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Cantemus
Names Gary Wood as New Music Director
After
nearly a year as interim conductor, Dr. Gary Wood, of Manchester,
has been officially named the new Music Director of the Cantemus
Chamber Chorus. Wood, who chairs the Salem State College Music
Department, stepped in as conductor last September following
the departure of the group’s long-time director, who
relocated to Minnesota. Cantemus audiences saw Wood at the
podium for the group’s “Celtic Christmas”
concert last December, and “American Treasures”
in May.
Cantemus
president Elaine Gomperts, of Ipswich, explained how the 33-member
group chose Wood as their permanent director. The search committee
received applications from 25 professional conductors and
held full-length-rehearsal “auditions” with four
finalists, including Wood. “After an exhaustive six-month
selection process,” Gomperts said, “we asked Gary
to stay with us because of his superior skill in vocal training,
well-designed rehearsal techniques, enthusiasm and charisma
with the group. His strong dedication to and love of the art
of choral singing were apparent from the minute he started
a rehearsal to the moment he put down his baton at the end
of a concert.”
“Hearts
on fire…Brains on ice.”
For the past nine
months, Wood has been communicating his choral philosophy
to the North Shore group’s singers, who range in age
from 16 to over 60. “I want the singers to have their
hearts ‘on fire’ – but their brains must
be ‘on ice.’ Singing is a very physical activity,
but it’s also very mental,” Wood explained. “Singers
must sing with passion, but they must always be thinking about
HOW they are singing. We’re out there to really make
something happen but it’s not going to happen unless
the singers and I are mindful of the technical challenges
that we are about to undertake. So I have begun to say to
the singers, especially before a concert: ‘Hearts on
fire. Brains on ice.’”
In an article published
in the April issue of Boston Singers Resource, a new magazine
for singers, Wood talked to interviewer Joe Stroup about performing:
“There’s something about that moment, when you
are making music, that still thrills me. It’s irreplaceable
and indescribable. It’s very, very personal. To me that’s
sort of the ultimate truth, playing or singing or performing
music. Because that’s it … it’s time to
do it now. You take your best shot and you put all of your
resources into that moment.”
Plans
for Cantemus’s Future
Though
his official Cantemus start date was July 1, Wood started
months ago to plan programs for the group’s next two
concerts, “Mother and Child” this December, and
“Old Texts, New Tunes,” next May. He has also
started a three-year repertoire plan leading up to Cantemus’s
25th anniversary, in the 2007-08 season.
To
get a grip on the group’s more recent performance history,
he studied all their programs for the last eight years. This
revealed that a major portion of the Cantemus repertoire has
been from the 20th century. “That’s an era rich
with masterworks for chamber chorus,” Wood explained,
“but I look forward to performing more and more works
from earlier style periods as well. I also want to explore
doing more ‘world music,’ with songs from other
cultures and continents besides Europe and North America.”
The
repertoire of Cantemus’s “Mother and Child”
concert in December will range from Hans Leo Hassler’s
“Dixit Maria” motet, mass settings, and a setting
of the Ave Maria text by Johannes Brahms, to selected settings
of “Silent Night” by contemporary composers, plus
other music of the world and cultures. “We may do a
Scandinavian suite for chorus, flutes and bassoon, ‘Gaudete’
by Anders Ohrwall. Like Britten’s ‘Ceremony of
Carols,’ which the women of Cantemus sang last December,
this piece is very artistic yet also very approachable.”
The
“Old Texts, New Tunes” program Wood is planning
for next May will include Aaron Copland’s “In
the Beginning,” an unaccompanied work for mezzo soprano
soloist and chorus, with Biblical texts from Genesis. Other
repertoire for that concert will cover a wide range of cultures
and traditions, “as there are unlimited ‘old texts,’
both sacred and secular, which have been set and re-set by
composers down through the ages,” Wood added.
Further
in the future, Wood is planning more concerts for chorus plus
one or more instruments, besides piano and organ, which the
group uses frequently. For the 25th anniversary concert, they
may perform a major work with orchestra. “We are making
plans to include as many former Cantemus members as possible
to help us commemorate this upcoming milestone,” he
said.
The
Redemptive Power of Music
In
the interview in Boston Singers Resource, Wood described his
own musical background: “I had no formal training until
college. I was basically self-taught or learned from my family.
