Vocal explosion: Powerhouse ensembles team up for rare night of music

May 18—The pandemic silenced many vocal-based arts organizations. With most masks now shed, new performances are emerging.

The Rocky Mountain Chorale, Boulder-based Cantabile and members of Longmont Symphony Orchestra have joined forces to deliver a powerful show Friday at Vance Brand Civic Auditorium in Longmont.

"This concert is going to be a tremendous celebration of a return to in-person music-making for our combined ensembles," said Jimmy Howe, director of the Rocky Mountain Chorale. "We will have nearly 100 singers in the choir and 41 instrumentalists in the orchestra. There is no feeling quite like the wall of sound we will be creating together for this concert."

Tickets to Friday's 7:30 p.m. show cost $10-$25.

"This region rarely experiences a concert of this magnitude because there are not many places in Boulder County that can adequately accommodate a production of this magnitude," Howe said. "This is a rare opportunity to experience the music in a truly powerful way. You can literally feel the sound from this many musicians."

Among the repertoire will be "Jubilate Deo" by Dan Forrest. The spectacular piece of music brings Psalm 100 of "O be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands," to new territory. Published in 2016, the cantata brilliantly builds from two parts into a full eight-part chorus.

"Dan Forrest's writing is so well-suited for the voice," Howe said. "This piece is very accessible to singers and sounds larger than life when we all come together. His writing for orchestra is equally magnificent. Forrest is skilled for writing melody and creating resonance within the orchestra."

Attendees can savor hearing verses sung in English, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Mandarin and Spanish.

"We sing in seven different languages throughout the course of this piece, and each movement contains musical elements that reflect the languages being represented," Howe said.

During the coming months, Rocky Mountain Chorale will allow the public to explore the art form with three "Summer Sings."

"We invite any and all to come and sight-read through some choral music," Howe said.

For now, members can look forward to this fresh collaboration between some of the Front Range's most thrilling voices.

Howe and Brian Stone, Cantabile's artistic director, have been friends for a number of years and both did their graduate work at University of Colorado Boulder.

"(Howe) and I have seen eye-to-eye about a great many things when it comes to choral music," Stone said. "Chief among these being that choral music is at its core about the power of collaboration. The sound and emotional power that results when a group of people join their voices is unlike anything else in this world."

The collaboration is a much-anticipated one for both performers and fans of choral excellence.

"We operate with a very similar philosophy around rehearsal practice and programming," Stone said. "Our ensembles, as a result, are a very close-knit community individually, and adding them together only deepens those connections in the arts community in the Boulder area."

Friday's content provides Stone with a full-circle moment, as he first performed "Serenade to Music" — one of the featured pieces — when he was a high school student.

"I had the privilege to perform with an 80-voice high school honor choir at the Oregon Bach Festival that was accompanied by world-class professional musicians in the orchestra," Stone said. "Ever since then, it has been on my bucket list to conduct. Outside of the memory of this experience, the absolutely lush orchestration and voicing of the choir shakes me to my core."

Composed in 1938, it still has the ability to resonate with and move listeners today.

"The text is about the power of music to inspire, enlighten and uplift humanity, and Vaughan Williams sets this idea perfectly," Stone said. "I would say it is an incredibly dramatic piece. It swings from complex harmonic climaxes to intimate solo sections with just a few instruments accompanying almost instantaneously."

While the piece was written by Williams as a tribute to conductor Sir Henry Wood, it also honors an iconic playwright. Direct words from William Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" can be found throughout.

"The text is painted at times with mysterious, almost melancholic, solos that make way for contented resolution and reassurance in the sounds of 'sweet harmony,' as Shakespeare puts it," Stone said.

Stone hopes the upcoming partnership will bring a bit of joy to attendees.

"COVID isn't going away anytime soon, and there's a lot of tragedy in our world and communities right now outside of the pandemic," Stone said. "I hope that people come to feel a moment of escape and a moment of beauty. This size of a collaboration is now something of a rarity. I hope the audience walks away reassured and uplifted, dare I say even hopeful."

While Friday will be the final concert of the season for Cantabile, Stone is already working to shape an intriguing 2022-2023 season.

"One of our concerts will be yet another collaboration, this time with two local visual artists," Stone said. "We hope to invite our audience into a place where they might make a bit of art themselves during the performance."

Continuing to nurture collaborations with other creatives is of most importance to Stone and the mission of Cantabile.

"Another concert we plan to do is a work by Jerrod Tate — an indigenous composer of the Chickasaw tribe — entitled 'Iholba' that is once again for a full orchestra and choir," Stone said.

For now, audience members can savor this new offering from Cantabile and Rocky Mountain Chorale.

"Plenty more music on the horizon for Cantabile, and we hope people won't stop at just this concert and come and see us next season as well," Stone said.