The Collegian

Issue date: 11/6/08 Section: Arts

Media Credit: Andrew Dodson

African tribal tunes and Brahms "Gypsy Songs" combined when the Hillsdale Arts Chorale held the opening concert of their 36th season on Sunday at St. Paul's Lutheran Church. The title of the concert, "Building on Our Traditions," didn't limit the traditions to western ones.

The opening "Four Gypsy Songs" by Johannes Brahms, were relatively short and well sung with alternating teams of sopranos, altos, tenors and basses. The choir worked particularly well together with accompanying pianist Kristi Gautsche, to form easy, flowing songs that melded into each other.

The concert expanded its traditional music beyond Europe when, just before intermission, a chorale member brought out a djembe (JEM-bay), an African drum, and started to beat. Slowly, the rest of the chorale started singing "Bandari: Inside These Walls" by Ben Allaway. The "Building Song," another high-powered African-themed song, brought out some unusual vocal effects: falling rain, monkey noises and other exotic sounds.

After a long stretch of "Three Mountain Ballads" by Ron Nelson, the chorale returned to the foreign beat with Victor Paranjoti's "Dravidian Dithyramb," using Hindustani elements from southern India along with Persian and Arabic words to create a genre called Tarana. It was catchy. The chorale used only the sound "na" in an upbeat song that stuck in my head.

However, to my untrained ear, the concert did have its downsides. Not all of the music was as exciting as "Bandari" or "Dithyramb." For example, Randall Thompson's "Alleluia" was much like "Dithyramb" in that it only used one word, but unlike "Dithyramb" the piece lulled me to sleep by lasting three minutes too long. Even Bach's "All Breathing Life, Sing and Praise Ye the Lord" seemed to go on longer than it should have. However, those were the exceptions to the performance.

The Chorale performed a good first concert, successfully demonstrating their vocal range and talent. With four more concerts left in its 36th season, one hopes the other concerts will be just as good as this one.

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