Feature: Composer-in-Residence Dale Trumbore

The faculty was joined by special guests Dr. David Conte (Professor of Music and Composition Department Chair-person at San Francisco Conservatory of Music) and David Bloom (Music Director of Contemporaneous, one of the most prominent new music ensembles in NYC). Both gave dynamic and eventful masterclasses about their re-spective areas of composition and conducting. Conte also actively participated in all of the student readings, offering his feedback in real time to the composers as they experienced the Ensemble singing their works for the first time. Bloom joined Vince and Matt on the conducting faculty to coach aspiring and seasoned conductors during their developmental time in front of the full Chorus. In true Institute fashion, the character of these interactions was hallmarked by balanced and pleasant discourse on different techniques in conducting and rehearsing choruses.

It is gradually becoming apparent that the Institute may need a new home soon. Although the acoustics and general vibe of the neighborhood and the space have been a perfect spot for us to cultivate new choral music, we have found it prudent to hold the free concert in a climate-controlled space going forward. Additionally, having climate-controlled spaces for the classes and lessons, as well as more properly equipped practice rooms would greatly improve the experience of the students. We have cast our eyes forward with this goal in mind.

SCHOOL OUTREACH

The Ensemble was able to do some elementary school outreach this year as well, most notably at King’s Elementary School, an Uncommon School in Brownsville / Crown Heights, Brooklyn. We were fortunate to receive this invitation via alto, Emily Crowe, a member of the Ensemble.

To our delight, we discovered that the format of the Pro Ensemble working with very young children works! Activities used included blindfolding the kids and having them walk toward different section members of the choir by voice part on indication. Other learning outcomes included high and low sound differentiation, style identification, and exposure to new repertoire including the whimsical and kid-friendly “Five Childhood Lyrics” by John Rutter and work by the Franco-Flemish early music composer, Josquin des Prez.

Both the singers in the Ensemble and the children were delighted by the interaction and we hope to set up more structure in the future to provide this opportunity to more similar school communities.

DALE TRUMBORE For the fifth time in our 11-year history, Choral Chameleon was able to provide a valuable season-long Residency for a composer, who would be given few constraints beyond those of the programming theme of the concert into which their commissions would be placed.

It is our usual model to commission 3 works from a composer, but in the case of Dale, who manages to work full-time as a composer, our Residency offered her the opportunity to have space and time to write 2 relatively longer works, building on her highly successful ‘secular requiem’ ‘How to Go On’.

As we have found with the freedom historically offered to our CIRs, the two pieces she composed for Choral Cha-meleon couldn’t be more different in tone and temperament and we were thrilled that she was able to express her unmistakable compositional voice, and fluency in setting text by contemporary poets, in such contrasting ways.

The two works premiered by Choral Chameleon were:

‘Footnotes to a History of Music’ Premiered at ‘Storytime’ at St Barts, Park Avenue, October 2018

With the brief from Vince to showcase the technical abilities of the Ensemble in a program of narrative pieces, Dale took us on a truly original and whimsical journey. Her bold choice was to pick a poem by Kristina Marie Darling which contains only imaginary footnotes from a main account the listener cannot read. Dale successfully painted a masterpiece of images for the mind’s eye: from canaries let loose into a concert hall, to scores of music rendered illegible by fire damage.

‘What Are We Becoming?’ Premiered at ‘Deus Ex Machina’, Union Theological Seminary and St Paul’s Carroll St, April 2019

This concert presented by the Chorus had a simple premise: to expand the possibilities of secular work for choir and organ. What quickly became apparent for both Dale and Vince, however, was that as much as one wishes to release the pipe organ from its church home, the instrument breathes, has a voice; one which calls to its listeners to a higher place. Dale chose to pair two poems by Abigail Welhouse and Lynn Ungar to create a diptych.

The texts provoked big questions about man-made phenomena such as gun violence and global warming, which Dale set sparsely and patiently - forcing performers and audience to truly absorb the size of the issues, whilst simultaneously rendering the conclusion that the secular answer lies optimistically with the collective outcome of individuals’ responses.