Full home for a ‘superb’ live performance

Music / “Jubilate Deo”, Canberra Neighborhood Chorale & Kompactus Youth Choir. At Wesley Uniting Church, November 6. Reviewed by GRAHAM McDONALD.

IT was a full home at Wesley for this very superb live performance on Sunday afternoon. It was a joint effort between the Canberra Neighborhood Chorale and Kompactus Youth Choir, with a seven-piece chamber ensemble offering the accompaniment.

The Chorale is a non-auditioned choir of round 40 voices beneath the path of Dan Walker and Kompactus is described as a “youth chamber choir” for singers between 18 and 30, beneath the path of Olivia Swift. They’re a talented vocal ensemble who mix properly and offered some admirable solo moments by the live performance.

The live performance opened with the choirs getting into in processional by the principle doorways singing  a Jubilate Deo by early 17^th century composer Michael Praetorius with the Chorale members heading to the choir stalls leaving the Kompactus singers on the stage for a choral association of “Beneath the Stars”, a music by English people singer Kate Rusby, with a solo by Henry Zovaro.

Whereas Dan Walker launched the foremost work of this system, “Jubilate Deo” by American composer Dan Forrest, the Chorale rearranged themselves behind the Kompactus members. Forrest’s “Jubilate Deo” is a set of seven songs with the texts taken from “Psalm 100” and sung variously in Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese language, Zulu, Spanish and English. The seven sections are all enticing works, every with a fairly completely different really feel.

The primary hints at being a before-the-interval choral variety of a Broadway present, set to a Renaissance dance rhythm. The second music (in each Hebrew and Arabic) has a melody suggesting Center-Japanese influences, with superb solos from alto Isobel Yeaman and soprano Freya Henfrey. Soprano Rene Li soloed within the subsequent part sung in Mandarin,  which featured some very fairly preparations for each the instrumentalists and the voices.

The fourth part was in Zulu and wanted a little bit extra precision within the phrasing to completely drive the rhythm together with the fifth music in Spanish that includes  soprano Caitlin Pilbeam who confidently soared above the mixed choirs. The penultimate “Alleuia” started with Kompactus sitting down within the entrance and simply the Chorale singing. The music constructed depth all through with percussion and a few large organ chords resulting in the Kompactus members sequentially standing, in a intelligent theatrical contact, earlier than segueing into the ultimate music of the suite, which featured large lengthy chords from the singers, busy arpeggios from the instrumentalists and prog-rock chords from Peter Younger on the Wesley organ.

I stay a little bit puzzled {that a} choir of 20-somethings describes themselves as a “youth” choir when such an outline does counsel a membership of adolescents and why would you identify a choir after moveable doc storage?