In Good Voice By: Heath Lees There were yobbos in Dunedin and fire alarms in Tauranga, but this year's nationwide choir competition produced magic. When you agree to judge the country's Choir Competitions - sorry, Group Singing Festival - you don't get the usual battlekit of hard hat and full-metal jacket. Instead, they offer you the brave new world of The Classic Sing - son of the already successful Big Sing for secondary schools and the Kids Sing for primaries. In the bad old days, there were two problems with adult choir competitions. One was that they were competitions (think warlike) and the other was that they were for choirs (think highly trained). Nowadays, driven by the upbeat New Zealand Choral Federation (NZCF), they are Festivals, and they're for Community Group Singers. Anyone can be in. And did we all, in ancient times, call the unfortunate judge an adjudicator as we struggled to bring England's green and pleasant choral sound to New Zealand's Artland? Yes, but not any more. with a big nod to TV and the sportsfield, judges have become commentators, summing up the day at the end, and suggesting certificate grades (a festival without certificates is unthinkable), then heading out of town before being trapped into politically incorrect statements about things such as excellence, technique and standards. Of course, it's easy to make fun of the revolution that has gone on in our choral circles. If singing were not something you did with the voice, you might say that choirs had been dumbed down. Yet, crazy as it seems, out there on the singing fields, with four slabs of the country carved out and voice-ready over consecutive weekends, the whole thing worked like magic. Rotorua, Dunedin, Palmerston North, Auckland... old-fashioned choirs had willingly modulated to become today's Community Group Singers, and change was in the air. You could feel it in the stuff they sang. Four-part hymns were the exception. You were more likely to be blown away by a smoothly oiled version of Gershwin's "Love Walked In" than by a feverently breathed "Nearer My God to Thee". Not that church choirs are out. Far from it. Some of the most moving singing (see - you stop saying "best"; it's easy because it feels right) came from St Paul's Cathedral Choir in Dunedin. They made that old-time religion seem like the only thing that mattered as they sang two simple hymn-settings by the late Don Byars from Dunedin. With one voice the choir had it sounding like the most transforming Bach. Still in Dunedin, a couple of yobbos passed by and shouted an obscenity or two through a door during a soft moment from the Dunedin Star Singers. The audience gasped, but the choir didn't seem to notice. It was like watching saints at work. At the same time, you couldn't help comparing the beauty of the musically led human voice with the ugliness of its sound in full mocking cry. and every one of the singers willingly came back at the concert's end to sing the item again, clean, for the recording. In Rotorua they were all out for a good time. First up, the Tauranga Civic Choir finished their last note just as the Odeon Theatre's fire alarms went off. Everyone evacuated, muttering dark things about guerilla warfare. But it was a joke; no one complained, because everyone accepted the culture. Sure, individual competition was alive, but it was shared enjoyment that had already become a way of life for the day. For my money, one of the best-ever groups appeared in Rotorua. It was called Stressbusters. A young group of women, from Reporoa would you believe, who sang - sorry, swang - music that gave them a buzz, such as "This Child", "Love Changes Everything" and "Hokitika Bill". Not the best choral group in the world, yet their sheer fun and genuine effort gave you such a kick. The Wanganui Male Choir Ensemble started the day in Palmerston. The venerable Jim Eyers, their conductor, was probably conducting choirs when you and I let out our first vocal, upside-down fortissimo after the midwife's bumspack. Shaky, yes, but the men's commitment and utter reliance on their conductor was moving. It reminded you of American composer Charles Ives's father, who conducted a similar choir. "Don't worry about the sounds," he would say, "or you'll miss the music." In Auckland, at the end of the line, a "graduate" chamber choir from Mangere's Aorere College made life worth living. Twelve huge, young Maore and Pacific guys sang unbelieveably expressive numbers with the most amazing delicacy. When they joined with the women as a full choir at the end of the evening, it was as though choir-singing had passed the final frontier and was now right up there with the angels. Sheer technical and musical excellence. Typical. You make it so they can just have fun without having to be all that good, and what do they do? They redefine the word perfection before your very ears. |
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