New Haven Chorale Shines A Light

As the sun set Monday evening, dozens of people began to congregate in the parking lot of the Unitarian Society on Hartford Turnpike in Hamden. They brought lawn chairs, sheet music, folders, and clip-on lights. On the stairs at the entrance to the building, New Haven Chorale Music Director Edward Bolkovac stood behind a small podium, a score in front of him, a microphone in his hand. Accompanist Blake Hansen sat behind a keyboard near him. In front of him, a camera was ready to Zoom everything. The New Haven Chorale was ready for outdoor rehearsal.

“Hello everybody — welcome! I’m really hoping the weather holds out for us,” Bolkovac said, as sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses — nearly 100 members total — settled into their sections. ​“I hear the crickets are warming up, so we’re in good company. I’d like everyone to stand up.”

Founded in 1950, the New Haven Chorale has a repertoire that ranges across the classical canon and includes modern and living composers, from whom it seeks commissions. Bolkovac has been its music director since 2003. Before the pandemic, the chorale collaborated with the New Haven Symphony, the Hartford Symphony, and other ensembles.

The pandemic posed a particular challenge to the New Haven Chorale, especially as terrifying word got out early about quickly the virus had spread — fatally — through practicing choirs elsewhere. The chorale had a large concert in the works with a full orchestra planned, but especially with several medical personnel among its members, it took no chances. Still, the group wanted to find a way to make music together.

“The minute we shut down, we started meeting every Monday night on Zoom, and we met every Monday night for the entire year,” said Linda Waldman, the chorale’s president. ​“Fifty to 70 people logged on with Ed, and we did everything you could do — everything short of singing together. We would exercise together. We would meditate to get everybody focused. We would sing along to our parts. We did that through the entire pandemic, and it was a grounding factor in many of our lives. It was the closest thing to normal Monday that we had.” Bolkovac also gave a large number of music classes on Thursdays, meaning that some members sang twice a week.

Soon, Bolkovac was talking about the possibility of assembling performances virtually. ​“We started working on Silver Rain in May” 2020, Waldman said, and ​“pretty quickly Ed decided that we could put together a virtual choir piece. And once we did the first one, we were off and running.” Subsequent virtual performances featured a string quartet. Its second-to-last one, ​“Great Day,” involved a sign-language interpreter.

“The artistic vision of each video is all due to Ed and Peter Robinson” of Audio Artisan, ​“who’s the sound engineer who put it all together,” Waldman said. ​“We were given resources to sing through headphones, so we could sing with someone singing our part. Very often we were watching a video of Ed conducting. These videos were made mostly on our cell phones. It’s a much more difficult and complex process than most people realize.” But ​“it was the only way we could sing together.”

“The videos got more and more complex and effective as time went on, from the first one to the last,” Waldman added. ​“We’re very lucky that one of us is an audio engineer.”

In June, with warm weather and case numbers low, the chorale finally got together in person again, at a pavilion in Milford. ​“It was fantastic — really wonderful,” Waldman said. The June 21 rehearsal ​“was the first time we sang together in 15 months. We all brought our chairs and spaced ourselves out in this outdoor space.”

They also took on 21 new members, who join the longer-running members in their dedication to the music. When they can’t get together in person, ​“we miss singing together and being together. We miss each other. It’s really a community.”

On Monday, before the singing started, Bolkovac first had the chorale go through a series of stretching exercises, designed to release tension and make breathing easier. One exercise involved everyone extending their arms from their sides as far as they could. ​“If you’re hitting the person next to you, you’re not socially distanced,” Bolkovac said, one of many lines that drew appreciative laughter from the chorale.

