CLASSICAL
Houston Chamber Choir spotlights local composers.
Houston Chamber Choir’s artistic director Robert Simpson did not have to look far beyond his front door to find inspiration for the ensemble’s third concert this season.
On Saturday, “By Local” will celebrate five widely admired, A-list composers — Mark Buller, Daniel Knaggs, Pierre Jalbert, Rob Landes and David Ashley White — all of whom have enriched and sustained the vibrant arts scene in Houston, a city they call home. The evening at South Main Baptist Church will begin with a reception and gallery exhibit showcasing work by a handful of local visual artists, after which the award-winning professional ensemble will perform a diverse program that captures an essential element of each composer’s approach and style.
“The Houston Chamber Choir often performs compositions by living composers, but it is a thrill to perform music by those we know personally and whose works, therefore, have a special emotional connection to us,” Simpson said.
David Ashley White, former director of the Moores School of Music and a seventh-generation Texan, has been associated with the ensemble since its inception as both a member of the founding board and a composer. In fact, this weekend’s program features two movements from “The Blue Estuaries,” a choral setting of poems by Louise Bogan
that the choir commissioned in 1998, alongside two of his other works.
Another repeat collaborator is native Houstonian Rob Landes, who appeared on Art Linkletter’s “House Party” as a child and was the keyboardist for the ’60s psychedelic rock band Fever Tree. Now artist-in-residence at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, Landes will present an encore performance of “Images,” a jazz suite that the Houston Chamber Choir included on its first album in 2001. To the accompaniment of the Rob Landes Trio, the choir sings scat-like sounds, in lieu of words, in all but one of the four movements contrarily titled “No Words.”
For Pierre Jalbert, the concert represents two firsts — his debut with the choir and the world premiere of his latest work, “Desert Places.” Based on poetry by Robert Frost, Sappho, Walt Whitman
and William Cullen Bryant, his five-movement piece references one’s inner psychological and spiritual realms, as well as the infinite vastness of interstellar space, ending with a meditation on “Lux Aeterna,” a Latin phrase meaning “Eternal Light.”
“Writing for choir, with the use of text, is something special and wholly different from writing for purely instrumental forces,” said
Jalbert, a member of Musiqa’s artistic board who has lived in Houston since he became a professor at Rice University in 1996. “When text and music fit together just right, it can be very powerful.”
Also enticed by the remarkable ability of the human voice to convey a message beyond words is Daniel Knaggs, who came to Houston in 2012 to commence his doctoral studies in composition at the Shepherd School of Music and is now a visiting assistant professor at the College of Wooster in Ohio.
In his fourth time working with the Houston Chamber Choir, the ensemble will perform the first two movements of an a cappella piece commissioned by the world-renowned, British octet VOCES8. “Of Time and Passing” reflects a narrative surrounding the seasons of life and the passage of time through a range of
vocal textures and colors.
Mark Buller’s “Overboard” also tells a story, but one based on a major historical event. Featuring text by Houston-based librettist Leah Lax, the piece was commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the World War II Battle of Sunda Strait. In its final movement, the singers, in their own rhythm, murmur the last names of lost soldiers, representing the gentle undulations of the sea where their bodies now belonged, explained Buller, who moved to Texas about eight years ago to pursue a doctorate in composition at the University of Houston and now serves as the director of education and community engagement at AFA, a nonprofit provider of music education.
“The arts are a wonderful way to experience and grow empathy for other people and cultures,” Buller said, “but we can’t lose sight of the incredible things happening in our own backyards.”
With this concert, it’s safe to say that Simpson certainly hasn’t.