Serenade! Festival: Morsels amid Pablum

Charles T. Downey, An inconsistent Serenade! choral festival
Washington Post, July 3, 2012

České lidové písně (Czech Folk Songs), Musica Bohemica, J. Krček (Supraphon, 2010)

Choral music brings people together, literally and figuratively, and the Serenade! choral festival, taking place in and around Washington, is celebrating that unifying power. Organized by Classical Movements, a company that plans tours for classical music ensembles, the festival brought together nine choral groups from five continents Sunday afternoon for a marathon concert. Friday night’s violent storms almost canceled the event, leaving Strathmore without power, but the organizers managed to relocate to National Presbyterian Church.

All of this music-making is laudable, and in one sense, those who most enjoy such performances are the enthusiastic performers themselves. Delights for the listener were not as consistent, especially when poor planning stretched the performance to nearly three hours. So much contemporary choral music is in a vaguely pop style — catchy rhythms, cloying harmonies, banal melodies — that thrills some listeners and grates on others. It comes in various regional accents — African (South Africa’s Imilonji KaNtu Choral Society and Namibia’s Voices of Namibia), South American (Colombia’s Verata E Liberi children’s choir) and North American (Boston City Singers children’s choir and Canada’s Cantaré Children’s Choir), including close-harmony jazz (Countermeasure, a polished a cappella group from Toronto) — but it all sounds pretty much the same. [Continue reading]

Serenade! Choral Festival
National Presbyterian Church

SEE ALSO:
Joan Reinthaler, Young choruses make a joyful noise as part of Serenade! festival (Washington Post, July 2)