They turned to working on passages from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Missa for Archbishop Colloredo, which meant Bolkovac had some notes for the singers regarding the pronunciation of the Latin. ​“It’s not Italianate Latin because this was written in Salzburg.” That meant they should try to adhere as close to the pronunciations that choral singers in Mozart’s time and region would most likely have used; it was about honoring the composer’s intentions, famously puckish as they sometimes were. They worked through a particular passage that Bolkovac meant to instill with more energy. ​“Come on!” he said, both goad and encouragement. The singers took heart. The next time through was more confident, more passionate.

“No note is without your spirit — and your diaphragm,” Bolkovac said. At times he engaged the sections in a little friendly competition (“tenors, I think the basses out-energized you,” he said at one point, a gleam in his eye) and other times he pitted the choir against the loudly chirping crickets all around them.

“My jokes went over better last week,” he said. ​“I guess I’m just bugging you,” which elicited a collective (yet still appreciative) groan from the choir. He circled back around to technical details to get the choir to express all the verve the music had to offer. ​“Every note needs an accent,” he said. ​“Accents make excitement, and Mozart knew that.” But that accent needed to be ​“one of vitality, not one of loudness.” There was a difference; it was about having the singers set their intentions behind their voices, put more of themselves into the music. ​“I know there are some feisty people out there,” he said.

Along the way Bolkovac offered pointers on everything from body posture to what mouth shapes would best support good tone for different vowels. On a passage that required a slow build from quieter to louder to full volume, he offered advice. ​“Keep a little held back so you have somewhere to go,” he said. That way, ​“it’s not just energy without a sense of direction.” He had a knack for giving directions about music that also felt like therapy, like kindness. As the passage progressed, he was ebullient.

By then it was dark out, and the chorale was a sea of small clip-on lights. ​“You’re singing much more fully,” Bolkovac said. ​“Look how happy I am!” He shined a light on his smiling face, drawing laughter again.

They switched to working on the spiritual ​“Have You Seen the Newborn King,” arranged by Victor Johnson. Here Bolkovac showed that the method of learning mattered; if the chorale was to learn Mozart from the page, he wanted them to learn the spiritual by ear, clapping on the 2 and 4.

“Put your book down,” he said. ​“I want you to fake it ​‘til you make it on this one.” He encouraged them to stand up, clap while they sang, maybe even sway from side to side. He offered a tangent about how much he had learned from some of his strictest teachers in Hungary, but also that ​“some of the best teachers I had were in the gospel church where I played” later in his career.

Instead of having the chorale read from the score, Bolkovac had every section learn every other section’s parts. They sang them over and over again together, with Bolkovac pointing out how they would overlap as they went along. Then it was time to put all the sections together. With Bolkovac providing enthusiastic cues, the voices built on one another.

“That was good!” he said. ​“You’re taking to it well.”

The choir next turned to We Sing Because, a piece the choir had commissioned from composer Colin Britt and put together over the summer as one of its virtual performances. ​“We approached Colin to write a piece for us,” Waldman explained. ​“He gave us 10 sentences to complete.” The beginnings of the sentences were prompts: I miss. I lost. I am thankful for. ​“The members of the chorale in a sense wrote the words for the piece,” Waldman said. The chorale worked on it in May and June and premiered the piece in July.

That familiarity served the choir well as they revisited it on Monday, as the pieces fell back into place readily.

“We’re doing great here, getting something accomplished,” Bolkovac said. ​“Give yourselves a round of applause.”

The chorale plans to meet outside at the Unitarian Society every Monday until the weather or the temperature forbids it. Then then have plans — pandemic allowing — to meet in the society’s cavernous indoor space, with some members meeting in person and others following along via Zoom. They then have a holiday concert in the works for Dec. 4 — perhaps with everyone in person with an audience, perhaps with everyone in person and a virtual audience, perhaps everyone virtual. The trick, Waldman said, was to have a plan, but stay flexible, too, to stay safe.

“We will adapt, because that’s how you survive,” she said.

The New Haven Chorale rehearses every Monday evening, with a concert tentatively scheduled for Dec. 4, Covid restrictions allowing. Contact the chorale through its website to schedule an audition.