During orientation week of my first year in college, my classmates and I were required to complete a form called “Strong Interest Blank,” which was designed to help us choose the courses, and ultimately the major, to accomplish our vocational goals. I went in with no major or vocation in mind, but the document figured me out: I scored highest as musician-performer, musician-teacher, and social worker. After many turns and detours along the way, I ended up where that document indicated I belonged: as a singer, a teacher, and a choral conductor. After several summers as a camp counselor, and a couple of winters running a teen recreation center, I found my way to teaching public school music, and later to twenty years teaching voice and conducting choirs on the college/university level. Along the way, I spent any number of years selling my skills as a singer.
These experiences all come together in Chorale’s formation. We are an independent community of people from many backgrounds and disciplines who work together to learn good music in an intense but congenial environment. We care deeply about music of the past, and no less deeply about the composers of the present time. Composers, and their works, are our lifeline to the creative force that runs through all of us, our salvation and inspiration when the world seems overwhelmingly lonely and dark and destructive. Chorale’s singers, each in their own way, find holy release in discovering and reproducing the sounds these composers require of us, and we strive to improve our musical and vocal skills so that we can live up to their dreams and designs, which would otherwise be only dots on paper. We take seriously our obligation to engage deeply with our music, for its own sake, and to present programs which communicate our deep commitment to this art form, and which inspire and entertain our listeners.
Chorale believes that our communal efforts foster a better world, a world lifted and transformed by the greatness of which human beings are capable; a world colored by the purest expression of beauty and grace. We hope, through music, to reach deep within ourselves, and our listeners, to bypass the many distractions that litter our path, to discover the great human gift we all share. As visionary conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt wrote, “Art is not a bonus to life. It is the umbilical cord which connects us to the Divine. It guarantees our being human.”
We will present our next concerts March 23-24. Our repertoire will include Denn Er hat seinen Engeln befohlen by Felix Mendelssohn, Ich aber bin elend and Warum ist das Licht gegeben by Johannes Brahms, and Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Chorus. Fitting music to usher in the Christian Holy Week. We look forward to singing for you, both here in Hyde Park, and in Lincoln Park, on the North Side.