Vol. 1, No. 1 
Fall, 1997
A Welcome from the Board of Directors
The Spectrum Singers will enthusiastically launch its 18th season on Saturday evening, December 13 with "A Spanish Renaissance Christmas Celebration". We've had eighteen wonderful years of presenting a unique body of music under Spectrum's founder, Music Director John W. Ehrlich. Our audience often hears rarely performed masterpieces of well-known composers. Or they hear music of composers they would never expect to enjoy together but who have links and ties that help us see them in a broader context. Every concert has its own beauty, musical context and excitement for audience and performers alike.
As Board Chair and a member of the soprano section, I am continually amazed by the entire process that culminates in a performance. This newsletter describe how an extraordinarily diverse group of people, who share a love of singing and the necessary talent, work together, learn together, support each other and the group together, to make music together. I have been singing in choruses since kindergarten -- over a half a century -- and I am grateful each time I raise my voice in song for the joy that music has given me. I hope you enjoy getting an inside look at some of what it means to be a Spectrum Singer -- choral workshops, rehearsals, fundraising, concert logistics, music practice on our own -- all fit in around our families and jobs. It's demanding, but rewarding.
So come hear us on December 13 and see how it all comes together!
- Barbara B. Penfield
The Best Choral Workshop
To evaluate and improve our voices, and to help achieve a blended ensemble, The Spectrum Singers held its fifth annual fall vocal workshop on Saturday, October 4 at the First Parish Church in Weston. Luellen Best, gifted soprano soloist, widely-respected voice teacher and all-around wonderful woman, planned and conducted the workshop.
This year's workshop focused on freeing the breath by minimizing (and hopefully eliminating) the physical tension that besets virtually all singers. Without free, relaxed breathing, singers simply cannot sing well. Luellen guided us through the 'tension hierarchy', explaining the link in musculature between the abdomen, larynx, pharynx, tongue, palate and other parts of our bodies. She then led us through several neck, jaw, tongue and back exercises to illustrate both relaxation techniques and poor, tension-promoting positions. Several brave singers volunteered to demonstrate these principles throughout the morning. Luellen also highlighted the cause of concert backaches (we breathe too high in our bodies) as well as the importance of keeping the neck loose.
We then reviewed the differences between soft singing and loud singing. In loud singing, a larger volume of air is sent through the vocal chords and the singer must concentrate more on inhalation. In soft singing, more air pressure is required (but not more air flow) and the singer must concentrate on the process of exhalation. Through several exercises, we experienced how our breathing affects dynamics and concluded our morning's session with a renewed appreciation that singing is a complicated and active, not passive, activity.
An important component of each workshop is singer placement. Because each voice has its own quality of brightness and darkness and a unique frequency of vibrato, the sound of a choral section is greatly affected by where the singers stand on the risers. One combination may sound thin, but may become more evenly balanced and rich, for example, if three people swap places. Luellen has a fascinating (and well-recognized) gift for discerning optimum singer placement and works with The Spectrum Singers (and other choruses such as The Cantata Singers) to achieve these ideal placements. In this Autumn's workshop, Luellen placed The Spectrum Singers to promote the pure sound desired in Renaissance music. It will be interesting to see how this placement will change to enhance the works of Bruckner, Verdi, Elgar, Schütz, Stravinsky and Haydn in our second and third concert programs.
We are fortunate to work with such a talented and warm artist as Luellen Best and look forward to putting her lessons to practical use throughout our musical year. Luellen will be the soprano soloist in our May 1998 concert featuring Stravinsky and Haydn and we hope that you will all come to hear her gorgeous voice.
Music Director's Notes
A Music Director is faced with many opportunities and challenges over the course of a season. One of the most interesting is choosing the music to offer to the chorus and its audience. It is enormously important that the singers be intrigued, challenged and ultimately take a personal franchise in the repertoire they are asked to spend so much time and effort to prepare. Equally as important, we want to attract an informed and intrigued audience to hear the results of these efforts. So long before the budgets are drawn up and subscription brochures printed, a lot of thought goes into the works we will offer in our three-concert season.
When The Spectrum Singers was first formed nineteen years ago, we set as a major part of our mission the exploration of worthy, but rarely performed repertoire. Our mission continues, but now we intermingle the unfamiliar offerings with more accessible and better-known works to help expand our audience base. Our 1997-1998 season exemplifies the broad range of musical styles and ideas we offer each year - a range we still believe is as adventuresome and probing as any offered by other groups in the area.
