A CHOIR OF CONDUCTORS

What do the current and/or former directors of the EKU Concert Choir; the Midway Singers; the Transylvania Singers; the Henry Clay, Scott County and Western Hills High School Choruses; the Lexington Men’s Chorus; and the choirs of Lexington’s Lafayette and Crestwood Christian churches, as well as Presbyterian churches in Mt. Sterling, Georgetown, Nicholasville and Troy, ALL have in common?

If you said that they are all accomplished musical leaders in the Central Kentucky choral community, you’d be absolutely correct.  But you would also be right if you said that they are all members of Musick’s Company and important participants in its ongoing early vocal music projects.

Many in the Center for Old Music audiences who hear our ensemble performances might be surprised to know that so many of the participants are themselves experienced leaders of their own groups.  Here are those who bring leadership skills into the Musick’s Company mix.

Wayne Gebb is a highly seasoned music director who conducts two choral ensembles at Midway College and serves as choirmaster at Frankfort’s Church of the Ascension, where he also directs a brass ensemble.  He has previously conducted the Women’s Chorus at Eastern Kentucky University, served as choir director at Crestwood Christian Church and directed the Georgetown Choral Society.  Currently anticipating completion of his DMA at UK this August, Professor Gebb is an accomplished vocal teacher and soloist.

June Williams is the former choral director at Scott County High, where she devoted her career building its vocal program from one small choir to a multifaceted music program that included two major choruses of 125 members each.  Her choirs consistently drew top scores and awards at numerous state contests and festivals.  Her Scott County Singers performed with the Louisville Orchestra in a televised special.  She has taken Scott County-based ensembles on three European concert tours, and conducted four choral groups at Henry Clay High (where she previously worked).  June continues to serve as guest conductor for various choral events across Kentucky, and was recently honored (5-5-05) by SCHS at its 20th Spring Ice Cream Concert.

The Rev. Mary Baber Reed (now the minister of Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church) may very well have the distinction of having conducted the widest age range of singers—from four to eighty-four years old!  Her directing experience includes a Center for Old Music vocal ensemble for youngsters, and UK’s Donovan Chorus.  (In the latter, the minimum age is sixty-five.)  Mary has also conducted adult and children’s choirs at several Presbyterian churches in the region, and served as student conductor of the Lexington Children’s Chorus.

Dr. Hunter Hensley is Associate Professor of Voice at Eastern Kentucky University, where he currently conducts the Concert Choir.  He previously conducted the concert choir at Lincoln Memorial University (Tenn.), where he served on the faculty from 1993-2000.  There he also directed the Tri-State Community Chorus, a group he founded.  Hunter has been the director of church choirs at First Presbyterian in Raleigh, North Carolina, and at Lexington’s Central Baptist (positions which he modestly describes as “church musician”).  He has also served as chorusmaster for productions with the Knoxville Symphony and Lexington Philharmonic.  Hunter is an exceptional vocal soloist, too, with special interests ranging from music of the 17th Century to chant of the 8th.

The Rev. Carl Wagoner, minister of Victory Christian Church, previously directed church choirs in the region for 20 years, chiefly at Lafayette Christian.  “Before the earth cooled,” he says, Carl was an assistant director of choral activities at UK.  We might also add that he served as front man (gig talk for “lead singer”) in a local blues band led by none other than Johnny Hedger (Musick’s Company’s longtime lutenist).

Loren Tice has had a variety of music leadership roles through his career.  At Transylvania University, where his teaching specializes in keyboards, he has conducted the women’s choral ensemble. He has also served as artistic director of the Lexington Men’s Chorus, and as choir director at Nicholasville Presbyterian Church.  Currently Professor Tice is organizing a chorale which he will conduct in the premier performance of a Requiem composed by his Transy colleague, Greg Partain.  Loren is also a contributing music critic for the Herald-Leader.

Tiffany Marsh is a very recent (and welcome!) addition to Musick’s Company, who also this year assumed choral conducting duties at Frankfort’s Western Hills High School.  She is a graduate of the University of Louisville, where she studied with early music specialist Jack Ashworth.