I had a lot of musical influences in my family … jazz,
country, bluegrass. My mother, father, uncles and aunts all
played music. It’s just a part of what they did, a way
of life. We played music.” Wood’s brother Philip
was an especially strong influence, and today, like his brother,
he’s a music educator, jazz musician, and composer.
Aside
from his choral work, today Gary Wood plays jazz piano, studies
jazz guitar and composes.
He
concluded: “There is an empowerment, enrichment, and
true joy that accompany our involvement in the arts. It is
the redemptive powers of music that underline my work as a
conductor and educator: it redeems our intellect, our spirit,
our spirituality, our reason, and our hope. And it challenges
us to be better than we are, to reach for those things that
we have not even yet seen in ourselves, but lie there waiting
to blossom. Music making is about the future: the notes sit
silently on the page, waiting for the choral singer to create
an edifice of sound. It is all so beautifully human.”
In
addition to his duties with Cantemus and as department chair
at Salem State, Wood is an assistant professor at Salem’s
music department, teaching primarily in the choral/vocal curriculum.
He has also been the choir director at First Church in Wenham
since 1996.
A native of Missouri, he received his Master of Sacred Music
degree from Southern Methodist University and his Doctor of
Musical Arts in Choral Conducting from the University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign. Previously, he taught for six years at Davis
& Elkins College in West Virginia.
Longtime
Accompanist to Retire from Cantemus
by
Bettina Turner, Soprano 2
Robert
Littlefield’s reassuring and familiar presence at the
piano and organ has been a part of Cantemus since 1985. His
laid-back attitude belies the fact that he is a superb accompanist
who can play practically anything set in front of him and
a musician with a lifetime of outstanding accomplishments.
Cantemus is only one of seven choruses Robert accompanies;
the others being Chorus North Shore, three choruses at Briscoe
Middle School in Beverly, MA, and his two choirs at First
Parish Unitarian in Beverly, where he has been Music Director
for 40 years. He also teaches piano and organ. He holds Bachelors
and Masters Degrees in Music from New England Conservatory,
where he majored in organ and minored in harpsichord and choral
conducting. Sadly, this will be his last season with Cantemus
as he is looking to move into semi-retirement.
In an
interview for this newsletter, Robert allowed some glimpses
of the man behind the keyboard.
 How
did you get started in music?
My parents
took me to church at Easter when I was four, and I thought
the organ was God! I talked about it for weeks. I started
to study the organ in eighth grade, as soon as I was tall
enough. Before that, I already sang in the choir at St. Paul’s
Episcopal Church in Newburyport. My first paid job was singing
in a boys’ and men’s choir at age 11. They paid
25 cents per rehearsal, 25 cents per Sunday, 25 cents per
solo, and, if you had perfect attendance and no “mark
downs” for bad behavior, you got double pay. I decided
at 11 years old that I wanted to be an organist and choir
director. My first organist job was as a high school sophomore.
In my youth I also played flute, clarinet, tuba and baritone
horn. I was an only child, a “prince,” and my
parents were supportive of my choice to become a musician.
My father, a tool and die designer, sang in the same choir
I did and I learned a lot about music from him. My son, Mark,
who is an excellent musician and pianist and presently heads
the math department at Newburyport High School, also followed
the family tradition and sang in the choir at St. Paul’s.
What
were some of the high points of your career?
I really enjoy accompanying choruses. I accompanied chorus
rehearsals under Aaron Copland at NEC when he was conducting
his own pieces. I also accompanied for Erich Leinsdorf and
the Boston Symphony. I was the piano soloist for the Beethoven
Choral Fantasy with the Salem Philharmonic.
What
are some of your favorite keyboard works?
Besides Bach? Probably organ pieces by Franz Liszt, who did
not even write a lot for the organ. It’s hard to have
a favorite; it depends on what day of the week it is and what
organ you are on.
What
kinds of things are you looking forward to doing in semi-retirement?
I read a lot. I especially like books on architecture.
How have you changed during 40 years of playing, conducting
and accompanying?
Other than the reading glasses, the gray hair, and that I
got a lot heavier? … I am not as good as I thought I
was in my twenties, but I know that I am better now than I
was then.
