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When Philip Brunelle was six, his mother took him to his first choral concert, Handel's Messiah. "When it was over, I said I wanted the score for Christmas," Brunelle recalls. "I got it, and I was so thrilled, I decided to be a composer. I started writing a piece that I called The Creation—first a tenor solo, 'In the beginning,' and then a chorus singing 'And there was light.' At this point, someone told me that Haydn had already written this piece, so I put it away."
That was just the beginning of a lifelong devotion to choral music for Brunelle. A former boy soprano who saved his paper route money to buy madrigal scores, Brunelle went on to play keyboard and percussion in the Minnesota Orchestra and to serve as music director of the Minnesota Opera. By age 25 he decided to start an ensemble to perform choral works "beyond the 12 warhorses," and founded the Plymouth Music Series, now VocalEssence, one of the country's premier professional groups.
Like Brunelle, many choral conductors working today had powerful early choral music experiences—within the family, in church, and at school—that helped set them on their career course. For some, there was no turning from the path; for others, the detours along the way only made the destination seem more like the right one.
For Kathy Saltzman Romey, artistic director of the Minnesota Chorale, singing was a central part of the Mennonite culture in which she grew up, and as the daughter of a choral conductor, she decided early to follow in the family tradition. She told a third-grade classmate that she was going to be a conductor when she grew up and was unfazed when his reaction was, "You can't do that, you're a girl." In college she planned to be a flutist, but soon realized that "it wasn't my language. I wanted to work with choirs—I liked the direct form of communication, the community aspect, the relationship of text to music." John Alexander, artistic director of the Pacific Chorale, came from a family of choral conductors—half a dozen aunts and uncles and as many cousins are in the choral field. He pursued the violin at first, but was happily unable to escape the family fate.
Craig Jessop, artistic director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, says, "I came out of the womb drawn to choral singing, and to this day, there is nothing I enjoy more. I like a sense of community, of many people becoming one. A choir singing is one of most noble acts of creation."
Choral conductors recount a wide variety of musical experiences early in life. Alan Harler, music director of the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia and chair of the choral conducting program at Temple University, remembers, "My mother was a whistler - with fantastic ornaments! I had a book, The Golden Book of Favorite Songs. When I was seven or eight, I would organize programs out of the songs and make my family perform programs for each other." As a teenager, Joseph Flummerfelt, former artistic director and principal conductor at Westminster Choir College, spent hours conducting Messiah in front of the mirror. Alice Parker, artistic director of Melodious Accord, says her family sang all the time; so says Susan Knight, founder and director emerita of SHALLAWAY, Newfoundland and Labrador Youth in Chorus.
Robert Page, director emeritus of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh and director of choral studies at Carnegie Mellon University, who grew up in Abilene, Texas, says, "I was raised in the Church of Christ, where all the singing was a cappella. No choir or instruments were allowed—there was no mention of them in the New Testament, and that was taken very literally. I learned to read music by shape notes, and in the summer, I conducted singing schools for revival meetings."
For some conductors, the awakening came in school, with charismatic teachers as catalysts. Stanley Thurston, artistic director of the Heritage Signature Chorale, sang in his Chicago high school under the leadership of a gifted young director. He remembers going to hear Cavalleria Rusticana at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and being impressed not as much by Luciano Pavarotti as by the opera chorus. Frank Albinder, music director of the Washington Men's Camerata, grew up in Hollywood, which had extraordinary public school music programs. "My junior high school had over 2,000 kids and seven choirs," he says. "We were singing Bach in middle school and doing it well—I didn't realize it was unusual." He says the middle school choir director made him want to be a choral conductor. Joyce Garrett, who directed the Eastern High School Choir in Washington, D.C. from 1972-2005, grew up in segregated North Carolina and was inspired by the superb music programs at the African-American high school and the choir director there, who became a mentor. "I wanted to be a high school choral director from the age of nine," she says.
Keyboard Connections
Keyboard lessons turned into early career opportunities for some. Having abandoned the violin after enrolling at the American Boychoir School in New Jersey, John Alexander took up piano and organ so that he could earn money. At 13, he was hired by a Florida church to play the organ and lead the choir. How did the singers react to such a young leader? "I was very mature for my age—touring with the American Boychoir, we had to be." At 15, when he got his second church job, this one with a professional choir, his authority was clearly established. "After two months, I went to the priest, and said we should fire the professional quartet because they weren't any good," he says. "He said fine."
Donald McCullough, a composer and conductor, actually planned to be an organist. He got degrees in organ and vocal performance, did graduate work in sacred music, and then got a full-time job at a church in Norfolk, Virginia. "I discovered I didn't like the hours of practicing by oneself." Other aspects of making music were more satisfying. "I began to realize that my gifts were teaching, inspiring other people," he says. "Choirs are ideal for that." In 1984, he started a small professional ensemble (now the Virginia Chorale) and realized that he had found his niche. "As I got older, I realized I'm inspired by the sound of a choir. I can be moved by the sound of a choir warming up!"
