Seattle

Published by Cappella Romana, October 9, 2004

Cappella Romana Opens its 14th Annual Season with

Seattle’s Tudor Choir:
EVERLASTING LIGHT: Mystical Visions of the Heavenly Life

9 October 2004 — PORTLAND, Ore.; SEATTLE, Wash. — Following appearances in 2004 at the Byzantine Festival in London, England and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Cappella Romana opens its Northwest concert series this November with EVERLASTING LIGHT.

Its sound hailed by Gramophone magazine as “a sensuous pleasure,” Cappella Romana (Alexander Lingas, director) begins its 14th annual season by joining forces with Seatttle’s preeminent vocal ensemble The Tudor Choir (Doug Fullington, director) for concerts in both Portland and Seattle November 12th and 13th. Audiences will experience the astonishing contrast of virtuoso Byzantine chant with English Renaissance masterworks, all on the theme of light. Cappella Romana will perform works by the most famous Byzantine woman composer Kassia (9th c.) and by the 15th-century revolutionary Ioannis Koukouzelis; the Tudor Choir will perform works by English Renaissance masters Packe, Tye, and Taverner. The ensembles will combine for the title work Everlasting Light.

Nominated for a 2004 Juno Award (the Canadian “Grammy”) and described by The Toronto Star as “a major feat of composition” and “a profound work,” Everlasting Light eloquently and poignantly combines the ancient texts of the Latin Requiem and the Greek Orthodox memorial service. The combined ensembles will sing in Latin, while a trio of soloists will sing in Greek: Brian Cummings (countertenor, Paris, France), Wesley Rogers (tenor, New York), and Richard Lippold (baritone, New York). John M. Boyer will perform as Byzantine chanter (psaltis). Everlasting Light will be accompanied by Brett Paschal on a rare five-octave marimba, plus tuned crystal glasses resonating on the “chord of nature,” built from the natural overtone series.

The American Musicological Society annual meeting, taking place this year in Seattle, has chosen Everlasting Light as one of the featured evening concerts for its 3,000 delegates coming to Seattle. Following these performances Cappella Romana is on tour at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Everlasting Light was written especially for a concert by the Elmer Iseler Singers dedicated to the memory of Elmer Iseler, the group’s distinguished founder and life-long conductor. It is a setting of the Greek Orthodox funeral "Trisagion" which is sung by the three solo voices (countertenor, tenor, baritone) and of the first two lines from the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass which are sung by the choir. In addition to the voices there is a five-octave marimba and four crystal glasses which are played behind the audience.

The work is more a ritual than a piece of concert music. It is meant to be performed at appropriate church services (memorial or funeral services). In such occasions the performance of the work may be interrupted at points specifically marked in the score, so that the priest or the service attendant may insert prayers, commentary or anything else that may be appropriate for the occasion. There are instructions in the score for adapting the language (Byzantine Greek and Church Latin) to the specific gender and case (singular/plural) particulars of the person(s) commemorated. [N.B., the Cappella Romana—Tudor Choir performance will use a generic commemoration for all persons departed from this life].

The role of the marimba in the work merits particular mention: I have heard percussionist Beverley Johnston perform Bach chorales on her beautiful five-octave instrument and the sound was nothing less than astonishing. It sounded like a shimmering organ with constant and subtle dynamic variation. After hearing her perform I realized that this was a sound that would work very well as support for actual choral voices. For the most part the role of the marimba in this work is that of organ-like support, however, towards the middle of the work the music for the marimba breaks out into complex rhythmic patterns, which require considerable technical and expressive virtuosity from the performer.

The crystal glasses are tuned to partials 12, 13, 14 and 15 of the overtone series based on a low Dflat, a chord which is heard several times during the course of the work set to the words ‘Requiem aeternam’. The glasses are microtonally tuned to approximate the actual pitch of these partials in the ‘chord of nature’ as it is usually called. This chord of nature produced by the choir, the marimba and the crystal glasses is the musical equivalent of Utopos, which the Hellenic texts describe as "a place full of light, a green pasture full of refreshment, from which pain and sorrow are absent". We often wonder what—if anything—lies beyond the great divide that physical death is. We are so preoccupied with daily existence that we do not stop to think that physical life as we know it may be nothing more than a dream in which the soul enacts its own fantasies within the domain of materiality; that reality may be a state that presently eludes us, for it may exist beyond the experience we call death. It is with this understanding that Everlasting Light is offered to the memory of Elmer Iseler and to the memory of all those who in the future may be commemorated through and by this work. Special thanks to Wayne Strongman, my friend and long time supporter, who inspired, instigated and saw this project through from its beginning to its final fruition; to Niki Goldschmidt, Artistic Director of Music Canada 2000 and The Canada Council for making possible the commission of this work; and last, but not least, to the Elmer Iseler Singers, the soloists and my wife, percussionist Beverley Johnston, for turning this work into reality (or dream, depending on how one views life).

