Cina Crisara

This week I want to shine a spotlight on one of our extraordinary musicians, Dr. Cina Crisara. Cina (CHEE-na) is a cherished member of the Conspirare family who sings frequently with the professional Company of Voices, most recently as a member of the ensemble that toured the Midwest in early March. She also serves as a section leader for the Conspirare Symphonic Choir and occasionally assists with conducting duties.

We are incredibly fortunate to have Cina in our midst. As a beautifully artful singer, gifted pianist, and superb conductor, she steps into many roles within our organization. We all love Cina not only for her many talents but for the generous spirit and inspiration she brings to our music-making.

Very recently, the Conspirare Symphonic Choir was invited to sing for the Andrea Bocelli concert at the Frank Erwin Center in February. Clearly, this was an exciting invitation to which we wanted to say yes, but I had a schedule conflict with the event, as did Conspirare associate conductor Richard Gabrillo.

It occurred to me that Cina might be the ideal person to prepare the choir for this concert. She is experienced in conducting many styles; while director of choral activities at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, a post she held for sixteen years, she was also chorus master for the Omaha Symphony and Opera Omaha. Her vast experience with the operatic repertoire and the strength of her musicianship and leadership were ideally suited for the Bocelli collaboration. So I asked her, and she said yes!

Cina and the choir were splendid; she prepared the singers expertly, in only a few rehearsals, to perform all the planned music. Additionally, as is often the case with new situations and collaborators, this event held some last minute surprises. She adapted quickly and brilliantly and made the chorus feel ready for anything that might possibly happen. The singers sounded terrific and I am so grateful to Cina for her great work with them. It is very special to have this level of talent, experience, and insight in our wonderful family of musicians. Cina is one of the many reasons it is really fun to come to work at Conspirare. I respect and love her and I just wanted to tell you about her!

Craig

Late February finds us looking forward with much anticipation to our Midwest tour this March.  I wanted to take a moment to tell you about the program, the concerts, and why this series is so special for us.

Conspirare’s circle of listeners reaches far beyond our home base in Austin.  In fact, our circle of singers is much the same way – the majority of our singers fly in to Austin from all corners of the country (and sometimes the world) for our rehearsals and performances in central Texas.  As word has spread about our music, it has felt more and more important for us to be able to meet our listeners who may only know us from a CD or DVD, or perhaps from hearing us on the radio, and to be able to share with them the space that we can create together as a group of singers and listeners. We are beyond excited to be able to join our friends in the Midwest for a great week of music.

When planning the program for our tour, I collected and gathered from some of our favorite musical moments from the last few years.  You will notice works from our recent concerts (two new works from Eric Whitacre that were previewed in January, and selections from our Barber concerts and recording sessions last fall), some cherished newer favorites, and some old faithful pieces that we have loved singing together for many years.

What are some of your favorite Conspirare moments from the last few seasons?  If you were to put together a Conspirare program or playlist, what would you include?  Please share your ideas and memories with us in the comments section below!

Now, a preview from the program along with song samples for you to enjoy:

My colleagues and I have been especially inspired in the last two years by our exploration of the African American Spiritual.  As such, several pieces from our “Sing Freedom” album will be featured on our Midwest tour.  Recommended listening:  “Soon Ah Will Be Done / I Wanna Die Easy” and “Hard Trials”

Still fresh in our hearts and minds is the wonderful experience we had this fall at Goshen College recording a new CD of the complete choral works of Samuel Barber.  We eagerly await the album’s release in early Fall 2012 and will perform a few of our favorites from the upcoming release while on tour.  Recommended listening:  “Agnus Dei” and “To Be Sung on the Water”

A stand-out moment for us came in 2010 when we performed David Lang’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work, The Little Match Girl Passion. Recommended listening: “Dearest Heart”

See you on the road!

Craig

“Soon Ah Will Be Done / I Wanna Die Easy” and “Hard Trials” (arrangements Craig Hella Johnson) from Sing Freedom!: African American Spirituals, Craig Hella Johnson & Company of Voices, Harmonia Mundi, 2011. “Agnus Dei” by Samuel Barber from the Grammy®-nominated CD A Company of Voices: Conspirare in Concert,” Craig Hella Johnson & Company of Voices live, Harmonia Mundi, 2009. “To Be Sung on the Water” by Samuel Barber, archival live recording from September 2011, Craig Hella Johnson & Company of Voices. “Dearest Heart” from The Little Match Girl Passion by David Lang, archival live recording from May 2010, Craig Hella Johnson & Company of Voices.

This last week with Path of Miracles was extraordinary for all of us. So many of you began to share stories with me, and I want us to share those stories with each other. I invite you to write some notes about your listening experience in the comments section below.

