Community comes together for Missa Solemnis performance

Amarillo Globe News article by David Gay

The Missa Solemnis, the 81-minute, five-movement work by Ludwig Van Beethoven which translates to “High Mass,” is known for being one of the hardest works ever created for a chorus.“It’s too high, it’s too long and it’s too loud, meaning the voice can’t withstand it,” said David Palmer, executive director for Chamber Music Amarillo. “Really, only truly professional choruses do it.”The piece demands major commitment and dedication from the people involved, Palmer said. But he has faith that his team, consisting mainly of residents of the Panhandle, can pull it off.After nearly two years of preparation, area representatives from Chamber Music Amarillo, Panhandle PBS, Amarillo College, the Amarillo Master Chorale, the Amarillo Symphony, West Texas A&M University and the First Baptist Church will come together as part of the Missa Solemnis Orchestra and Chorus on May 30 to perform the work at 7:30 p.m. in the Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts.The performance will feature Katie Van Kooten, soprano, Ellen Graham, mezzo-soprano, Eric Barry, tenor, and Clayton Brainard, bass. The performance will be conducted by Michael Palmer, David Palmer’s father.David Palmer said the thought came to his mind to do this performance in 2016 as he was thinking about what he wanted to do to celebrate the 250th birthday of Beethoven.“I wanted to do something that was a collaborative effort in the community,” he said. “When I thought of the Missa, it was 3:30 a.m. in the morning and I was lying awake in bed. I thought to myself that this was the best or worst idea I have ever had in my life.”David Palmer reached out to Nathaniel Fryml, the director of choral activities at Amarillo College and the artistic director of the Amarillo Master Chorale, to see if the master chorale would be willing to be the core for this initiative. Fryml said his first thought was terror, being one of the people to tackle this notoriously difficult work in his first full-time choral position.“I was just trying to get my feet on the ground here in town and learn the lay of the land and everything,” he said. “Artistically, it was extremely exciting. On the practical side, it was very daunting.”Rehearsal for the performance started in the summer of 2018 due to the challenging nature of the work, as well as balancing its rehearsal with the other obligations the Master Chorale had. Fryml said the main challenge of the Missa Solemnis is the number of notes performers have to sing.While this mass is choral-centric, like the others of this classical period, Fryml said none of the others are on this scale. The challenge and the beauty of the project is undertaking a piece of this magnitude with the Master Chorale, an ensemble which consists of members of the community who are not all professional musicians.“There are all sorts of backgrounds present, a lot of professional musicians in the group, but definitely more than half of the members have never been professional musicians,” he said. “They may have had a degree in music at one point, or they may have just sung in choirs for many years … It’s exactly the unlikelihood of this sort of endeavor even being attempted that made a lot of us so excited at the beginning.”Because of the community coming together in this way to put on the performance, Panhandle PBS was called on to make a half-hour documentary over the two-year rehearsal time before May’s performance. Kyle Arrant, the director of operations for Panhandle PBS, said before the project began, he did not know much about the piece. But he quickly recognized the significance of this piece and of this project.“This is not only difficult, but taxing. It’s one of the hardest pieces that I know of,” he said. “It’s certainly one of the hardest of Beethoven. This takes a lot of work to put together. This is not something in a traditional symphony format, (where) you come in and rehearse for a couple of weeks or get it a couple of months in advance and do. The choral parts of this especially are just incredibly difficult. It’s every range, it’s every feeling. It’s every emotion in this piece.”The documentary will give participants the chance to relive the process, David Palmer said. When you are in the middle of practicing and, eventually, the performance, it is impossible for someone to process the scale of the project.Through the rehearsal process, Fryml has learned to depend on others, using their unique talents and experiences. Everyone brings something new to the table.“This is not the sort of project where any one person could clone themselves into 100 or 150 people and have it work, because there is so much more going on than just one particular skill set,” he said. “As a teacher, it’s very humbling to not know everything, to not be able to do everything, and yet still have that task of guiding the ship, in a way. It’s thrilling, at the same time.”Arrant’s eyes have been opened to the collaboration it takes for a project like this to get off the ground. The power of the arts community in Amarillo is incredible, he said.Even though the performance is a few months away, there is still a lot of work to do, David Palmer said. “Faith has become a major force for me moving forward, not because I don’t believe in the people — I do believe in the people,” he said. “When it comes down just before the downbeat, the bottom line is going to be that there are elements that we are going to experience that faith is going to carry us through.”Kevin Ball, chief executive officer of Panhandle PBS and vice president of communications and marketing at Amarillo College, said he expects there to be a big response from the community about this performance.“I think when they understand the magnitude of it and it’s touched so many people,” he said, “because every one of those singers, everybody, everybody at WT, everybody at the symphony, everybody at Amarillo College, when that network starts to click out there, I think there will be a huge (response).”Arrant said even though only one performance is currently scheduled, he hopes there are at least two: This is an important experience for residents in the community to witness.“This community has a history of doing big things and not really singing their praises, not really telling the world, ‘Hey, we did this,’” Arrant said. “This is one of those things that Amarillo and the Panhandle can be very very proud of. It’s an incredible adventure, experience, slog, whatever you want to call it. I think May 30, you are going to see everyone come together. It’s going to be magical.”Tickets for the performance range from $20 to $55 and are currently on sale at Panhandle Tickets locations as well as on the Panhandle Tickets website, https://purchase.tickets.com/buy/TicketPurchase?pid=8778651.

Original article can be found HERE.