Sarah Lang
Chorale artistic director/conductor Mikko Rankin Utevsky.
R. Murray Schafer’s 1971 choral work titled “Miniwanka” (The Moments of Water) is making waves. The composer, who is also a visual artist and an acoustic ecologist, drew waves in the score to instruct singers to emulate the movement of water with their voices.
Including pictures and other non-musical symbols in a score was popular during the experimental music phase of the 1950s and ’60s. But it also works well for Schafer in the 21st century as he delves deeper into the relationship between humans and their acoustic environments.
“Miniwanka” is one of many songs that Madison’s Choral Arts Society Chorale will perform at Madison’s Trinity Lutheran Church on April 28 in a program titled Water: A Celebration in Song.
In this ecologically focused concert, the Chorale joins with its community partners, the UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, the Clean Lakes Alliance and Wisconsin Conservation Voters.
Mikko Rankin Utevsky, the Chorale’s artistic director and conductor, keeps his finger on the pulse of the city’s social and environmental concerns. “I want the choir to be the singing voice of Madison’s body politic,” he says. “For example, last spring we programmed a concert on immigration that included music from the Renaissance to the late 1990s.”
So when Gov. Tony Evers declared 2019 the year of clean drinking water and UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank chose Dan Egan’s illuminating book, The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, as the 2018-2019 Go Big Read, Utevsky read the book and felt it was time for the choir to sing about water.
The concert will have something for everyone, from jazz and folk to late 16th-century Renaissance polyphony. And the audience will leave the show more informed after Utevsky talks about the methods that composers, like Schafer, use to evoke the sounds and images of water. As a short interlude between songs, guest speakers from the Chorale’s community partners will talk about water issues in Wisconsin. And the crystalline sound of pianist Yana Avedyan will be the perfect accompaniment for the program.
Some songs will highlight local composers. Folk legends Lou and Peter Berryman wrote the tune “A Little Water” for the Madison Water Utility to encourage the judicious use of water. And the Chorale’s newly commissioned work, “By the River,” by prize-winning composer Scott Gendel, will have its premiere at the concert.
Classic spirituals, including “Wade in the Water,” will extol the healing powers of water, and audience members will get a chance to sing along to Woody Guthrie’s “Roll On, Columbia.”