Craig

Many of you are preparing for hearing our upcoming performances this weekend of Joby Talbot’s Path of Miracles.

We are loving the piece and looking forward to sharing it with you.

I want you to get acquainted with Joby. He has written an extraordinary work, and I think you will enjoy getting to know a bit more about him. The profile at the link below is a great place to start your acquaintance.

I’m grateful you are a part of this Conspirare listening and learning circle…

Craig

“Interview: Joby Talbot” from musicOMH.com

Next time you see one of them, sing them a little song of praise for all they do to make Conspirare what it is!!

On behalf of my great colleague Ann Hume Wilson and myself, wishing all of you fine Conspirare friends the Happiest of Holidays…

With much gratitude,

Craig

From left to right: Melissa Eddy, Nicki Turman, Nina Revering, Robin Kate Barde, Ann McNair, Kristie McCune, Ann Hume Wilson, Craig Hella Johnson, Meri Krueger, Tamara Blanken, David Hammond, Wravan Godsoe. Not pictured: Katie Apple, Rick Gabrillo, Robert Harlan.

Listen to this track from her new CD Shelter, a song by Andre Previn.

“Shelter” (title track)

On behalf of all of the Conspirare musicians, I must tell you how excited we are to sing for you this week.

See you very soon!

Craig

Some of you have been asking about our 2011 guest artist for the Conspirare Christmas concerts…

Well, this year we have TWO amazing artists who will be joining us, Matt Alber and Mela Dailey…. They both bring so much to the table and it is really special to collaborate with them in this way for the 2011 concerts…

Matt is a singer-songwriter based in the Seattle area. I first met him when I was Artistic Director with Chanticleer. Young Matt came to audition for the group and he was the first singer I brought into the ensemble during my time there. He sang with them for several years. Since leaving he has branched out on his own…

Here is a song Matt will be singing during our Conspirare Christmas — a song about the union of souls… Judee Sill wrote this song and she says, “This song is about the union of opposites that we all have, and the kiss is a symbol of that union.”

Here is a recording of Matt singing it, and the lyrics follow…

“The Kiss” – by Judee Sill

People are asking a lot these days about what is going to be on the program for this year’s Conspirare Christmas —

Well, you know I don’t like to give too much away, but I want you to know that we will be reviving a couple of Conspirare’s more famous “happy moments” — the Conspirare commissioned arrangement of Eric Whitacre’s “What If” and my arrangement of Carly Simon’s “Let the River Run”…

During these challenging times, I’m hoping these will bring joy and “up-lift”…

Here are the videos from the PBS Company of Voices production —

See you soon!

Craig

Conspirare performances of “What If” by Eric Whitacre and “Let the River Run” by Carly Simon (arrangement by Craig Hella Johnson) from the PBS special “A Company of Voices: Conspirare in Concert,” a production of KLRU-TV in association with Conspirare. Conductor, Craig Hella Johnson. Recorded live at Dell Hall, Long Center for the Performing Arts, Austin, TX, October 2008. Available on DVD and Grammy®-nominated CD (Harmonia Mundi).

We need to be singing now more than ever. Singing together. You may have seen our new Conspirare tag line, “We Sing Life.” I suggested it because I’ve learned, from an amazing array of experiences working in the middle of people’s singing, how powerfully music, and especially singing, can be a wonderful conduit for the living and expression of all that we are experiencing on our human journeys. I love Brian Eno’s simple and powerful statement, I believe in singing. This singing that we all do together is beautifully a way to express that we are here, that life is moving in us. Many of you know how I love to quote Bernice Johnson Reagon (founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock).  She said, “When we sing, we declare our existence.”

We are putting out the call to people to return to singing together. Just making sounds and declaring what is wanting to express itself through us. Coming together. Breathing deep in our bodies, laughing and lamenting through song.  Many voices from throughout the culture are hearkening us back to singing. Here are just a couple of examples recently—one from Brian Eno and another from Kathleen Parker.

I hope you will enjoy the columns below, share your own experience in the comments section, and come out to sing with me at the Big Sing on November 17 at 6 pm at First Baptist Church.

We Sing Life—

Craig

“Singing: The Key to a Long Life” by Brian Eno (npr.org)
“Try Singing It” by Kathleen Parker (cjonline.com)

In 2006, I composed a piece for our performances at the convention for the North Central American Choral Directors Association. We were to perform a concert in the beautiful Holland Performing Arts Center in Omaha. The program included one of my favorite works for choir, Benjamin Britten’s Hymn to St. Cecilia, as well as motets of Brahms, a triple choir work by Jacob Handl and some American music.