Directed by founder Alexander Lingas, Cappella Romana is a vocal chamber ensemble dedicated to combining passion with scholarship in its exploration of the musical traditions of the Christian East and West, with emphasis on early and contemporary music. Performing music of the Three Romes, its name is derived from the medieval concept of the Roman oikoumene (inhabited world), which included not only "Old" Rome and Western Europe but also "New Rome" (Constantinople) and "Third Rome" (Moscow) and its commonwealth of Slavic countries. Cappella Romana made its London début in March 2004 at the Byzantine Festival in London, with concerts at Queen Elizabeth Hall, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the Greek Cathedral of London. The following month the ensemble made its New York début at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Its fourth CD recording, “Music of Byzantium,” was released on CD through the Metropolitan Museum of Art in March, 2004, and has sold over 8,000 copies. It has recorded two prior CDs on Gagliano and two on Gothic Records. Its forthcoming recordings are “Epiphany: Medieval Byzantine Chant” and “The Fall of Constantinople.”

Alexander Lingas is Cappella Romana’s founder and artistic director. Under his leadership Cappella Romana’s programming continues to expand, including music from the very oldest musical manuscripts to contemporary works by some of the world’s most notable composers. He has directed Cappella Romana on NPR and BBC Radio 3, Festival Vancouver (BC), and recently at the Byzantine Festival in London, which featured a gala concert in St. Paul’s Cathedral, performed before HRH The Duke of Kent and an audience of over 2,000. Dr. Lingas is currently an Assistant Professor of Music History at Arizona State University’s School of Music and a Fellow of the University of Oxford’s European Humanities Research Centre. With a B.A. in Music (Composition) and Russian Language from Portland State University, he received his Ph.D. in Historical Musicology from the University of British Columbia. Dr. Lingas has received Fulbright and Onassis grants for musical studies in Greece with noted cantor Lycourgos Angelopoulos, a Junior Fellowship in Byzantine Studies at Harvard University’s Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., and a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship for study in Oxford under Bishop Kallistos (Ware). From 1998 until 2001 he was British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Oxford University’s St. Peter’s College. In May 2001 he collaborated with Ioannis Arvanitis, Lycourgos Angelopoulos and the Greek Byzantine Choir on the first celebration in 500 years of Vespers according to the ancient Rite of Hagia Sophia. His upcoming projects include books on Sunday Matins in the Rite of Hagia Sophia and Byzantine experiments in polyphony, as well as a general introduction to Byzantine Chant for the Yale University Press. From 2003–2004 Dr. Lingas was in Princeton, New Jersey as a member of the School of Historical Studies of the Institute for Advanced Study and as an NEH Area Studies Fellow from the American Council of Learned Societies.

ABOUT THE TUDOR CHOIR

The Tudor Choir is a professional vocal chamber ensemble founded in 1993 by Artistic Director Doug Fullington. The group maintains a flexible membership of between 8 and 40 singers and specializes in the performance of Renaissance, early American and English choral music. As Artists-in-Residence at St. Mark's Cathedral, Seattle, the choir presents an annual subscription series and has performed under guest conductors including Peter Phillips, Paul Hillier, Andrew Parrott, Stephen Cleobury and Martin Haselböck. The choir also has made guest appearances with the Mark Morris Dance Group, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Early Music Guild of Seattle, Seattle Baroque, and in conjunction with Seattle Opera. The choir has performed live on National Public Radio's "A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor" and recorded for Seattle Symphony's "Musically Speaking" series. The choir's recordings of Tudor polyphony, English carols and early American music have been released on Loft Recordings.

Doug Fullington is the founder and Artistic Director of the Tudor Choir. He is a specialist in music of Tudor England and also early American music, both of which inform the Tudor Choir’s repertoire. An accomplished countertenor, Doug performs with the Tudor Choir under guest conductors and has sung with The Tallis Scholars on their December 2000 tour of the United States, in La Chaise Dieu, France, in August 2002, and in Manchester, UK, in January 2003. Mr. Fullington has also sung with Cappella Romana, including their tour performances in the Byzantine Festival in London. He has also conducted studio sessions for film soundtracks. The Tudor Choir has made four CD recordings that are distributed through Loft recordings and Gothic Records. In demand as a coach for Tudor music, he also prepares editions of Tudor and other Renaissance vocal music for such groups as The Tallis Scholars and the New York-based ensemble Vox. Mr. Fullington and the Tudor Choir have established themselves as leading interpreters of early American music. Their Shapenote Album is regarded as the definitive professional recording of the shapenote genre and is regularly played on National Public Radio. Their recent Shaker album has reinforced this reputation, as has the recent An American Christmas recording released by Loft Recordings.

(503) 236-8202 or (206) 683-9543 • info@cappellaromana.org • www.cappellaromana.org

EVERLASTING LIGHT

PORTLAND: Friday, 12 Nov 2004, 8:00pm

SEATTLE: Saturday, 13 Nov 2004, 8:00pm

ABOUT THE TUDOR CHOIR



Volume 6 Number 42 - Tuesday, October 19th, 2004	A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY