Singing their way to Seghizzi

“[At] the concert…you will see 36 students pouring their hearts out onstage,” said Ethan Sperry, conductor of Portland State’s Chamber Choir.

Sperry and the choir have been accepted to compete in an international competition in Italy this summer: The Seghizzi International Competition for Choral Singing is one of the oldest and largest choir competitions in the world.

The Portland State Chamber Choir is the first American choir selected to participate in several years. They will be in Italy July 18–20.

This Friday and Sunday, the choir will perform a benefit concert to help fund this unique opportunity.

The Portland State Chamber Choir has been around for nearly 40 years and has earned a stellar reputation. This past year they released a CD, Drop in the Ocean, that received positive reviews in national magazines.

In February they were selected to perform at a music educators’ conference in Portland; they were one of only three groups selected to perform out of 27 university choirs that applied.

Sperry, the head of PSU’s choral program, has been the choir’s director for three years.

“It’s a smaller group of singers,” Sperry said. “They’re all really well-trained and dedicated…I feel like the group can pretty much do anything that a professional choir can do. Any genre, any style. You’ll hear that at the concert.

“We’ll sing important European sacred music, pop songs, music percussion, music from other countries and pretty much everything in between,” Sperry said. “It’s one group of singers, but the voice is the most versatile instrument that’s ever been invented. These singers know how to use their voices in every possible way. It’s a really talented, versatile and hardworking group of singers.”

There is a song called “Arrivederci, Roma” about the sadness of leaving Rome. The Portland State Chamber Choir concert is called “Arrivederci, Portland!” to express its members’ sadness at leaving Portland, but also their excitement about where they will be going.

The concert will include many arrangements, from well-known titles such as “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen and “MLK” by U2 to a rendition of “Amazing Grace” by a young composer from Latvia, along with various other musical pieces.

“One of the advantages [for] PSU, I think, is that we have by far the strongest music program in the Northwest, and are also one of the cheapest schools in the country,” Sperry said. “Part of the reason I think this place is so successful is because we do provide an amazing education and we do it at a fraction of the cost. So we’re able to recruit very good singers here, and I think they more than get their money’s worth.”

St. Stephen’s Catholic Church in Laurelhurst is an excellent acoustic setting for the Friday night concert. The church holds 400 people, and there is hope that the event will sell out. Each performance will be between 75 and 90 minutes long.

“You can’t just go onstage and be technically good—you actually need to go onstage and share some of yourself with the audience,” Sperry said. “You can just get onstage and try to make a pretty sound, sing a tune, don’t crack the high notes or whatever. Or you can think about the words that are written in that piece you’ve chosen to sing, make them your own, deliver them from your own standpoint and communicate it.”

Sperry pointed to one song, “A Boy and a Girl,” that captures what makes this concert so special.

“A Boy and a Girl” is about “this couple whose love is so innocent that it literally continues into eternity,” Sperry said. “Even after they’re dead, they don’t need to say anything to each other; it’s just obvious that they still love each other.

“The last minute of the piece, the choir doesn’t even say a word—it’s just humming,” Sperry continued. “There [are] all these moments of silence in between each phrase. We played it at our first concert. There were over 600 people there and you could’ve heard a pin drop. Somebody has captured in music this idea of love beyond the grave. The whole audience was just sitting there in awe.”