Wilmington Voices. Jenna Corely Photography
WILMINGTON, NC: Music on Market is one of the excellent arts series’ in Wilmington. The Port City is graced with an exceptional amount of high-quality culture. Music on Market, held at St. Andrews Covenant Presbyterian Church – which is indeed located on Market St. – has been presenting concerts since 2003. This season the series includes 5 events of widely varying styles. All the concerts are free. (Donations are always welcome.) Free admission in conjunction with the high calibre of the performances makes St. Andrews a stand-out locale for hearing music. Performances are invariably well-attended, and concertgoers enjoy plenty of enthusiastic company for any concert they may choose.
First on the 2024-25 series was the choral group, Wilmington Voices. Founded just 2 ½ years ago, the group has taken its place as one of the top-quality performers in the region. They appear regularly at attractive locales around town and wonderfully, all their concerts are free. Founded in the wake of the height of the Covid pandemic, Wilmington Voices was created to “rebuild a sense of community and connection” here in Wilmington and its surroundings, according to the website. It seeks to present “choral music of the highest caliber to the communities of Eastern North Carolina.” That is well worth quoting, because they are clearly succeeding in both respects. At this performance, there was almost not enough space for all the attendees.
The program was titled “Music for a Sacred Space,” and all the pieces were directly religious or had spiritual overtones. There was much variety. The music spanned from the Renaissance to the Baroque, through the 19th century, with most of the others written within the past fifty years or so. Half a dozen of the pieces were in Latin. First on the program was “My Spirit Sang All Day,” by the British composer Gerald Finzi, which served as a bright opening. One heard immediately the fine blending of the voices, tight attacks, and clear enunciation of Wilmington Voices.
Two pieces of the Renaissance/Baroque master Monteverdi followed. “Adoramus te, Christe,” had a lovely gentle opening and was expressive throughout. There was also a good swell, imparting overall shape to the piece. The following work was “Cantate Domino,” the opening line of the biblical Psalm 96. The extroverted sections were light and transparent. Along with expressive singing – which one might call the signature sound of the group – this number brought out an energetic quality in the articulation, whether it was soft or louder.
The next piece was “Ave verum corpus” by William Byrd, a generation before Monteverdi. Up to this point, the chorus – six men and six women – had been arrayed in descending pitch order, with the sopranos to the left, ending with the basses on the far right. Here the arrangement was changed to have men between women. Presumably that gave a preferred vocal blend. It also illustrated the democratic quality of the group, in which there is no priority position and also different members may conduct while singing. The tone in this piece was wonderfully smooth, and attacks precise. Some of the music here was reverent, and the performance projected that sense of hush beautifully.
The group positions switched back for “Exsultate Deo” by Alessandro Scarlatti. This was the father of the more famous Domenico Scarlatti, a contemporary of Bach whose almost 600 keyboard sonatas are beloved of pianists and listeners alike. However, Scarlatti père was a fine vocal composer whose music deserves to be in the general repertory, as this piece showed. The piece was upbeat, as the name implies. The group brought out the detached articulations with clarity, tight coordination, and excellent entrances.
This was followed by the very beautiful “Ubi Caritas” – “Where charity and love are, God is there,” by the Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo, born in 1976. More reverent, gently expressive music here, done with a beauty in performance well worth savoring. The penultimate Latin piece was “Astiterunt reges terrae” – “The kings of the earth rise up,” by Tomás Luis de Victoria, from the same generation as William Byrd. The music is surprisingly calm and lyrical, given the vehement content of the words. The expressive strength of the group came through effectively yet again. The translation in the printed program – perhaps due to space reasons – was missing the second verse and the key word Christum.
The following work, and one could say the centerpiece of the program, was “Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen” – “How lovely is thy dwelling place” – from the German Requiem by Brahms. This well-loved, often-performed movement brought forth the first appearance of Elizabeth Loparits, the pianist for this concert. For the entire first half of the program up till now, which was all a capella pieces, she had sat quietly at the piano, doing nothing but give the choir their opening pitches. Now with her richly colored and sensitive support, the choir seemed to have an expanded resonance as well. The piece is normally sung by larger groups, but the twelve professional singers here projected beautifully. There were ringing peaks too. (This is something one could have appreciated having more often over the duration of the concert.) This was the only piece on the program that would have been known to general concertgoers, and it served as an effective anchor point. (One wonders why it was sung in English, rather than the original and familiar German.)
Continuing in the Romantic style and with another well-known masterwork, Loparits had an opportunity at this point to shine in a solo piece: “Sposalizio” by Franz Liszt, from his Années de Pèlerinage – Years of Pilgrimage, the imposing three-book set of pieces vividly evoking through tone, Liszt’s travels in Europe. The beautiful piano sound stood out here, with finely colored lyrical playing and a strong climax. (Full disclosure: Loparits is a colleague of this writer.)
The second half of the program returned to finely-wrought a capella singing. “The Old Church” by Stephen Paulus was a standout, both for its great lyricism, and for the evocative words. The third verse had a fine peak. Right before it was “Dies Irae” by Michael John Trotta. This brought forth energy, including in the detached accompanying voices. The whole worked up some clangorous force at the end, another of those ringing choral moments.
The ending piece of the concert, “Sing Me to Heaven” by Daniel Gawthrop – who was represented by two works on the program – was, despite the name, again quiet and lyrical. As in “The Old Church,” the words here were lovely, and the singing matched that. And no matter the subdued ending, the full audience reacted with great appreciation. There followed quickly an encore that remained unidentified, but showcased one more time the expressive richness of the group.
Wilmington Voices. Janna Corely Photograph
The artistry of Wilmington Voices has made them quickly into a leading performance presence in Wilmington, one to revel in. That said, on a concert such as this one, one could wish for more variety in the form of a larger percentage of faster, energetic pieces. Also, with so much of the program from the 20th century, all of those pieces, lovely as they are, share a conservative tonal language. One might wish for a work such as Schönberg’s setting of Psalm 130, or a movement of the masterwork When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d by the American Roger Sessions. These professional singers could do it beautifully, and Wilmington audiences are already appreciating such music.
Meanwhile, no matter what they perform, Wilmington Voices is bringing beauty and musical fellowship to Wilmington in a way that many places might envy. Many thanks to artistic director and alto singer Angela Burns for the vision and energy to create this wonderful contribution to life in Wilmington.
Note: This performance repeats across the street at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church at 4 pm on Sunday, September 22.
