted to celebrate her 20-year tenure in Opus 7 by commissioning a new work. She writes that she wanted to thank the group for offering “reassurance and stability…through all that happens in life—marriage, kids, career, cancer. The poem ‘Singing Together’ poured out of me at a time of depression and struggle, when I turned to choir rehearsals as a place for mending, for rising above.”
Muehleisen was originally going to set only part of the poem, in combination with other texts. But when he began composing, he was so struck by the inspirational message of the poem he decided to use her words exclusively. He writes: “I sincerely hope that the setting paints a fitting musical picture of the wonderful images in Jill’s poem and that it captures the uplifting spirit of her text and the joy that comes from singing together.”
To conclude the first half of our program we feature the work of two more rising stars from Los Angeles.
Dale Trumbore has become a real favorite among our singers and a “go-to” composer when I’m putting programs together. In addition to a growing catalogue of wonderful works for all kinds of choruses, solo voices, and instrumental ensembles, she has also published many essays, short fiction, and a book titled Staying Composed: Overcoming Anxiety and Self-Doubt Within a Creative Life. In a program note for her piece she writes: “I have always loved when songs about happiness are set in a minor key; the harmonic language acknowledges that we can’t have joy without recognizing its opposite. Threads of Joy has similar undertones. Not just an exultation of happiness, it recognizes how we emerge from darkness and pain back into light, and the music captures this duality in ever-shifting, prismatic harmonies.”
Having just turned 40, Indian-American composer Reena Esmail is blazing an astounding career. With degrees in composition from Juilliard and Yale School of Music, she divides her attention evenly between orchestra, chamber, and choral work. Although she is a native of Los Angeles, she has embraced her Indian roots. She received a Fulbright-Nehru grant to study Hindustani music in India. Upon her return, she titled her doctoral thesis Finding Common Ground: Uniting Practices in Hindustani and Western Art Musicians. An example of her mission to synthesize these styles is embodied in the three-minute piece Tuttarana. She explains: “The title of this piece is a conglomeration of two words: the Italian word ‘tutti’ means ‘all’ or ‘everyone’, and the term ‘tarana’ designates a specific Hindustani (North Indian) musical form, whose closest Western counterpart is the ‘scat’ in jazz. Made up of rhythmic syllables, a tarana is the singer’s chance to display agility and dexterity. While a Hindustani tarana is a solo form, I wanted to bring the tarana into an ensemble setting.” It’s a wild ride, and brings a completely different aesthetic to a choral concert!
After intermission we return to sacred music in several different styles.
Zanaida Stewart Robles is an award-winning Black American composer, vocalist, and teacher. She proudly proclaims that she was born, raised, and educated in Southern California. A fierce advocate for diversity and inclusion in music education and performance, she has brought those ideals to work in the Los Angeles County School District as well as with Street Symphony, an organization that engages communities directly affected by homelessness and incarceration in Los Angeles County through performances, workshops, and teaching artistry. Dr. Robles is also a concert soprano soloist and studio vocalist whose credits include many film, television, and video games.
Veni, Sancte Spiritus was composed in 2012 under the guidance of Morton Lauridsen, her composition teacher at USC. It is based on an original love song, End of Time, written by Robles in 2001. She explains, “The harmonic treatment and syncopation are derived from popular music styles; pop, rock, etc. The compound meter, intricate piano lines, and choral voicings are elements that anchor the piece firmly in the classical choral tradition.”
One of the last students of legendary teacher Nadia Boulanger, David Conte is Chair of the Composition Department and Professor of Composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He is the composer of over 150 published works, including six operas, a musical, works for chorus, solo voice, orchestra, chamber music, organ, piano, guitar, and harp. Long a fixture on the Bay Area music scene, he is a personal friend and was one of my professors when I attended the San Francisco Conservatory. One of his earlier pieces, Ave Maria was commissioned by Chanticleer in 1992 and is dedicated to the composer’s mother. I remember hearing the premiere performance of it. Ave Maria was one of first new works that I introduced to St. Gregory’s Choir when I became Music Director there in 1993.
Now 80 years old, Morten Lauridsen is one of the deans of American choral music. A National Medal of Arts recipient (2007), he was composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Master Chorale (1994–2001) and has been a professor of composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music for more than 40 years. In 2006 he was named an ‘American Choral Master’ by the National Endowment for the Arts. His worldwide prominence for decades on choral concerts and more than 200 commercial recordings makes him an obvious choice for inclusion in this program, just as it was in the first Pacific Passions concert in 2011.
Ubi Caritas et Amor begins by declaiming the 10th-century plainchant on which it is based. From there the melodic shape of the plainchant becomes fodder for a motet that has been described as “reaching the deepest corners of the human spirit.” As the publisher describes it, “The chant is quoted intermittently through the piece, but always as a backdrop for Lauridsen’s own arching melodic lines and intensely beautiful harmonic clusters. The final restatement of the chant as the ‘Amen’ in the tenor brings closure to this work of unsurpassed beauty by a celebrated American composer.”
Finally, we present an encore of one of my pieces in an updated version. Glory to God for All Things began as the final movement of an extended work for chorus and piano, The Fabric of Peace: A Choral Celebration. It was commissioned by the Oakland Symphony Chorus and premiered in 2008 in celebration of their 50th anniversary. Bay Choral Guild presented the entire work on its June 2010 concerts, but it has not been performed since. In programming today’s concert, I needed a strong closer with piano accompaniment and decided to give Glory to God for All Things another hearing. I’ve changed music notation software since 2008 and needed to create a new score. In the process of that I made some minor changes to the structure of the piece and other small edits. This 12-minute opus sets a portion of the Akathist of Thanksgiving, a complete liturgy of prayers and responses for the Orthodox Church. The text was found among the effects of Archpriest Gregory Petrov upon his death in a prison camp in 1940. The title is from the last words of St. John Chrysostom as he was dying in exile. The work is a song of praise from amidst the most terrible sufferings, attributed to Metropolitan Tryphon of Turkestan (Prince Boris Petrovich), an Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, who died in 1934. I dedicate this performance to all the citizens of Ukraine who have been enduring great suffering in the past year. We pray that the brutal incursion of their territories comes to a conclusion and that the intruders make a complete retreat soon.
Thank you for attending our concert and being loyal supporters of Bay Choral Guild! We wish you a happy and safe summer full of joy and refreshing activities. Most especially we look forward to seeing you again next season when our programs feature “Majestic Masses,” “Icons of the Baroque,” and “American Journey.” For more information, see the inside cover of this program booklet. We would also love to involve more singers in our group. If you or someone you know is looking to join a choir, please consider BCG. Contact [email protected] to schedule an audition.
