Life is often seen as a circle, no matter what culture you come from. For its upcoming concert series, Vancouver’s Reprise Choir is collaborating with student singers and musicians from Vancouver School of Arts and Academics to present “Circlesong,” a modern choral piece that explores the cycle of life through Indigenous texts.
Next week’s three concerts will be the Pacific Northwest premiere of “Circlesong,” with words coming from many different tribal and Indigenous sources, and music by choral composer Bob Chilcotte.
“It is a beautiful and holistic thing,” VSAA choir director Joel Thoreson said.
He hatched the idea of teaching his students Chilcotte’s ambitious but achievable choral work after he first heard it and was mesmerized.
“It is a striking piece of music and it’s full of beautiful ideas,” Thoreson said.
If You Go
What: Reprise Choir and Vancouver School of Arts and Academics present “Circlesong” by composer Bob Chilcotte
When: 7 p.m. March 19 at VSAA (featuring VSAA singers), 3101 Main St., Vancouver; 7 p.m. March 22 and 3 p.m. March 23 (without VSAA singers) at Vancouver First United Methodist Church, 401 East 33rd St., Vancouver
Admission: $20 donation suggested
Information: reprisechoirsings.org
Those ideas originate with Native North American peoples and writers. It would have been ideal if the underlying music — the vehicle delivering those ideas — had been written by a Native composer too, Thoreson said. But there just aren’t many Native sources of choral music that’s right for high-schoolers, he said.
“Circlesong” composer Bob Chilcotte, a renowned name in contemporary choral music, is white and British. That’s pretty removed from tribal America.
“And we run into a million problems there,” Thoreson said. “I sat with this whole idea for a long time.”
Thoreson was keen to avoid misusing Native texts, ideas or beliefs, or doing anything inappropriate. But he decided to go ahead with what he knew would be a rewarding challenge for his students.
“ ‘Circlesong’ is sharing and celebrating universal ideas,” he said. “It’s not trying to mimic Native music in any way. It’s not saying all Native Americans believe this or do this. It’s not trying to represent any culture. It’s taking little ideas from all these different cultures. They all celebrate life’s journey in these different ways.”
“Circlesong” takes the listener through birth, youth, growing up, falling in love, the trials of middle age and the arrival of death, Thoreson said. The lyrics are poems from Chinook, Seminole, Pueblo, Yaqui and many other Native sources.
Thoreson said he didn’t realize until he started working on the project with his choral students that a couple of them have Indigenous roots and were delighted by the piece.
The same goes for Reprise Choir, which agreed to be VSAA’s partner in the project. Co-director April Duvic said she was surprised to learn that two singers in her choir have Native heritage.
“I think it’s great,” said Reprise tenor Dakota Luu, a Vancouver resident with roots in the Tanana Athabascan people of interior Alaska. “It’s all about the beauty of the music and the emotions of the original texts.”
Ironically, Luu said he’s enthusiastic about the very thing Thoreson was worried about: representing Native beliefs in a general way.
“No one is dressing up in Native garb or pretending to be something they’re not, but it definitely gives me a feeling of representation,” he said. “Native Americans in North America — we’re an important minority and we’re underrepresented in the world today. So anytime a big piece like this can be shared with the community, I feel like people will get a lot out of it.”
11-part harmony
Reprise is a 35-voice choir that offers just one annual concert series each year in March. That’s because the group includes many choir directors and music educators who stay plenty busy rehearsing their own groups throughout the year. Reprise launched in 2017 after Duvic and co-director Janet Reiter-Galbraith both retired as co-directors of choral music at Clark College, but wanted to continue working with great singers, including many of their former students.
To meet the demands of “Circlesong,” Duvic said, Reprise has added a “treble ensemble” — nine way-high voices — to its base group of 35. Meanwhile, Thoreson said, he’s got a mixed group of up to 60 VSAA high school and eighth-grade singers who are enjoying the challenge and scope of rehearsing a unified, 40-minute piece of music.
“My kids don’t usually get to experience that musically. They usually sing three-minute pieces and they do a short set and they’re done,” he said. “This really takes you someplace musically. I remember my first time playing a really large work and it was like, ‘Whoa, you can do this?’”
When you’re working with nearly 100 voices, it’s possible to spread out from standard five- or six-part harmony to harmonies with as many as 11 parts, Reiter-Galbraith said.
The Wednesday night debut concert will see all singers taking the VSAA stage, plus two grand pianos played by Duvic and Reiter-Galbraith, plus a large student percussion ensemble, featuring four timpani, marimba, drums and hand percussion. That’s nearly 100 performers in all, making what’s sure to be a massive and mulilayered sound.
“This is a complex work,” Duvic said.
If that many harmonies is what you crave, don’t miss the Wednesday night concert at VSAA, because that’s the only one with student singers. The Saturday night and Sunday afternoon concerts at Vancouver First United Methodist Church will retain Reprise’s treble ensemble, pianos and student percussion section, but not the VSAA mixed choir. (It may be a smaller performance, Duvic said, but in rehearsal the stage at First United still felt crammed with talent.)
To round out the 40-minute “Circlesong” for the full concert, Duvic said, several more pieces were added to the start of the concert, including poetry by former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. The Traveling Day Society, an interfaith, inter-tribal Native drum group, will open all three concerts.