Wayne, Loren, and Mary provided some thoughts on the subject of musical leadership and the Musick’s Company modus operandi:

Wayne says that music-making should always be a collaborative effort, even if you’re assumed to be a take-charge director.  He sees the 18-member vocal ensemble as “essentially a chamber group” and is comfortable with that model.  “I played a lot of chamber music when I was younger, and there you also learn give and take.”  He adds, “There is that wonderful quote, ‘A conductor is one who can follow more than one person at the same time.’ ”

Loren reports that when he first joined Musick’s Company, two things struck:  1) The group tackles a new piece by sight-reading a capella.  “You know you are in for a ride when you’re freed from that old clunker, the piano (my favorite instrument, actually).”  2) “When you get to the end, the spirit of mutual inquiry is all-embracing.  In the reactions and ‘post-mortems,’ all participants are equal.  That is something new to a singer who also conducts.  Most groups are leader-dominated.  This one is a group of you-firsters, a group of easy laughers, and people of great seriousness of purpose.”

Mary offered this analysis:  “It is a wonderful thing to sing with a bunch of directors.  Among us, there are those who, without seeming self-important, will remind us of nuances we should discern.  Insights come from different people at different times.  It’s comforting to realize that we all make mistakes and are able to acknowledge them with humor.  We are getting a chance to sing fabulous music with good musicians who are also very nice people.  AND we have our own talented and amazingly knowledgeable director in Donna Boyd, even if she is sometimes reluctant to function in that role.  I am grateful that she does, and appreciate her open approach to what the rest of us might have to contribute.  It’s a great blessing to be part of this group.”

Schütz Requiem to be Featured Work on June 4 Concert

 In 1636, the year that Heinrich Schütz wrote the Musicalische Exequien, a spectre was haunting Europe — the spectre of death.  Northern Europe in particular, including the composer’s Saxony home, was in the throes of the Thirty Years War, featuring the all too familiar themes of fervent nationalism and religious zealotry.  More accurately a subset of wars (with chaotic beginnings before 1618 and no real conclusion in 1648), its devastation left few, if any, lives untouched.  Too, epidemics of plague and dysentery regularly visited the region during the immediate generations before and after Schütz’s birth.  Death’s spectre would haunt Schütz himself on a more personal level.  Within a concentrated time, he endured the loss of his wife, both his daughters, his brother, both his parents, and several close friends.  In the midst of this period, he undertook his greatest of many funeral compositions — a work commissioned for the interment of a Prince.

This “German Requiem” is, by far, the largest vocal work ever presented by The Center for Old Music.  In the first part, a six-voice tutti setting is heard, interspersed with solos, duets, trios and small ensembles.  Part 2 is in the form of an antiphonal double-chorus motet.  The final part features a five-voice chorus with three soloists (“two seraphim and the beata anima”).  Several solo voices will be heard in this performance, including Wayne Gebb, Loren Tice, Hunter Hensley, Carl Wagoner, June Williams, Emily Sartini, Anna Isaacs, Mary Reed, Jenny Brock, Tiffany Marsh and Michele Bennett.

A Note on the Continuo Players

Susan Carey (organ) has been a singer in Musick’s Company since 1998, but she is also a highly experienced keyboard accompanist.  In that role she has worked with many of the groups mentioned above (“A Choir of Conductors”), such as the Transy Choir, Scott County High, the Georgetown Choral Society, and numerous KMEA choral events.  She has also worked in productions for three Lexington high schools (Tates Creek, Lafayette & SCAPA), and served as organist at six area churches, including St. Luke’s and Epworth United Methodist.

Bob Reynierson (theorbo):  Bob and the Center for Old Music go back a very long way; he was a founding member, specializing in fretted instruments.  In the 1980s, he re-located to Nashville, Tennessee and served as artist/teacher-in-residence at Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music.  Since then he’s resided and worked in Florida.  Two years ago, Bob re-united with the Center for an all-Purcell concert at the conclusion of our 25th Anniversary season.  Bob will also be featured on this program as a lutenist, playing solo and in duets with John Hedger.

More on the Program

The singers will perform two additional works:  a 5-voice Mass by the Mexican composer Juan de Lienas (c1635) and a 5-voice sacred piece (text from Isaiah, sung in Hebrew) by the Mantuan composer Salamone Rossi.... Instrumental music by Rossi & others of the Italian courts will feature recorderists Barbara Miller, Atossa Kramer & Catherine Oleksa.... Mixed consort tunes include ballads from the British Isles, the Netherlands & North America.

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