Radiance
One of the more enjoyable parts of being in a choir is the exciting repertoire we learn, and we think our Music Director, Bill Simmons, excels here. With Radiance, our annual concert for 2015, Bill again found just the right mix of variety, challenge and fun. From the spiritual to the secular; the swinging to the languid; the light and breezy to the thought-provoking – it's was all there.
Following our usual format, the afternoon started off with the choir showing its more serious side: Josef Rheinberger's glorious Missa Opus 187 was the featured work here. Adding (among others) Mendelssohn's Laudate Pueri into the mix, it was a spiritually uplifting bracket.
The second half of the concert saw us fast-forwarding through the centuries to the present. En route, we paid homage to the ear-worm with jazz standards How High the Moon, Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive, and that big band favourite from the forties, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. (Majellan Singers channel The Andrews Sisters? And why not?) Those with a more contemporary bent will be delighted to find musical over-achiever Sting was represented twice, with the achingly beautiful Fragile and Fields of Gold. We even persuaded Bill to trade baton for guitar for Fragile!
Modern choral masters Eric Whitacre and David Brunning were represented with The Seal Lullaby and Radiant Sisters of the Day. And Melbourne-boy Eddie Perfect's A Place by the River was a revelation: this plaintive and beautiful song, which sees its protagonist (Perfect?) wrestle with his ambivalence towards Melbourne and its famous river, Birrarung (the Yarra), is simply unforgettable.
Sublime classical, swinging jazz and contemporary classics: sounds like another Majellan Singers annual concert.
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