A major venue for church choir
YouTube video of performance helped group earn spot in show
Nearly 30 choir members from Christ Church Sugar Land will join dozens of other singers from as far away as New Zealand to perform “LUX: The Dawn From on High” tonight at Carnegie Hall in New York.
“How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice.”
The joke is almost as old as the august Manhattan venue itself, yet even today it retains a kernel of truth. A little serendipity never hurts, either.
Nearly 30 choir members from Christ Church Sugar Land will discover that firsthand Monday night, when they will join dozens of other singers from as far away as New Zealand to perform Dan Forrest’s “LUX: The Dawn From on High” in Carnegie Hall’s largest performance space, the Isaac Stern Auditorium.
Remarkably, no auditions were necessary. A representative of Distinguished Concerts International, the organization
producing Monday’s concert — which pairs “LUX” with a handful of shorter works by Norwegian-born Ola Gjeilo — simply saw the CCSL choir perform one of Forrest’s previous works on YouTube and asked them to participate. According to the choir director, whose singers have now had nearly a year to prepare, the news set off quite a stir in the United Methodist congregation of about 4,500 people.
“People were definitely excited,” says DeAndre Johnson, the church’s Pastor of Music and Worship Life. “They were proud to have performed so well that someone would call and invite us. It was just us doing what we do, and we’re very proud of that.” Checking all the boxes
The 41-year-old Forrest, an American, ranks among the leading composers of contemporary choral music and is composer-in-residence for DCI’s New Yorkbased operation. About a year ago, the organization began making arrangements for the Carnegie Hall premiere of “LUX,” following the piece’s October 2017 debut in Greenville, S.C. When he happened across CCSL’s recording of Forrest’s “Jubilate Deo,” DCINY program developer Jeff Binner says he responded to the Sugar Land singers’ high degree of musicality — plus their obvious enthusiasm.
“We really want to look for groups that look like they’re gunning to not only work hard (on) a good performance but also have fun doing it, because we feel very strongly that music is transformative and it should be an experience,” he explains. “We look for groups that love to sing, and we really saw that all there.”
In short, CCSL’s video “checked all the boxes for me,” Binner adds.
Recorded in March 2017, the “Jubilate Deo” performance originally represented a much different milestone for CCSL: It was the final concert programmed by Lahonda Sharp, who retired later that summer after 33 years as the church’s music director. Johnson had been on the job for about nine months when he got the call from New York.
Christ Church Sugar Land was founded in 1986 to minister to the spiritual needs of the burgeoning First Colony area; the sanctuary is supposedly built on the highest point in the city. Johnson stocks his choirs’ repertoire with latter-day composers like John Rutter, Mack Wilberg and the late Glenn Burleigh, to go with plenty of the “old, dead German guys” he says the members joke about. Emotional music
The choir is also wellversed in Dan Forrest’s works. Besides their fateful “Jubilate Deo” performance, they’ve sung the symphony-length “Requiem for the Living” as well as shorter pieces like Forrest’s arrangements of “Nearer My God to Thee,” “The Huron Carol,” and, this coming Easter, the beloved Charles Wesleypenned hymn “And Can It Be.”
He cites Forrest’s skillful voice-leading, or the interaction between several melodic lines, and overall accessibility as the composer’s top qualities.
“The melodies are singable and they’re enjoyable,” Johnson says. “They’re not so catchy that they become trite … there’s a loveliness that evokes meaning and significance, that I think people grab hold to. And then people want to sing (them) because of that.”
According to DCINY’s Binner, Forrest’s compositions work because they’re “not just notes on the page,” he says. “He really brings across the feeling that he’s trying to emote in the music, whether that’s joy or sorrow or whatever he’s trying to get out.”
With “LUX,” says Johnson, “I think Dan takes great care to musically paint what light looks like — or sounds like, as it were.”
The close harmonies in one section create a kind of shimmering effect, leading to a feeling of profound stillness, while animated rhythms in another conjure the way light can seem to dance. (Forrest’s website says the piece was visually inspired by the light in France’s Reims Cathedral and the Irish megalithic tomb Poulnabrone Dolmen.)
“LUX” utilizes a variety of texts within its 40-minute running time, including the seventh-century liturgical chant “Creator of the Stars of Night”; the Greater Doxology (better known by its first line, “Gloria in excelsis Deo”); and Daniel Ladinsky’s 1999 poem “The Gift:” Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe Me.”
Look what happens With a love like that, It lights the whole sky
“When you get to ‘It lights the whole sky,’ then all of a sudden the harmonies open way up,” notes Johnson. “There’s lots of open sounds on these open harmonic structures to get that sense of expansiveness.” Some are staying home
Because not everyone from CCSL can make the trip to New York, its large Festival Choir — about 70 members strong — will perform “LUX” in the church sanctuary on March 3.
“I’m looking forward to the Carnegie Hall experience,” Johnson says. “I’m even more so looking forward to our own experience when we perform it (here).”
Until then he’s been studying the annotated “LUX” score provided by DCINY consultant Dr. James M. Meaders, who will conduct Monday’s performance. In all, Johnson says 44 people will be making the trip from Texas; those not among the 28 who will perform at Carnegie Hall are gladly going to offer moral support.
The group agreed their first stop after disembarking in New York would be the 9/11 museum. Later on, some members will visit with family members in the area, while others will head to Broadway and take in productions of “Aladdin” and “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.” Johnson says he’ll attend a director’s meeting Friday evening and assist wherever he’s able during weekend rehearsals before joining the chorus, which should number around 300 voices, and singing second tenor Monday night.
“I’m excited,” he admits. “I think it’s going to be great fun.”
Like most people in the Sugar Land party, this will be Johnson’s first time in Carnegie Hall, either as a performer or audience member. But someone who has done it says few experiences compare to the thrill of performing on one of the world’s most famous stages.
“There’s a kind of tension before a performance, those nerves as you’re waiting to go onstage,” says Binner. “Then once you go on with those lights and that huge, full audience — it just has that remarkable energy.”