This season's opening concert - "A Spanish Renaissance Christmas Celebration" - centers upon the extraordinary Tomás Luis de Victoria. Of all the Spanish composers we know from the Renaissance, none achieve the heights of sublimity so frequently or with such powerful emotion as Victoria. Though it appears he wrote music only for the church, the emotional scope and variety of these works are compelling. We are fortunate to offer some of his finest 4, 5, and 6-part motets, plus his radiant Missa "O Magnum Mysterium," a wonderful setting of the traditional text of the Mass, its music drawn from elements of Victoria's famous motet of the same name.
As a special holiday treat, members of Renaissonics, Boston's fabulous Renaissance "dance band", will join us in this concert for some festive villancicos. This concert will joyfully welcome the holiday season, and we hope to see you there.
In March, "On Matters of Faith and Belief" will present the work of four great composers, and will examine these musicians' singular and personal approaches to the setting of sacred texts.
Verdi, an agnostic, maintained a personal separation from traditional religion, especially difficult, one would imagine, in so Catholic a country as Italy. The three works which we will perform come from very late in the composer's life, and take on an especially compelling significance when heard with this in mind. Both Edward Elgar and Anton Bruckner were Roman Catholic, Bruckner piously so. Elgar's setting of Psalm 48 -- Great is The Lord -- is in his grand style, scored for divided chorus, baritone solo and a especially rich organ accompaniment, creating an extrovert and ardent spirituality. Even more ardent are the motets of Anton Bruckner, which flow forth with richly chromatic harmony and a remarkably concise musical vocabulary. Many who have eschewed Bruckner before are "converted" upon experiencing these radiant and reflective masterpieces. Heinrich Schütz' moving German Requiem, his Musikalische Exequien, is an intensely personal and richly variegated work scored for soloists, continuo, and single and double antiphonal choruses. Esteemed by many as this extraordinary composer's finest extended composition, the Musikalische Exequien offers unique reservoirs of reverence and consolation.
Our final concert May 30, entitled "The Breath of Life", is our Fifth Annual Benefit for The Hospice of Cambridge and offers music for voices and winds. Stravinsky's witty Octet and the exquisite a cappella anthem The Dove Descending form a fitting prelude for his Mass, uniquely scored for chorus, soloists, and ten wind instruments. The somewhat chaste mood created by the Stravinsky Mass will be immediately offset by two joyous works by Franz Josef Haydn - the popular Concerto for Trumpet in E-flat, and the last of Haydn's twelve settings of the Mass text, the B-flat Harmoniemesse. Harmonie in German refers to the wind band of an orchestra, and the expanded passages for woodwinds and brass in this valedictory work have given this work its popular description.
We have planned an exciting and varied season for you this year. Why not subscribe right now? It only takes a minute.
I look forward to seeing you!
- John W. Ehrlich
Fifth Annual Benefit for the Hospice of Cambridge
The Spectrum Singers is delighted to continue its collaboration this year with The Hospice of Cambridge for the Fifth Annual Benefit. Not only is the concert Spectrum's third subscription concert of the season, but it also serves as a major fundraising event for Hospice. It is an excellent example of two worthwhile, nonprofit organizations working together for the benefit of each. As John Ehrlich has said when reflecting on the music selections, he chooses works for these concerts for their consoling, uplifting content and hopeful message, and each concert is meant to serve as an oasis of comfort for all who are touched by difficult, long-term illness, especially for musicians with AIDS.
You will find the program description in the schedule of upcoming concerts elsewhere in this newsletter.
"Name our Newsletter" Contest
Our new newsletter needs a name. Submit as many ideas as you like, by December 31, 1997, to:
The Spectrum Singers
P. O. Box 382325
Cambridge, MA 02238
Attn: Newsletter Contest.
The winner will receive a prize and be credited in the next newsletter.
Thanks to all for a Successful Yard and Bake Sale
Our fall yard and bake sale, held on September 27 in Cambridge, was a huge success thanks to a great location, perfect weather, innumerable 'treasures' and a multitude of enthusiastic shoppers. Special thanks go to Chris Noble (one of our new Board members) and his wife Bette for generously hosting the sale, storing the items, and driving the unsold clothes to the Portuguese Association for Community Action; to alto section leader Kristin Aikin for expertly spearheading this very successful fundraising effort, our first in the 1997-1998 season; to Chris Keppelman for trucking the large items; and to the Chorus and Board members for their donations, hard work and cheer during the sale itself.
