17 April 2008
CONCORA forced into encore by rabid audience
Local Motion: Church: Better Than Bars
CONCORA forced into encore by rabid audience; 39 Mariner forced to play “Brown-Eyed Girl” for quadrillionth time
By DAN BARRY
Thursday, April 17, 2008
[inspic=18,right,300]How’s this for contrast: on Saturday night, I’m crammed in among the hot bodies and big screen TVs at Rookies in Cromwell, listening to 39 Mariner cover Bon Jovi. Sunday night, I’m at the Church of St. Thomas the Apostle in West Hartford, listening to CONCORA perform Rachmaninoff’s All Night Vigil. I may be a rocker, but ask me to choose and I’d take the church and chorus any day.
The All Night Vigil was written for the Russian Orthodox church, but as a whole it’s actually very creamy and ambient. When I first saw CONCORA, they were also performing at St. Thomas Church, and the acoustics of the church hall tended to muddy the Haydn piece they performed. On Sunday, though, the piece and the venue were especially well-matched. The balance between them was phenomenal, with each section adjusting their volume so as to be consistently audible. Quite a feat, when you consider how difficult and rare it is for sound techs with expensive mixing boards to do the same thing.
The men’s voices of CONCORA deserve particular recognition for their performance. In any choral piece, men’s voices are able to hit the lower, more fundamental notes, and thus do more of the heavy lifting. But Rachmaninoff, being quintessentially Russian, wrote the men’s parts as though for draft horses, assigning them complex mixtures of low notes held for vast lengths of time. What’s more, the Vigil isn’t the kind of piece a chorus can just blast its way through; it’s marked by extraordinary control and restraint. CONCORA deftly managed their breath control, dynamics, and volume balance across the entire performance — and the men came off with a rich, golden timbre besides. (Not to take anything away from the women, and especially not from Cynthia Mellon, who did masterful solo work in the second song.)
At the end of the evening, the audience was so enthralled by the performance that they applauded the chorus for a solid three minutes! The bedazzled chorus offered an encore — not exactly typical in the world of choral music.
As for 39 Mariner — well, in the world of party bands, these fellas were actually rather impressive musicians. Members frequently switched instruments and roles, with keyboardists becoming vocalists, vocalists becoming hornsmen, and members appearing out of the blue to add new sounds to songs. (For example, a three-piece horn section magically cropped up out of nowhere to add the first unique spin I’ve ever seen to “Brown-Eyed Girl.”) There was a predictable amount of alcohol-worship (dude, do you really need to encourage people to drink at Rookies?) and birthday shout-outs between songs. There was a predictable amount of Bon Jovi. I’m starting to think that choosing between party bands is like choosing between Clinton and Obama — there’s no fundamental difference except how they look.
Copyright 2008, The Hartford Advocate
