BCC Sings in Nine Languages
by David Patterson (Boston Musical Intelligencer)
(Review) The Boston Children’s Chorus once again returned to the Gardner Museum, this time with Native North American and Bantu languages alternating with Slovenian and even English. The BCC defines its program title “CHOREGIE,” as “theater of voices or vocal theater multi-disciplinary art form.”
All in black attire, the youthful chorus ceremoniously walked two-by-two into Calderwood Hall then lay down on the floor on their sides and backs until the extended performance space was full of resting performers. Their vocalizing that began the show appeared to this listener as a nod to “nature concerts,” that is, the sounds of the natural world heard by human ears.
This African gospel song surpassed fine tuning and exceptional discipline with these young Boston singers going deep with feeling.
Perhaps this was yet another special feature of Saturday afternoon, where the chorus was intermixing a cappella sounds within the ten-song concert. The only explanatory note to appear on the three-page handout was this: “With fragments from Columba aspexit (Sequence for Saint Maximin) Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179).” Listed, though, were the names of the 60-some singers—all of them standouts!
The chorus’s logo on the vocalists’s shirts displayed “BC” in red and “C” in yellow. Also in formal black attire, president and artistic director Anthony Trecek-King garlanded his black shoes with red shoestrings.