In Toronto, for four and one half days in August of 2017, we experienced John Rouse’s vision of an immersive, multi-barreled, intensive investigation of the African American spiritual. In Canada, where enslaved persons fled for freedom, with their music, before the American Civil War. This was a new YAC concept – not only singing a particular genre of music, but digging down to its essence, trying to sing the music with a different feeling and using different performance techniques, and studying the history of the music and participating in seminars discussing not only how the music arose, but how it is interpreted today. John Rouse called this an “inner journey”. For those of us lucky enough to experience Toronto, we now know what he meant.
And how do I describe our opportunity to meet Brainerd Blyden-Taylor, conductor of The Nathaniel Dett Chorale? Our alto section did truly sound different after our master class with Brainerd. Hard to describe, but they seemed to sing with deeper seriousness, angst and pain. Isn’t that what Professor Michele Johnson said – with spirituals the beauty is “conjoined with pain”? I remember Jeff stating at our “Singposium” (and again I paraphrase) that the Yale Glee Club has sung the Barty and Fenno spiritual arrangements as “bring down the house” encores for nearly 80 years, but there is so much more to learn. Our usual thundering herd of second basses somehow clinched the moment when they sang “Go Down Moses!” in the mighty fugue of the Dett Oratorio at our gala concert at Koerner Hall at The Royal Conservatory of Music. Members of The Dett Chorale told me that they were deeply moved by YAC’s version of the Nathaniel Dett anthem “O Holy Lord”, which is still ringing in my ears. And we were proud to share the stage with the accomplished and professional Nathaniel Dett Chorale. What wonderful singers, and what wonderful people.
Mark Alberta
