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Music

Warming up in Venice

FLC choirs make music in Italy

In one of the world’s great public spaces, Piazza San Marco in Venice, Fort Lewis College students huddled in a tight circle. It was mid-May, and in one hour the singers would perform for evening Mass in St. Mark’s Basilica. A soft, buttery light made the church look like a medieval spice box with five domes and glittering mosaics.

After a long day of sight-seeing, the singers needed to warm up and change into black concert attire.

No rehearsal hall was available, and many wore black all day. Others had to get creative, such as freshman Wendy Smith, 19, a business administration major from Portland, Oregon, who made an open-air costume change by sliding her long concert dress over a light summer dress, which she then slipped off from underneath.

At 6 p.m., Charissa Chiaravalloti, director of FLC choirs, pulled the singers together. A very public space would have to serve as a private rehearsal hall.

“We’re going to warm up here,” she said with a smile.

Chiaravalloti organized the first European performance tour in the college’s history. From her chamber, concert and men’s choirs, she gathered 48 singers. Most were current students, a few had recently graduated, and three of us would qualify as senior-senior members: Shauna Blaylock, Steve Blaylock and myself.

The FLC choirs performed in two Catholic Masses in Venice and Bologna and one formal vesper service in Salzburg. Mini concerts took place in Rome’s Pantheon and Assisi’s cathedral. A complete concert concluded the trip in a spectacular chapel within the Vincentium, a senior residence in Munich. One spontaneous concert took place in Orsanmichele, a quiet but famous Florentine guild-hall-turned-church from the 14th century.

Warmups generally took place on the bus or in a rehearsal room. The longest turned out to be a chant workshop with Janos Czifra, music director for Salzburg Cathedral. Budapest-born and educated, Czifra has been Salzburg’s kapellmeister for most of his professional life. When he distributed copies of medieval and contemporary church music, the FLC singers realized they would be expected to sing it at the vesper service later that day.

The service went well, augmented by five members of the Salzburg choir. For the second time on the tour, the choir sang “Grace,” a new work composed by Chiaravalloti for Sr. Helen Prejean last fall during the college’s Common Reading Experience.

Abroad, the choir performed “Grace” first in Assisi Cathedral, then again in Salzburg, which may have been the optimal rehearsal experience.

Venice was the most memorable.

In the piazza, Chiaravalloti simply said, “We’re warming up here,” and launched basic exercises. By the time she added loose vocal sirens, a crowd had gathered. Every musical blip drew applause.

At 6:50, Chiaravalloti led us to a side entrance and signaled for silence. We filed through evening light past the main altar and walked down narrow stone steps to a small chapel in the crypt.

About 50 worshippers sat on benches facing the altar. At 7 p.m., a priest whirled in and began the rosario with prayers to the Virgin Mary.

Chiaravalloti conducted four works and concluded the service with a contemporary version of “Ave Maria.”

Still, it wasn’t quite enough for her, so she asked permission to sing one work upstairs in the great basilica. The sexton agreed with conditions– four minutes, standing.

Filing up the narrow staircase, we quickly formed random rows facing the high altar. We sang “Let Thy Holy Spirit,” a full-bodied Russian Orthodox anthem.

Four minutes later, we left and hurried past the Ducal Palace, heading for the vaporetto landing. Our boat transferred us to an enormous parking lot where our bus waited.

We rode back to Bologna mostly in silence – a significant contrast to the often rowdy buzz that powered us all over Italy.



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