Last Saturday my spouse and I had the pleasure of listening to another excellent concert by the Bay Choral Guild at the Campbell United Methodist Church. The name of the program was “A World of Song”, a title which does not really do proper justice to the program.
One of the great lessons of anthropology, art history, and other fields dedicated to studying the varieties of human expression is that there are many, many ways that people to think about things. The full range of that diversity can be almost shocking when you run into it; shocking, exhilerating, and enlightening. This program encompassed a remarkable array of cultures and traditions.
I was also impressed that those songs that were not from English-speaking traditions were sung in their respective languages. Languages such as Mongolian, Latvian, Japanese, Senegalese, and others. I also have it on good authority that Artistic Director Sanford Dole brought in language coaches to ensure proper pronunciation by the singers. This is pretty typical of the level of detail I have come to expect from this group, and it showed in the performances. Even when one could not understand the language, the words were crisp and clear.
The program began with a stirring and technically daunting piece in Mongolian by Se Enkhbayar, followed by a “Dravidian Dithyramb” by Victor Pranjoti. That should give you some idea of the level of material that was performed, and performed very well. A few other highlights for me were a delightful rendition of Ralph Vaughan William’s arrangement of “Just As the Tide Was Flowing”, a piece I performed with a choir at some point in my youth, and then forgot amidst the fog of middle age. This performance brought it all surging delightfully back.
Where the first half of the program covered traditions rooted in the Eastern Hemisphere, the second half was devoted to the West. This included some beautiful pieces in Portuguese and Spanish, along with a sublime performance of James Erb’s “Shenandoah” as well as an original composition by Sanford Dole, “Girls of the Old West”.
It’s easy to conjecture that such a wide range of music types and traditions would feel like a rollerskate tour through a museum of fine art, and there might be some truth to it. But it didn’t feel that way. Bay Choral Guild is a highly talented and artistically competent group of performers that conveys a lot about about a given piece of music by dint of their excellent preparation and performance skills. This was an evening of small tastes, but highly satisfying nonetheless.