We are extremely proud that nearly 100% of our singers participated in the sale and we look forward to sharing this enthusiasm and dedication with our audiences through our music making in the upcoming concert season.
Spring Donor Bash!
Although we don't have a date set, look for announcements about our 1998 Spring Donor Appreciation Celebration. Contributions from our family, friends, acquaintances and businesses constitute the major portion of our operating budget and we want to say "Thank You" with an evening of delicious refreshment and lively entertainment.
A Spanish Renaissance Christmas Celebration
with special guests Renaissonics
First Church Congregational
11 Garden Street, Cambridge
Saturday, December 13 at 8:00 pm
Tickets: $18; $13 for students & seniors
617-492-8902
A Spectrum of Singers
The Spectrum Singers has always been graced with an exciting mix of musicians, diverse in background and interests. A far-flung bunch, we hail from 21 towns in Massachusetts, as far north, south and west as West Newbury, Foxboro and Bolton. One singer lives in Nashua, New Hampshire. Although most of us do not live in Cambridge, the chorus' home base, about half of our singers reside in the greater Boston area.
Three-quarters of our musicians have studied voice privately; a significant number continue to train with the area's leading vocal instructors. A few members sing in other choral groups (Longy Chamber Singers, Russian Chamber Chorus, Tanglewood Festival Chorus) or in musical theatre. Several participate musically in religious services, as soloists, cantors, organists, choir directors, accompanists, choir members and section leaders. Among our spouses, children, and parents are professional musicians, amateur musicians and music appreciators.
With the exception of our music librarian John Schumacher, a voice instructor, and Sara Glidden, a theatre manager and marketing director, we make our primary living in fields unrelated to music. Almost half of the singers work in educational and related institutions, as professors, teachers, researchers, camp directors, speech/language pathologists, librarians, and office administrators and assistants. Our researchers study the economics of health policy and long-term care, education in the Boston Public Schools, solar astronomy and biochemistry. In healthcare, we have a clinical social worker who counsels drug addicts, alcoholics, and batterers; a senior project manager who oversees the construction of numerous kidney dialysis clinics; an advocate for consumers of mental health care services; a speech pathologist; a home health aide coordinator; and an adminstrative assistant. We have a software engineering manager, a software engineer, a linguist and a contracts administrator working for high-tech firms. In finance, we have a systems designer, a quality assurance engineer, a public account and a student loan administrator. Our self-employed singers work in house restoration, sales and consulting. Our Board Chair is about to retire, and a few of us are in the midst of exploring new careers.
We share an avid interest in athletic activity, with a surprising focus on hiking in the White Mountains. Nat Coolidge has hiked all of the 4000 footers in New Hampshire and a large number of singers are in the midst of achieving that same feat. Every Summer Solstice, starting at 4 a.m., Cathy Meyers hikes the entire Presidential Range (she finishes around 4 p.m.). We have several soccer players, skiers, cyclists, canoers, a high diver, a figure skater, a rock climber, an ex-karate maven and a non-checking hockey player. Many of us love travel, with recent trips taken to England, Spain, France and Mexico. Being an oral bunch, the appreciation of fine wine and fine cuisine also tops the list of our singers' chief interests. We also seem to share a fondness for cats.
The singers are a modest lot. When gathering information for this story, many seemed to say 'I'm not all that interesting....'. I beg to differ.
- Mary B. Van Wormer
Announcing: Spectrum Volunteers
It takes many hands and talents to run The Spectrum Singers. You can help-and save money on tickets at the same-time by joining Spectrum Volunteers. We seek volunteers to assist on concert nights with the box office, ushering, and after-concert receptions. Throughout the year, we'll ask volunteers to join mailing parties to address concert announcements, fundraising appeals, and newsletters; to help with fundraising events; and to help us in our outreach commitment to making good music affordable to everyone. Our Spectrum Volunteers will be listed in our concert program books. Those who serve on concert night will be admitted free to that concert and all will be offered the senior/discount ticket price for all other concerts. If you are interested, please call The Spectrum Singers at (617) 492-8902.
Spectrum in Cyberspace
Check out www.spectrumsingers.org, Spectrum's own web site. You will find a bit of history; John Ehrlich's bio sketch; our membership list; this newsletter; concert programs, program notes, and texts and translations of concert programs since our web site started nearly two years ago; reviews of Spectrum concerts that have appeared in The Boston Globe; and much more. You can also order tickets or custom-designed stationery.
And our e-mail address is information@spectrumsingers.org.
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