Ruehr in Rehearsal

Guest Blogger: Catherine Davies

Whenever I bring friends to a TWC concert, one of their first questions after the performance is: "how much rehearsal did you have?" The average number of rehearsals for one of our concerts is 8 –– that's a total of about 17.5 hours, taking out break and announcements. For many of us, when we sing works like the Verdi Requiem (which we will do for the third time in three seasons this June, this time with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra), the notes and rhythms are already in our muscle memory from previous performances so rehearsals can shift quickly into focusing on interpretation. But I think the only work that 95% of the chorus knew right off the bat (by show of hands), was "Oklahoma!" for a Wolf Trap NSO Pops Performance last summer. (P.S. Chorus manager Amy Lipstein totally won a bet about that...)

So, at the moment we're preparing for the first New Music for a New Age concert. The series is now in its third year, but this will be the first time it will be part of the subscription season and the first time it will involve all 185 of us. It's music by Elena Ruehr. Who? Not Mahler? No–that's in May. Monteverdi? Nope. Mozart? Nein.


It is just as the title says: new music. Elena, a Boston-based composer whom Julian has known since his days as organist at the BU Chapel, will be coming down for the week prior to the concert to work with us, as well as presenting workshops on her music and the texts she selected by Langston Hughes, Louise Gluck, and others at libraries, community colleges, and high schools in the metro area. I suspect I might be the only person in the chorus who had heard of her before Julian introduced us to her music, as I actually sang the world premiere performance of "Gospel Cha Cha" with my former chorus, VocalEssence in Minneapolis, MN.

But it's thrilling to have the chance to learn completely unfamiliar music – and challenging in such a large chorus. The intricate rhythms, singing in English (ridiculous, should be easy, right? But everyone in the audience knows how it should sound, so each consonant and vowel has to be exactly right...!), the modern tonality – it's a totally new experience. Fortunately, Julian, in addition to everything else he does, is a composer in his own right. So he's at home here. He can disassemble the various parts of the score and teach it to us in three different ways until we get it. Thank goodness. After all, we have just about 12 hours left…

Just for fun: leave a comment below with the name of your favorite living composer...