peformance report 1

Introduction:
The event is the Shakespeare in Song concert held on March 26 and 27 at the Jonsson Performance Hall at 8pm on the 26th and at 2pm and 8pm on the 17th directed by Kathryn Evans. The singers are from the UT Dallas Chamber Singers. The music consisted of pieces from various plays by Shakespeare including The Tempest, Hamlet, Cymbeline, Othello, and Twelfth Night. The plays themselves didn't really have any music but rather, there were some authentic songs written during the time of Shakespeare, some solo songs written by a British composer named Roger Quilter and choral arrangements of the songs of Shakespeare by Matthew Harris (director's notes in program). Both these composers have outstanding reputations in the music world.

Music:
As stated previously, the music is pulled from authentic songs of Shakespeare's time, from British composer Roger Quilter and from choral arrangements of Shakespeare songs by Matthew Harris. The music is mostly vocal (well..of course..it's singing afterall) in that there is only a piano to accompany a medium sized group of singers. The main focus is the voice in that there is little else to hear. Most of the songs are fairly quick and have a pretty quick tempo. It makes it a sort of "happy" song which means it's mostly in major keys. The texture consists of mostly vocals with there being a good balance between male and female voices. The vocal parts are split into the SATB parts for the singers. There are times when they might sing in unison (males/females in unison or male and female in unison but the latter is less) which is when the texture is a little bit thinner but not any softer or less full. The arrangements are fairly simple with no crazy runs or insane leaps. This shows the music's time in the choral/solo singer music world. Rhythm is also pretty simple. There aren't any passages in the music that sounded too challenging rhythm-wise. It was mostly very simple rhythms of 8th notes,quarter notes and maybe the some 16th notes but there really wasn't any tricky combinations.

Performers:
The first thing to take note of is that the performers were dressed like the people during the times of Shakespeare, including the director. Everyone had something different on but they were all costumes designed after the clothing worn by the people during Shakespeare's time. Everyone stood on a choir stand with the male voices on the right and the female voices on the left (if you were looking at the stage). Another thing to note is that everyone had a score. This takes a lot of the interaction between performers and the audience out because they have to look down all the time. Besides, the vocal exchange portions of the performance in which performers would come out of the choir stand and speak specific lines, the performers would communicate to each other with glances, hand motions, whispers, etc. The director, of course, conducted and held everyone together. During solo portions there was good communication between the pianist and the soloist since the director does not conduct theses portions. It was more like the pianist did a good job following the singer. During the parts where everyone sings together, the pianist is in good communication (with eye contact and nods) with the conductor who is in good communication with the choir using hand motions and eye contact and perhaps silent words as well (not clearly seen as you can only see the back of the director).

Audience:
The people who showed up to the performance, as far as I could see, were parents/friends/relatives/etc of the performers. Other than that, the next biggest group were those who were there for class. During the second and third performances, there were fewer and fewer people. The performance is open to outsiders. outsiders as in, people who have either never heard of Shakespeare in song or have never been exposed to this or just aren't very familiar with this music culture. In general, they are the people that don't know Shakespeare as much. You could go just to enjoy the singing and never get anything about it being Shakespeare. Since the performers are performing for the audience there is some communication in that. But, even if the audience didn't show up, the performers would still perform the same thing, although perhaps with less gusto. The performers may have been looking out into the audience but the audience has little to do with their performance nor is there much communication between the two parties.

Time and Space:
There was a pretty significant difference in the number of people in the audience for each of the performances. The first performance had the most people but even then, there weren't that many. Most people were there for the sake of class or because they knew someone who was performing. The performers were also visibly excited and nervous from perhaps the fact that it was the first show. I was told my a performer that, in the second showing, one of the solo performers was switched for another because the original one had failed to make the call time.
The substitute performer was noticeably more nervous but it didn't affect her performance a great deal. The excitement of the performers obviously died down as the performances continued.

Conclusion:
This was a rather interesting experience. The music is obviously not what most people are use to. It's surprisingly written by people who are very well established in the music world and is still being written today since Matthew Harris isn't dead yet (director's notes in program). The audience may not have been the best since most of them were there for class, but the performers were performing for themselves as well although it may have been discouraging for the performers to practice for something and no one shows up to listen.

Sources:
Shakespeare in Song. by Matthew Harris, Robert Johnson, Roger Quilter, Franz Schubert, Anonymous. Dir. Kathryn Evans. Perf. UT Dallas Chamber Singers. Cond. Kathryn Evans. Jonsson Performance Hall. Richardson. 26 March 2010.

Evans, Katryn. Program notes. Shakespeare in Song. 26 March 2010. Richardson: Jonsson Performance Hall. (Evans).

*Note: italics are used for sources because the underline option cannot be found in blogspot.