The Back Bay Chorale: The Golden Age of Brass Concert

COVID-19 is a game changer, the world’s pace of life is changing daily. If you’re a music lover as I am, showing up for live concerts and shows is now a no-no.Tonight’s concert is the last one I will attend for a while. My devices are ready to fill the gap. I’ll play my favorites on my phone, laptop, listen to my favorite radio stations, and dance in my kitchen. Music is another game changer, but the best kind for me, a mood enhancer, a psychic salve. I can get lost in song. And I don’t have to wash my hands after listening.

The Back Bay Chorale: The Golden Age of Brass

Saturday March 7, 2020, 8 PM
The Emmanuel Church, 15 Newbury Street, Boston, MA

A special night for singers, musicians, the crowd, and director Scott Allen Jarrett -A Rich Program Delivers A Bridge Over Troubled Waters

This was no ordinary evening of cultural entertainment. The tide of COVID-19 was rolling in to Boston. The public was skittish. Whether patrons would attend or not was in question. In the days preceding, several public events had been cancelled. When we arrived at 7:15 PM, about fifty people were rattling around in the pews of the historic Emmanuel Church. That’s about 500 people short of its capacity. Not encouraging.

You could see the relief on their faces at precisely 8 PM when the performers filed onto the stage. About 300 patrons awaited them. The loyalists in the pews knew the score, not the one on the pages of the performers' song books but the chance that this would have been a major (but understandable, considering the circumstances) disappointment for the 110 singers in the chorale, plus the six soloists, and the six musicians with period style instruments in hand, if the audience had stayed home.

The reception was not lost on esteemed conductor Scott Allen Jarrett. Visibly moved, he stepped down into the aisle on level with the first row, hands clasped, and delivered his own solo of heartfelt gratitude. Ardent supporters had showed up for the Chorale. He was aware that tonight there could have been more people on the stage than in the audience. It was a poignant moment.

In another departure, Jarrett took the time to give us a tutorial on tonight's program, "The Golden Age of Brass" that featured the music of Giovanni Gabrielli (1553-1612), Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), Johann Hermann Schein (1586-1630) and Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672).

“The late 17th century composers wrote some of the richest pieces in the canon. I love their work. They added new techniques to older tradition to enrich choral singing, they are not played as often as they deserve to be and we’re thrilled to perform them for you tonight.” Their collective creativity introduced contrapuntal technique and fused Italian and north German musical and concerto styles.

I am familiar with the Italian names Monteverdi and Gabrielli thanks to my Saint Michael's College professor Dr. William Tortolano  The Germans Schütz and Schein not so much. They all made stirring polyphonic music. (By the way, Dr. Tortolano, at 90, "still practices on the organ at Saint Michael's when the priests are not looking!")

Sitting in a semi-circular pocket in the midst of the chorus was the early instrument sextet, Dark Horse Consort. The sextet plays three sackbuts (early trombones), two cornetti (early trumpets), keyboard and a strange looking theorbo (a plucked string instrument of the lute family). The small grouping of brass and strings was calibrated to undergird the chorale and soloists with just enough instrumentation to be heard, not overwhelm, and add a soft brass layer to the chorale. The aptly named cornetti were so small they looked like a children’s instrument (but certainly didn't sound like ones).

Add the 110 member chorus, three female and three male soloists who could blow out candles on a birthday cake at ten paces and you got a glorious sound that filled the acoustically perfect Emmanuel Church with music that was divine.

Choral, even classical music, are becoming less played and performed as a host of rich popular music takes over the airwaves. It took my ears a few minutes to become accustomed to it. Soon, I felt myself settling into the warm curve of the 150 year old sturdy burnished oak pew in the venerable church. I was transported into a world of long ago when the sounds of voices in harmony and a few brass and stringed instruments could transport you a little closer to a world you imagined you would some day inhabit.

 Ready to perform...

As the chorale settles into their places, conductor Scott Allen Jarrett delivers an impromptu heartfelt thanks to the audience for showing up...

and an explanation of why tonight's music is special to him and why it was chosen...

A standing ovation...Well done!

Artistic Consultant Justin Blackwell and Artistic Director Scott Allen Jarrett

Stained glass window, back of church, behind the pews

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Comments

[Sal Falzone]

Paul,
A welcome respite from the madness of the day…

Best,
Sal

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. AKA pt at large]

Thanks, Sal,
I believe this concert just made it under the wire before ‘social distancing’ became the rule of thumb and it would have been cancelled.
Madness of the day for sure - looks like we’re gonna need to find respite wherever we can in the foreseeable future.

[Susan Bennett]

Wonderful piece PT! I listened to so much beautiful music at Emmanuel. Wish I’d heard this one.