Conspirare, with Patrice Pike
Christmas perfected, and then some
December 5, 2010It seems almost an impertinence to review “Christmas at the Carillon,” the annual gift of love and light from the Austin-based Conspirare vocal ensemble and its incomparable artistic director/conductor/keyboardist/vocalist/genius, Craig Hella Johnson. It isn’t something to be reported and analyzed. It is something to be cherished in the moment.
That moment for San Antonio this year was Dec. 3 in Laurel Heights United Methodist Church, with subsequent performances in Austin at The Carillon, where the tradition began, and the Long Center for the Performing Arts.
“Christmas at the Carillon” is unlike any other “holiday” concert. It is not a musical smiley face and, apart from a set of familiar carols, not outwardly very Christmasy.
Johnson’s ingenious format layers ancient and modern, sacred and profane music, often interleaved in a way that transforms contemporary pop or country songs into secular hymns or prayers. The specifics change from year to year, but the point of view has remained constant. That point of view is deeply Christian, but it is the kind of Christianity that has little truck with the encumbrances of dogma or with triumphalist pietism. Most of Johnson’s musical choices burrow far below the doctrinal surface and into the universal human experience to reveal core values of love, compassion, forgiveness.
For this year’s edition, Conspirare was joined by Austin singer-songwriter Patrice Pike, who contributed several of her own songs to the mix. She was a wonderful choice. Her voice, with an edge that suggested country and rock sympathies, was extraordinarily beautiful. There was real depth to her songs, which so ideally fit the context that I wonder if she might have written them for the occasion.
Conspirare’s 23 singers continue to amaze with their taut ensemble, meticulous intonation and stylistic versatility. Among the several dozen pieces, in whole or in part, there was a Kyrie by Claudio Monteverdi, conducted by Johnson with a fluid swing and ending with a gorgeous sustained chord; a rollicking choral Noel in the Kituba dialect of Central Africa, with splendid solo work by bass David Farwig; Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock,” with graceful solo work by soprano Kathlene Ritch; Beth Nielson Chapman’ “How We Love,” an achingly fervent vocal solo by Johnson; and Michael Burritt’s Prelude 5, to a text by Rumi, with a glorious marimba part brilliantly played by Thomas Burritt, the composer’s cousin.
One constant of “Christmas at the Carillon” has been its astonishing final sequence. Johnson’s unutterably lovely setting of Wendell Berry’s poem “We Clasp the Hands,” which portrays the circle of life as a dance, is followed by a choral “Silent Night” into which the guest soloist interjects -- with utterly surprising perfection -- “I Could Have Danced All Night.”
Can perfection be made more perfect? Yes. This year Pike introduced the final sequence with Clyde Lovern Otis's "This Bitter Earth," a meditation on loss and rupture and healing; and the Lerner & Loewe song led into Pike's own “Dancing in the Mouth of God.”
Mike
Greenberg
