SAY IT LOUD, SAY IT PROUD: Voices of Ascension @ Zankel Hall

We attended the Tuesday evening performance by the vocal ensemble VOICES OF ASCENSION under the direction of Dennis Keene. The performance was presented by the Sorel Foundation, with the ultimate goal of the evening being the presentation of the foundation's Sorel Medallion Competition for Women Composers. One should admire the foundation for its striving to bring women composers to the forée, and the three pieces presented, Lamentations for a City by Lisa Bielawa, Meciendo by Leanna Kirchoff, and Choral des Bêtes by Christina Whitten, showed an interesting and promising range of new choral music. At least as best as one could deduce from the performances that night, which did not serve any of the composers of the evening, alive or dead, very well.
My favorite piece of the evening (and winner of the gold medal prize) was Ms. Kirchoff's Meciendo, or Rocking in English. One would think the conductor might have tried to produce the kind of soothing, rocking motion a mother would provide her upset child. Instead Mr Keene set a speedy tempo that brought to mind a nanny being chased through Central Park while pushing her pram!!
In fact, the entire evening was lacking in subtlety. By the end of the first half of the concert, I felt the group only had two settings: soft and loud. Then Mr. Keene surprised us all by showing in the second half that they could also do REALLY LOUD!! If one was hoping that this group of fine professional singers might be able to produce a bit more color and variety to their performance, they were deeply dismayed. One also has to fault them for their sloppy diction of the texts: they were more than two thirds of the way through Ms. Bielawa's Lamentation for a City before I realized they were singing in English! It sounded exactly like everything they had sung before that moment: Mendelssohn, Schumann and Schubert. The evening ended with a raucous version of JS Bach's Motet VI: Lober den Herrn, alle Heiden. By this point the choir was joined by organ, viola, and cello and everyone puffed away at their own speed; violist tapping away to some erratic distant rhythm, chorus noses down into their music, and Mr Keene like some Hollywood swashbuckler jabbing away at some imaginary enemy. Poor Johann. Poor everyone! They deserve better!!