The logo for the new Vox Humana SF ensemble (from its home page)
This weekend saw the launch of Vox Humana SF, a new a cappella choir founded by its Artistic Director Don Scott Carpenter. The first performance took place this past Friday evening in Belvedere, but the program was repeated last night here in San Francisco at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. The title of the program was, appropriately enough, In the Beginning. The repertoire covered an extensive interval of time, from the early nineteenth century of Felix Mendelssohn to the very recent past of Reena Esmail.
The title of the program was also the title of the first selection after the intermission, Aaron Copland’s setting of the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis. Much of the structure involved call-and-response, with the “call” coming from the solo mezzo Meghan Crosby-Jolliffe and the “response” from the full ensemble. Those readers that recall my account of the Sony Classical anthology Copland Conducts Copland – The Complete Columbia Album Collection may or may not agree with me that the music of this champion of the twentieth century has not survived the test of time very well. “In the Beginning” was part of that anthology; and, even with the freshness of contemporary voices, the rhetoric of the music itself began to get tiresome well into the Third Day of the Creation.
Indeed, the selection by Mendelssohn, three selected movements from his setting of the Mass in the German language, was far fresher in its impact. This was probably due in part of the interplay of the four solo voices during the Gloria portion (“Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe”). The interleaving of soprano Morgan Balfour, alto Shauna Fallihee, tenor Sam Faustine, and bass Jefferson Packer with the ensemble revealed a technically elegant side of Mendelssohn’s expressiveness that is not encountered in his instrumental works. It also made for an engaging coupling with its much later predecessor on the program, the opening selection of “Alleluia,” composed in 1990 by Algirdas Martinaitis and featuring soprano Kelly Ballou as soloist.
The oldest composer on the program was followed by the youngest, Reena Esmail. Those that have followed this site for some time know that Esmail was one of the composers included in Sarah Cahill’s Future is Female performances, and her music was also featured at the 2021 International Piano Festival. However, I do not think I have encountered any of her music since May of 2022, when Earplay presented her “Nadiya.” Her choral offering, “Even after all this time…” included a clarinet solo performed by Kevin Tang, which made for a decided contrast to the vocal sonorities. While the text for this selection was brief (six lines of blank verse), I felt that the music had overstayed its welcome somewhere around its halfway mark. This was followed by “Schaffe in mir, Gott, ein reines Herz” (create in me a clean heart, O God), the second of the two Opus 29 five-part motets by Johannes Brahms, whose brevity (three sentences) came across with far greater impact.
The program concluded with a coupling of two contrasting works. “Canticum Calamitatis Maritimae,” composed by Jaako Mäntyjärvi in 1997, is a harrowing account of a shipwreck of a car ferry in the Baltic Sea. Solo passages were taken by soprano Cheryl Cain and precentor Jack Wilkins. The entire text (which is in Latin) is framed by citations of the “Lux æterna” portion of the Requiem Mass. That work was then followed by the full “Lux æterna” text arranged by John Cameron in a setting of the “Nimrod” music from Edward Elgar’s “Enigma Variations.”
Taken as a whole, the evening was a thoroughly engaging account of the diversity of the a cappella repertoire, making for an absorbing journey of discovery and leaving at least some of us wondering about what will come next.
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