NYT: 1,000 Singers Trying to Find B Flat

[Frank Forman]

Thanks to Sarah for this.

1,000 Singers Trying to Find B Flat
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/12/arts/music/from-cacophony-a-choral-miracle-at-lincoln-center.html

By MICHAEL COOPER

MOUNTING a new choral piece for 1,000 singers is not for the faint
of heart--or the disorganized.

That is one thing Lincoln Center has learned as it prepares to
present the premiere of David Lang's "the public domain" around its
fountain late Saturday afternoon at a free concert celebrating the
50th anniversary of the Mostly Mozart Festival.

First, organizers had to recruit 1,000 singers, many of them
amateurs (ability to read music not required). Some responded to
social-media invitations to "make your #LincolnCenter debut." Others
came from New York's richly varied vocal scene: well-known large
ensembles as well as church choirs, synagogue choruses, the New York
City Bar Chorus and a kaleidoscope of other groups. By the time
rehearsals began this summer, more than 2,000 people had registered,
leaving a healthy margin for attrition.

Then there was the question of how to marshal such a massive force,
which is even bigger than choruses typically used in Mahler's Eighth
Symphony, often known as the "Symphony of a Thousand." A musical
chain of command was established, with singers assigned to five
different "strands" that all worked individually (think spy
networks, or fast-food franchises). A website was built to
disseminate rehearsal times, notes and instructional videos.
Overseeing it all musically has been Simon Halsey, one of the
world's leading choral directors, and a team of 25 conductors
working beneath him who are allowed to shout, and sometimes sing,
their instructions through cone-shaped megaphones whenever more
traditional maestro hand gestures seem insufficient.

The sheer scale of the undertaking can be hard to fathom.

"You simply join in with the 600 people who have sung the
beginning," Mr. Halsey patiently told a bloc of 200 singers at a
rehearsal on Monday evening in the Baruch College gym. On the gym
floor, a painted logo of the college's home team, the Bearcats,
represented the Lincoln Center fountain.

At one point Mr. Halsey, who directed the chorus that sang with the
Berlin Philharmonic in its searing performances of Bach's "St.
Matthew Passion" at the Park Avenue Armory in 2014, addressed the
assembled altos about a cue they needed to watch for. "The altos
alone will see that it's time to start, and all over the plaza, I
think there are 420 altos--you are in very strong numbers--you
will all be trying to find D or a B flat," he told them.

Throughout the rehearsal, Mr. Halsey, the choral director of the
London Symphony Orchestra, peppered his remarks with friendly
cajolery and encouragement, repeatedly telling the occasionally
bemused-looking singers that "it does work--I promise."

He should know. He has done this before, conducting the first choral
piece Mr. Lang wrote for 1,000 singers, "Crowd Out," which had its
premiere in Britain in 2014. Mr. Lang, a Pulitzer Prize-winning
composer, said he had been inspired by an Arsenal soccer match he
saw in London.

"I was just completely amazed by how wild the crowd was, and in
particular how great the sound was--everybody was together making
this incredible kind of a noise," he recalled. "And you would hear a
scrap of music from the other side of the football stadium and it
would circulate, and like a wildfire take over everyone and then
disappear. People were yelling the most absolutely insulting and
completely biologically scandalous kinds of things at each other,
and having a great time. It was really fun, and also really
terrifying."

Mr. Lang described "Crowd Out," written for "a thousand people
yelling," as exploring the loss of individuality people experience
when they succumb to the power of crowds. But the new work, "the
public domain," explores the flip side--what people gain by coming
together. "That was the fundamental thing about this piece," Mr.
Lang said. "We do need each other, we are around each other, we do
get something from each other and we are alike."

He crowdsourced the text by typing unfinished sentences into
internet search engines and seeing what the auto-complete function
added. After some trial and error (mostly aimed at weeding out
pornography and weight-loss quackery), he settled on a sentence that
began, "One thing we all share is," which produced a variety of
intriguing endings, including things as varied as "love of music"
and "favorite sandwich."

Jane Moss, the artistic director of Lincoln Center, said the work
had taken on added resonance since she decided to bring it to New
York. "Being in such a fractious time, with so much polarization
around the world," she said, "this project is astounding in its
power to demonstrate how we can work together."

Organizers discovered just how many singers and choirs there are
hiding in plain sight around New York in providing the project with
talent. The New York Choral Consortium, a membership group of more
than 60 city choruses with 2,500 to 3,000 singers, helped get the
word out. So did David Dabbon, who identified 400 different choruses
in the metropolitan area when he worked as the music supervisor of
"The Events," a play staged last year at New York Theater Workshop
that enlisted a different local singing group at each performance.

Recent rehearsals had a distinctly New York flavor. Singers warmed
up with arpeggios to the words "kosher sushi." Leaders of each group
of 200 singers described the wedge shapes in which they would stand
around the fountain as slices of pizza ("You're at the crust!").
There were octogenarians and children, and everyone, even those who
walked with canes or used motorized wheelchairs, was able to do the
simple choreography devised by Annie-B Parson.

Sebastian Cunto, an 8-year-old who is singing with his mother,
Natalia Araujo, said he was enjoying the rehearsals and offered his
own assessment of Mr. Lang's music. "It's not like Baroque, it's not
Mozart," he said. "It's very new, very modern."

Mr. Lang, who wants to blur the distinction between the singers and
the members of the audience, who will stand in the plaza as the
performance unfolds around them. He is already contemplating whether
the piece, which was commissioned by Lincoln Center, the London
Symphony and the Berlin Philharmonic, can be scaled up and
eventually sung by tens of thousands.

But first Mr. Halsey will have to pull off Saturday's concert.

"My job is relatively easy from a conducting point of view: I'm a
super traffic policeman," Mr. Halsey said. "Each of the 25
conductors working underneath me is being a real conductor. But then
everybody has got to be referring back to me."

Asked if he ever wished that he were allowed to shout instructions
through a megaphone at the other choruses he conducts, Mr. Halsey
laughed. "Oh God, yes, absolutely," he said. "In the middle of every
concert, I should think."

The world premiere of David Lang's "the public domain" will be
presented on Saturday at 5 p.m. at Josie Robertson Plaza at Lincoln
Center. Admission is free. Rain date: Sunday at 5 p.m.===