"As I got older, I realized I'm inspired by the sound of a choir. I can be moved by the sound of a choir warming up!"
Dennis Keene, artistic director of Voices of Ascension, was also a serious organ student, with a doctorate from Juilliard, studies in Paris, and a job in New York. Then he became organist for the Gregg Smith Singers and Smith became a mentor to him. "In the mid-1980s, I decided I wanted to put the emphasis in my life on choral conducting, not organ concerts, because I loved working with voices," he says. "In 1985, I conducted my first St. Matthew Passion and found a satisfaction that I didn't have playing organ concerts, so I decided to study conducting seriously."
Instrumental music was Emily Crocker's first dream. A French horn player, she went to the University of North Texas planning to be a band director, but in her last semester, worried about the job market in the early 1970s, she took a class in elementary vocal music. Sure enough, after graduation the job she found was as an elementary school music teacher—Texas was not ready for female band directors. "The school wanted a choir, so I started one in my elementary school in Dallas," she says. "For fun, I took them to a little contest, and to my surprise, we were awarded a prize for outstanding elementary choir. Meanwhile, I was close to getting a band director job when the district called and told me, 'we need someone to rescue the choir program in the middle school.'"
Crocker soon realized she needed more skills, so she went back to North Texas to study voice, choral literature, and choral conducting. "I started singing in the Dallas Symphony Chorus, so I could learn how choruses operate in the professional world. I went to Westminster Choir College. I spent 10 years learning in rehearsal, workshops, and college courses what was lacking in my background, and tried to apply it in my schools." In 1989, Crocker moved to Milwaukee to take a position with the music publisher Hal Leonard. A few years later, realizing that she missed working with children, she started the Milwaukee Children's Choir, which is now conducted by Carol Storck. She is still vice president of choral publications for Hal Leonard.
Meeting A Mentor
Many choral conductors cite the importance of a particular mentor or teacher in helping them acquire the skills needed to advance in choral conducting. Kathy Saltzman Romey went to Germany to study with Helmuth Rilling. John Alexander went to Oberlin as an undergraduate especially to work with Robert Fountain. There was no choral conducting major, but he studied organ and served as Fountain's assistant. Donald McCullough didn't get much conducting training in academic settings, but studied privately with Robert Page and went to workshops with other conductors such as Dennis Keene and Margaret Hillis. The other 50 percent of his conducting education, he said, came through working as chorus director of the Virginia Symphony. "JoAnn Falletta [the music director] was really generous about giving me podium time, and I was willing to be taught. I could say to the concertmaster: 'People were looking at you not at me,' and he'd tell me why." Robert Page spent 19 years preparing choruses for Eugene Ormandy at the Philadelphia Orchestra and another 18 doing the same for the Cleveland Orchestra. "I learned texture from Ormandy and clarity from Lorin Maazel," he says.
The Philadelphia Singers' director David Hayes loved choral music, but planned to be an orchestra conductor. Indeed, he went to Curtis, which has no choral program, for graduate work. But then Michael Korn offered him a job as his assistant with The Philadelphia Singers. "I said, 'Wow! A gig!'" Hayes jokes. It was more than that, however. "At The Singers, I was around a professional chorus for the first time," Hayes says. "I had known only fine volunteer choruses, and I thought, this is a whole different world. I fell in love with the sound of a professional chorus."
After Korn's unfortunate illness and death, Hayes became music director of The Singers. He was also working at the Philadelphia Orchestra and heading the orchestra and conducting programs at Mannes College, The New School of Music in New York. "I really love having both," he says. "I would feel kind of cheated if I had to focus on one or the other. My conducting is better for having both." Hayes also takes exception to the prevailing myth of the technical superiority of the orchestral conductor over the choral conductor. "The problem is, we have not until recently addressed the issue of choral conductors having training equivalent to what an orchestra conductor has. But the converse is true as well. There are lots of orchestra conductors who have no idea what to do with the voice, but they get away with it."
From Singer To Conductor
Chicago a cappella's director Jonathan Miller came from a family of academics and always assumed he would be one as well. However, his family moved to Chicago when he was nine, and his musical experiences there led him inexorably in other directions. He sang top-quality repertoire in the Chicago Children's Choir under its founder Christopher Moore and High Holy Day services at his Hyde Park synagogue with the liturgical composer Max Genowsky, who was "a ruthless vocal coach. If he gave you a solo line, he would work you until it was perfect, so that everyone got goose bumps." Miller dutifully enrolled at the University of Chicago as a math major, but what really mattered to him was singing Renaissance music with the Collegium, led by the legendary musicologist Howard Mayer Brown. Miller started singing in a paid church choir and several a cappella groups—he was a founding member of His Majesty's Clerkes (now Bella Voce)—and after finishing his math degree went to Chapel Hill for a doctorate in musicology. After moving back to the Midwest, he realized that performing and programming concerts was what he really liked doing. Chicago a cappella, which he founded in 1993, is made up of nine professional singers.
