As someone who talks with his hands for a living, choral music conductor Carl Harris can appreciate that skill in other people. So during the Jefferson Choral Society’s recent four-concert performance trip to Italy, Harris was in his element.
“The Italians have such a zest for life,” he said, “and talking with their hands is part of it. They’re a very expressive people.”
Like all performers, of course, Harris’ favorite form of hand communication is the practice of repeatedly banging the palms together to express pleasure. It’s called “applause.”
But it took a member of the audience in the Norcia town square to truly put the importance of that practice in perspective.
“Norcia was probably the high point of the trip for me,” Harris said last week, after the group returned from its 10-day trip to Rome, Florence, Venice and several smaller cities. “We played in the square, which took up pretty much the whole town center, all these old buildings around. They applauded like crazy, they called out for encores, and they were even asking for our autographs.
“What really touched me, though, was a man who approached me afterward and apologized for not applauding. One of his hands had been severed, he explained, and the doctors had just sewed it back on.”
This was the fourth European trip for the JCS — and according to veteran choir member Libby Jarrett, the best.
“Everything was so well organized,” she said, “and we had probably the best blend of voices of any of the trips.”
In most of its local concerts, the group achieves that proper blend. The European trips, however, tend to tip the balance toward the more mature voices.
“So often,” Jarrett said, “the younger people in the group can’t afford to go, or else they can’t take that much time off. This time, for whatever reason, we had a better mix.”
They also had John Wright, a soloist from Cincinnati, Ohio.
“I found John two years ago at the Berkshire Music Conference in Massachusetts,” Harris said, “and contacted him about coming along with us. We featured him throughout the tour, especially on the spirituals, and he really added a new dimension.”
“The Italians loved him,” Jarrett said of Wright.
Glenn Buck, who co-organized the trip with Andrea Dukes, has always loved Italian composer Andre Gabrieli.
“He was an amazing composer,” Buck said. “He wrote for 20 parts — he would have different choirs at different places all over a cathedral, a brass group somewhere else. What came out was very powerful, and I remember lying awake at night as a kid as listening to some of it.”
The JCS concert in St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice gave him the opportunity to meet Gabriella’s ghost. The Lynchburg-based group sang at the end of a Mass in ancient St. Mark’s, and Buck recalled: “There were more people in the choir than the audience.”
But to him, it didn’t matter.
“The acoustics were incredible,” he said. “It was the kind of place where you can end a note and the sound lingers in the air for four or five seconds. This is where Gabrieli put on many of his performances, and I swore I could see him looking down at us. It gave me chills.”
Chills, however, were in short supply in Italy last month. The country sweltered in a 100-year heat wave (with temperatures to match), and the visiting choristers sweated along with everyone else.
Maybe more so.
“We wore tuxedos and formal dresses in some of our outdoor performances,” Buck said, “so at least we sweltered in elegance. At one point, my shoes felt like they were full of water.”
Choral Society trips always involve a delicate balance between “work” (the actual performances and practicing for them) and play. The Italians, Jarrett said, made that easy.
“They definitely have the right attitude,” she said. “They made everything fun. My son lived there for 11 years, and I used to give him a hard time about keeping my grandchildren so far away, but after this trip I told him: ‘Now, I see why you stayed.’”
Among other things, the Central Virginia visitors saw the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo’s David (featured on T-shirts all over the country, some of them a bit racy), the chapel of St. Francis Assisi, Vatican City and the canals of Venice.
“The gondola rides aren’t cheap, though,” Harris said. “We were given a price of $100, but we got the gondolier down to $80.”
Libby Jarrett returned with three “peace” flags she said “were everywhere, just like American flags were everywhere after Sept. 11.”
“They had kind of a rainbow design,” Buck added, “and they were in reaction to the Iraq war.”
From June 18-30, however, politics was something the 49-person Central Virginia contingent — choir members and what Buck called “our groupies” (non-singers who went along with spouses or friends) — left far behind.
Music, food and wine left no time for it.