How
Choral Music Has Changed Our Lives
Although
some Cantemus singers employ music as part of their professional
lives, we all (professional musicians or not) sing for the
love of it, a love that often sprouted very early in our lives.
We thought it would be fun to ask our singers to share how
their involvement in choral music, early on and as adults,
has affected their lives. Here’s what they had to say:
Gary
Freeman, tenor 1
 Lessons
learned:
In elementary school, the music teacher gathered me into a
make-shift chorus to perform at a teacher’s workshop.
I remember watching the music teacher’s cue, and singing
my solo, “Let There Be Peace on Earth.” I sang
it as fast as I could, relieved when it was over. At the end,
everybody applauded, and I joined in. But I had forgotten
that I’d been troubled that day by stabbing pains in
my arm, which were increasing as I applauded. A few hours
later at the doctor’s office, I found that I had broken
my arm earlier that morning when I’d fallen while running.
I’ve learned that if you want to be a star you’d
better not run before a major performance. But if you do,
don’t applaud when you’re done.
Dorothy
Monnelly, alto 2
 Best
memories: An elementary school performance of “Evening
Prayer” from Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel.
Yes, I was one of the angels, complete with halo, and I couldn’t
get enough of the music. Later, I always sang in church choirs,
although the memory that comes to mind is stealing the organist’s
shoes and marching out with them concealed under my choir
robe.
What she brings to choral music: I am often struck
by the parallels with photography (what I do with the rest
of my time). Ansel Adams said that the negative is the score
and the print is the performance (he was a fine pianist, so
he understood the full meaning of his words). To move from
the negative to the final print, or from the score to the
performance, I am aware that the attention to detail and technique
is similar, as is the continuing sense of the “big picture”
which guides and inspires the process.
Mark
Pierce, tenor 1
 Best
memories: My most outrageous memories of singing involve
musical comedies, not choirs. I have performed dressed in
an emerald green hoop skirt, a yellow sandwich board, as a
corpse, a soldier, a cowboy, and as a sleazy bartender (my
personal favorite). Each of these extravaganzas involved dancing
as well. You have not lived until you have tried to carry
a tune while being “clothes lined” by another
dancer.
Lessons learned: What have I learned? Duck! Also, that
the key to performing well is performing confidently then
letting go. The key to performing confidently is preparation,
but even that won’t eliminate mistakes. When mistakes
occur, forget them immediately and continue on confidently.
Somehow, things will turn out all right.
Nat
Pulsifer, bass 2
 How
choral music changed his life: Singing was more important
than smoking. So I quit!
Chris Reif,
alto 2
 Best
early choral music memory: I sang in chorus in school
until 6th grade, the highlight being when we performed with
Karen and Richard Carpenter on their “Sing A Song”
tour.
Lessons learned: After 6th grade, I had to choose between
instrumental groups or the chorus, because they met at the
same time, so I stayed with the band and orchestra. I did
not sing with a chorus again for over 15 years. I then took
another four-year hiatus from all music due to child-rearing
and work demands. Those were the emptiest four years of my
life.
What she takes from choral singing: One beautiful thing
about choral singing (as opposed to instrumental music) is
that you can practice in your car. Another is that, though
arthritis can make it an ordeal to play guitar chords or press
trumpet valves, it has no impact on your ability to sing.
Finally, the measure of success is how well you blend with
others to form one rich sound; it’s not about competition,
it’s about unity.
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It’s
not too early to plan to hear Cantemus during the holidays!
Save
the weekend of December 2-4, 2005, when we’ll delight
you with musical gifts of the season. We’re looking
into adding more concert dates and locations to accommodate
our growing audience! Watch your mailbox for updated information.
Order
a CD
Ranging
from traditional carols to international music of the season
to a complete performance of Benjamin Britten’s masterful
"Ceremony of Carols" for treble voices and harp,
our debut CD presents the listener with a sampling of our
most spirited seasonal pieces.
"Joy
Shall Be Yours" is available for
purchase at all of our concerts as well as at the River Gallery
in Ipswich.
To
purchase "Joy Shall Be Yours" by mail,
please send a check or money order for $8 per CD, or 2 for
$15, plus $2.50 shipping and handling, payable to Cantemus,
P.O. Box 784, Ipswich, MA 01938. There are just a few left,
so order yours today.
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