Cross-cultural choir music

“This is going to be a fun choir concert,” said Andrew Kent, member of the Portland State Chamber Choir. “This is not going to put you to sleep, and it’s not beautiful, sacred music; this is upbeat, fun, awesome music.”

This Friday and Sunday at the First United Methodist Church, all four PSU choirs—the PSU Chamber Choir, Man Choir, Vox Femina and University Choir—will be performing in the concert “Global Rhythms PDX.” The event will focus on world music in languages that include Indian, African, Haitian and Greek and will feature several styles of percussion.

“Most world folk music comes out of the same tradition as American pop music,” said Ethan Sperry, PSU’s choral director. “It’s very rhythmically driven, so the whole feel of the concert is going to be closer to a pop concert or a rock concert than a classical concert.”

“This music is cheating—it’s that entertaining, with the percussion and the really upbeat rhythms and really loud, tight harmonies,” Kent said. “You don’t have to know anything about music to show up and go, ‘Wow, that was cool.’”

The concert will also be quite celebratory, according to Erick Lichte, a graduate student assistant conductor.

“We’re really delving into different cultures in ways that are educationally worthwhile for the folks in the choir, and the pieces have a real integrity for the audience and for the listeners,” Lichte said.

Lichte conducts the men’s choir (aka Man Choir) and co-conducts the beginning University Choir with the other grad assistant, Kevin Lambert, who also conducts the women’s choir, Vox Femina.

The other concerts throughout the year have mostly featured classical music, including a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony last term.

“‘Global Rhythms PDX’ is a way for us to let our hair down at the end of the year. A lot of different kinds of listeners would like this,” Lichte said. “If the general PSU student came to one concert, this is the one that they would probably enjoy the most.”

When Sperry taught at Ohio’s Miami University, he was part of a project called Global Rhythms, which inspired this week’s concert. The project was started by Srinivas Krishnan, an Indian musician who decided to teach musicians to play Indian music on Western instruments rather than go through the process of teaching them to play Indian instruments.

Sperry decided to apply this same idea to choral music and has been arranging Indian music for choirs ever since.

The choirs will be singing about 20 pieces in all. The four choirs will sing two pieces as one large choir, the gospel “City Called Heaven” and “Jai Ho” from the film Slumdog Millionaire. The program will also feature two pieces composed by students for a composition contest.

One of the winning compositions, “Sirens,” will be sung by Vox Femina. The piece is written in Greek, and the singers will portray the sirens of Greek mythology.

“It’s wild. A lot of it isn’t voice; it’s using hand gestures and whispering to represent the sound of the waves,” Sperry said. “The piece is such a trip. The women have worked incredibly hard on it, and it sounds amazing.”

The Man Choir will sing the other winning composition, an Indian meditation titled “Namokar Mantra.”

“It’s really cool, and it’s also very difficult. Student composers often have great ideas, but they have a hard time making things easy,” Sperry said. “But these pieces were so cool that we thought they were worth the stretch.”

Vox Femina and Man Choir are both new this year. This is Sperry’s second year at PSU, and he has been working on expanding the choral program. This year, there are approximately 100 more people in choir than last year.

“Both groups this year hit the ground running and have been thriving,” Lichte said. “To see that kind of growth that quickly is a real testament to what’s been going on around here.”

The Chamber Choir recently recorded an album with Grammy-winning choral producer Steve Barnett. They were also accepted to compete in the international competition in Russia this June, but the competition was cancelled due to political complications.

Sperry hopes that this concert will help people realize how accessible choral music is.

“The idea of a concert being serious and a concert being fun are not mutually exclusive. Choral music is very accessible and is really varied,” Sperry said. “I hope people will want to come back to another concert and see what other things the human voice is capable of.”

“You can take a lot of different people from a lot of different walks of life, bring them together and through making this music, make a community,” Lichte said. “You can take people that have had a lot of vocal training, people that have none, and you can bring those kinds of singers together and make really phenomenal music.”

“Anybody can do it,” Sperry said. “We all have a voice, anyone can sing. If you decide you want to join an orchestra, you’re talking about years and years of violin lessons. But if you want to join choir, you really can do it. And that’s what I love about choir. It’s instant access to the world of music.”