Frank Albinder's conducting path took a long detour through singing. After four years as a choral director at a small college, he decided that the academic community was not for him, so auditioned for an opening with Chanticleer and got the job. But the conductor's urge was still there: Albinder spent 11 years in Chanticleer, was named assistant conductor in his second year, and later, acting director. Today he juggles directing duties with the Washington Men's Camerata, Woodley Ensemble, a community chorus, and a men's glee club at the University of Virginia.
Craig Jessop also found his way to choral directing through singing. "I'm from a small town in northern Utah and all my ancestors were cowboys," he says. "I always loved singing and choral music. My rebellion was when I hung up my cowboy boots and guitar and announced to the family that I wanted to be an opera singer. Imagine the shame!"
"My rebellion was when I hung up my cowboy boots and guitar and announced to the family that I wanted to be an opera singer. Imagine the shame!"
William Ramsey had discovered Jessop's singing talent while he was in his teens, gave him voice lessons, and remained his mentor as Jessop studied at Utah State, Brigham Young University, and later Stanford. But a 12-week stint with the San Francisco Opera's Merola summer apprentice program helped Jessop decide against pursuing a career as an opera singer. "I wanted to be a conductor." He was teaching high school and had started pursuing a doctorate when he was recruited by the Air Force to head the Singing Sergeants. "Conducting the Sergeants opened opportunities and experiences—recording, performing, touring, preparing things for performance—that I might never have had if I had gone into academia." Performing with guest artists ranging from Robert Merrill to Oscar the Grouch, he says, also taught him that music is not meant to be made in an ivory tower. "Music belongs to the people. It helps to come out of a family of cowboys—there are not a lot of cowboys attending choral concerts." Another profound influence was Robert Shaw, whom Jessop met while he was leading the Air Force Band and Choir of Europe. He sang with the Robert Shaw Festival Singers for the last 10 years of the conductor's life. "It was the transforming experience of my life," he says. "I call on my experiences with Shaw every day."
Alice Parker's experience with Robert Shaw was also a transforming one. A student of organ at Smith College in the 1940s, she sang in the glee club and started her own octet. Parker planned to be a composer, but was put off by the pervasive 12-tone style and started looking elsewhere. "It was just when Robert Shaw began to get noticed," she says. "He was at Juilliard, so I applied and was accepted—I was the only woman. It was a real baptism. We started working together on arrangements for his recordings: folksongs, hymns, chanteys, everything. I did that for 20 years. It was an incredible education—I started listening to things I had no idea about, like qualities of vocal sound, vowels, and consonants, not to mention the historical and stylistic things, and Shaw's fantastically developed instinct for melody."
A Calling to Conduct
For a number of conductors, work in choral music has the extra dimension of a calling that goes beyond singing. "I was always committed to the idea of using music for social change," says Dennis Coleman, who has headed the Seattle Men's Chorus since 1981. "I didn't see a way to do that just playing the organ or the piano. You need words, and once you add that element, the music has a particular effect on the listener and on the singer. I feel we have influenced the political climate in western Washington," he says. "We're the single most visible gay organization. And our concerts are about more than music—there's a message woven in, through careful selection of texts."
Susan Knight also had a mission when she started SHALLAWAY. A fourth generation Newfoundlander, she learned singing from her father and from the Irish nuns who taught in the schools. "Newfoundland has a singing culture," she says. She trained as a nurse in Montreal, but turned to teaching and choral conducting instead at the University of Toronto, studying with Elmer Iseler, often called the father of the Canadian professional choir tradition. When Knight and her family moved back to Newfoundland, she taught in the schools.
Then in 1992, cod fishing, the area's central industry, was suspended in Newfoundland. "We had a mass exodus of our population," Knight says. "The culture was in peril." Her response was to try and preserve that culture by founding SHALLAWAY, a youth choir whose mandate, she says, is "to preserve and promote the culture of Newfoundland and Labrador, establish awareness of it overseas, and provide education and leadership for young people." What drives her, she says, are "sound and the communication of that sound. The skill building with the children is important, but artistry goes beyond technique. It's about connecting with audiences and influencing lives, that empowering and transporting of humanity."
Joseph Flummerfelt's career has always centered on college teaching - ranging from his own alma mater, DePauw University, to his more than 30 years at Westminster. "I love to teach—as conductors, we are always teachers," he says. "Students bring a wonderful freshness. They are filled with passion and love for what they are doing. And it's a fascinating process in the sense that in a way, you have to rebuild every year, as new students join the choirs."
Whatever their routes into choral conducting, its rich combination of teaching, community, and above all, music is what keeps these conductors in their chosen field. Alan Harler says, "The expression of text through music is such a privilege. It affects people in an almost spiritual way." And Philip Brunelle, who does guest conducting with orchestras and opera, says he always comes back to his focus on the chorus. "It's the challenge of being able to present this repertoire at the highest level I possibly can and get people excited about this huge realm of choral music that they don't know is there. It's a wonderful way of making music."
This article is adapted from The Voice, Spring 2004.