While planning for this program, I was having a hard time finding just the right piece to open this concert. It is always a very special opportunity to sing for a distinguished group of colleagues who all love choral music as deeply as we at Conspirare do.

In the end, I decided to compose something for the opening and I turned to the elegant, inspirational Bengali poet and Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore. All of the verse he writes is so beautifully shaped that it feels like it is already music simply when read aloud. I decided to follow the contour of his lines and wrote what I called “modern plainsong chant” so as to give his words the most space to express their own shapely essence.

Here is the text I set:

Ever in my life have I sought thee with my songs.
It was they who led me from door to door,
and with them have I felt about me,
searching and touching my world.
It was my songs that taught me all the lessons I ever learnt;
they showed me secret paths,
they brought before my sight many a star on the horizons of my heart.
They guided me all the day long to the mysteries of the country of pleasure and pain,
and at last to what palace gate have they brought me at the end of my journey?

You came down from your throne and stood at my cottage door.
I was singing all alone in a corner, and the melody caught your ear.

You came down and stood at my cottage door.

Masters are many in our hall, and songs are sung there at all hours.
But the simple carol of this novice struck at your love.
One plaintive little strain mingled with the great music of the world,
and with a flow’r for a prize;
You came down and stopped at my cottage door.

—Rabindranath Tagore

Here is an audio recording of a live performance of what I called “Gitanjali Chants.” The texts come from a collection of verse by Tagore that he called Gitanjali and means “Song Offering.” If you are not familiar with this collection, I recommend it to you.

“Gitanjali Chants” performed by Conspirare

In one of the early collections of Tagore’s works, William Butler Yeats writes a long introduction to the works. He was deeply moved by the words of Tagore. I love how directly and passionately he writes about his encounter with Tagore. Below, I share an excerpt from Yeats’ introduction.

I have carried the manuscript of these translations with me for days, reading it in railway trains, or on the top of omnibuses and in restaurants, and I have often had to close it lest some stranger would see how much it moved me. These lyrics—which are in the original full of subtlety of rhythm, of untranslatable delicacies of colour, of metrical invention—display in their thought a world I have dreamed of all my life long … Rabindranath Tagore, like Chaucer’s forerunners, writes music for his words, and one understands at every moment that he is so abundant, so spontaneous, so daring in his passion, so full of surprise, because he is doing something which has never seemed strange, unnatural, or in need of defence … as the generations pass, travellers will hum them on the highway and men rowing upon the rivers. Lovers, while they await one another, shall find, in murmuring them, this love of God a magic gulf wherein their own more bitter passion may bathe and renew its youth. At every moment the heart of this poet flows outward to these without derogation or condescension, for it has known that they will understand; and it has filled itself with the circumstance of their lives.

Flowers and rivers, the blowing of conch shells, the heavy rain of the Indian July, or the moods of that heart in union or in separation; and a man sitting in a boat upon a river playing lute, like one of those figures full of mysterious meaning in a Chinese picture, is God Himself. A whole people, a whole civilization, immeasurably strange to us, seems to have been taken up into this imagination; and yet we are not moved because of its strangeness, but because we have met our own image, as though we had walked in Rossetti’s willow wood, or heard, perhaps for the first time in literature, our voice as in a dream.

—William Butler Yeats

Thanks for being a part of this Inspire circle … So glad to have this place to share some of these things with you …

May the music keep knocking at your “cottage door.”

We Sing Life—

Craig

Song 49 and Song 101 (trans. from the original Bengali by Rabindranath Tagore) and from the Introduction by William Butler Yeats from Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore, London, ed. 1913.

“Gitanjali Chants” performed by Conspirare from NC-ACDA Convention 2006: Gala Closing Event CD, live recording of the Gala Closing Event featuring Conspirare, 2006 North Central American Choral Directors Association Convention.

by Eliza Gilkyson

listen

“Requiem” by Eliza Gilkyson, choral arrangement by Craig Hella Johnson, from the Edison Award-winning and twice Grammy®-nominated CD Requiem, Conspirare – Craig Hella Johnson & Company of Voices, Harmonia Mundi, 2009.

Our friends at Impact Austin have asked Eliza Gilkyson and me to share a dialogue about building community and the transformational power of music. We will be talking, singing, playing songs, and telling stories, and we hope that you will join us for this musical conversation.

The event takes place the evening of October 25th and is open to the public — please visit Impact Austin for details.

Here is another clip, taken at the piano in my studio.

And finally, a few words about The Lovers:

Getting to know The Lovers

Dear Friends,

Here are the program notes for our upcoming concerts. I hope these give you a chance to prepare for your listening experience with us.

