Martín Palmeri
The Advent-Christmas season is a major hot spot on Chicago Chorale’s calendar. Summer is generally relaxed and devoted to family activities and vacations; but by September the days shorten, the weather turns colder, students return to school, and workplaces turn up the pressure. And choirs, which have largely been on hiatus over the summer, begin rehearsing. Beginning in September, Chorale devotes about ten weeks to preparing a program; and the culmination of those ten weeks places us squarely in the middle of the much-needed holiday season. The covid pandemic wreaked havoc with much of what performers and audiences take for granted, but it did not do away with this basic calendar: the Christmas break still happens, and we still observe it with music. Singers and listeners are cautious about infection being passed in the close quarters that characterize live performance, but this caution doesn’t keep them away; Chorale’s numbers are back almost to pre-pandemic levels, and audiences for our Christmas concerts were the largest we have ever enjoyed for these annual events, in these venues.
Chorale’s Christmas repertoire consisted of numerous smaller pieces, from many traditions, in several languages, composed any time between the sixteenth century and the present. The seasonal theme determines the repertoire, chosen and organized with the goal of creating a unified arc, much as a composer plans the movements of a major work to create a single, satisfying experience.
The remaining concerts of our 2022-23 season are organized very differently. The first, to be presented March 25-26, is a single work, Misa a Buenos Aires, or Misatango, by Martín Palmeri, premiered in 1996. A setting of the ordinary of the Roman Catholic Mass, the five- movement work is composed in the tango nuevo style developed and popularized by Astor Piazzola (1921-1992). The genre, with the characteristic tango orchestra of piano, bandoneon, bass, and strings, has proved to be very popular with Chicago audiences, though the only local performance of this particular work was back in 2017, in Naperville. An exhaustive search of the Chicago region did not turn up a qualified bandeon player, so we are bringing in Charles Gorczynski, an expert in this field; we are also bringing in Argentinian mezzo soprano Raquel Winnica as soloist, who understands the idiom and can project the music and text authentically. As is true whenever we step outside of our customary a cappella idiom, this concert will cost us a lot of money to produce, necessitating energetic fund-raising on our part. But, as always, Chorale is committed to doing justice to this brilliant, colorful, attractive work. Our major challenge is to attract you, our audience, to come and hear it! This isn’t the sort of music you are accustomed to expecting from us; but I promise you a first-rate performance, and I’m confident you will love it.
Our third set of concerts, scheduled for June 10-11, is organized in another way entirely. We plan a program of British choral music beginning with the such foundational composers as William Byrd and Henry Purcell, before reaching into the 20th and 21st centuries to explore contemporary takes on this celebrated tradition, by such non-traditional composers as Kerensa Briggs, Judith Weir, and Roderick Williams. In addition to presenting these shorter motets, Chorale will sing Herbert Howells' Requiem, a perennial favorite with singers and audiences alike.
An ambitious season, staking out new territory for us. Would you expect anything less of Chicago Chorale?