• program notes
• Samuel Barber biographical note

---

“Choral Music of Samuel Barber” and “Samuel Barber: An American Romantic” by Joshua Shank and “The Lovers ” by Robert Kyr used by permission of the authors. All rights reserved.

Here is an inspiring interview with conductor Sir Colin Davis that I would like to share:

“Sir Colin Davis:’You are of no account whatsoever’” from The Guardian

with a poem by Rumi

listen

“What Was Said to the Rose” by Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, used by permission of Coleman Barks. All rights reserved. Archival recording of Conspirare’s performance of “Dona nobis pacem” from Mass in b minor by J.S. Bach recorded live at Dell Hall, Long Center for the Performing Arts, June 2010.

from “the elegance of the hedgehog”

listen to audio introduction

Below is an excerpt from The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. In this passage, the protagonist, a precocious 12 year old, attends her school’s choral concert. These are “her words” after the experience…

“….silence fell and the performance began.

Every time, it’s a miracle. Here are all these people, full of heartache or hatred or desire, and we all have our troubles and the school year is filled with vulgarity and triviality and consequence, and there are all these teachers and kids of every shape and size, and there’s this life we’re struggling through full of shouting and tears and laughter and fights and break-ups and dashed hopes and unexpected luck — it all disappears, just like that, when the choir begins to sing. Everyday life vanishes into song, you are suddenly overcome with a feeling of brotherhood, of deep solidarity, even love, and it diffuses the ugliness of everyday life into a spirit of perfect communion. Even the singers’ faces are transformed: it’s no longer Achille Grand-Fernet that I’m looking at (he is a very fine tenor), or Deborah Lemeur or Segolene Rachet or Charles Saint-Sauveur. I see human beings, surrendering to music.

Every time, it’s the same thing. I feel like crying, my throat goes all tight and I do the best I can to control myself but sometimes it gets close: I can hardly keep myself from sobbing. So when they sing a canon I look down at the ground because it’s just too much emotion at once: it’s too beautiful, and everyone singing together, this marvelous sharing. I’m no longer myself, I am just one part of a sublime whole, to which the others also belong, and I always wonder at such moments why this cannot be the rule of everyday life, instead of being an exceptional moment during a choir.

When the music stops, everyone applauds, their faces all lit up, the choir radiant. It is so beautiful.

In the end, I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song.”

From The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson, Europa Editions, 2008 (L’Élégance du hérisson, Collection blanche, Éditions Gallimard, 2006). Used by permission of Europa Editions.

Conspirare really loves to devote to the great masterworks of the choral repertoire. It’s a big part of what they do. What’s really fun about the singers is that they love to take a song from popular culture, too, and just sing it. We needed a really fresh and fun opening for a PBS special that we were privileged to get to do a few years ago and we came up with this. I did an arrangement of Carly Simon’s great song “Let the River Run,” and we have a ball singing it.

Conspirare performance of “Let the River Run” by Carly Simon (arrangement by Craig Hella Johnson) from the PBS special “A Company of Voices: Conspirare in Concert,” a production of KLRU-TV in association with Conspirare. Conductor, Craig Hella Johnson. Recorded live at Dell Hall, Long Center for the Performing Arts, Austin, TX, October 2008. Available on DVD and Grammy®-nominated CD (Harmonia Mundi).

listen

“Requiem æternam 1,” the third movement of Requiem by Herbert Howells (1892-1983) from the CD Requiem, Conspirare, Craig Hella Johnson and Company of Voices, 2009 (2006). (Background music: “Salvator Mundi” and from “Psalm 23,” the first and second movements from the same recording.) Available on Grammy®-nominated CD.

welcome to inspire

Welcome to Inspire. My hope and intention for this page is to invite you into an ever-deepening experience with choral music. I want you to come closer in and enjoy being a part of this circle of listeners—come closer into the music. Come closer to the musicians of Conspirare and to me and to the work that we do together. Come closer into the things that inspire us as a community. I want to share things here which can enhance your experiences with choral music and help you enjoy all that this incredible music has to offer.

At Conspirare, we believe that music has the power to transform us, the power to change lives. How this happens may be different for each of us, but in the end I hope that there will be times when you will recognize yourself reflected in the music and that this reflection will give you deep satisfaction. You are the music.

Whether it is an audio or video clip, a poem, a program note about a conposer’s life and work, an interview—whatever is shared here is meant to support your listening experiences with us and to enrich our shared musical journey. The offerings will be widely varied and will come from many sources. Come back often and be a part of the conversation. And please, bring your own revelations, provocations and inspirations to the table. Welcome.

Background music: from “Cum Sanctus Spiritus” from Mass in b minor by J.S. Bach, archival recording of Conspirare performance live at Dell Hall, Long Center for the Performing Arts, June 13, 2010.