“I always think, ‘Why is my audience coming to a Christmas concert?’”
This might seem a ridiculous question for Erick Lichte, artistic director of Chor Leoni, to ask himself – especially given that his work spans more than two decades and numerous choirs across North America.
But his internal inquiry isn’t simply a means to try to determine which songs the acclaimed men’s choir should sing each year at its annual (and, inevitably, sold-out) holiday performances. Lichte is intensely curious about the relationship between various styles of music, and between music and the people who listen to it. Not for nothing did the Washington Post remark about the “audacity” of the programs he creates for his concerts.
“I’m not sure the answer, in a place like Vancouver, is the veneration of the nativity of our lord,” he continues, chuckling. “I can’t imagine that, for everyone, there are purely sacred reasons. Of course, the sacred will be there within Chor Leoni’s music program, but my question is, ‘What’s the deeper need? Why do we go to Christmas concerts every year?’ And, frankly, why do I do them?”
It should surprise no one that the majority of choirs attract their largest and most diverse audiences during the holiday season. The month of December and the sound of massed voices raised in song is a combination as time-honoured and elemental as the morning of January 1, migraines and regret. We don’t question the reasons for their existence; we simply know – and expect – them to happen, because none of us can remember a time when they didn’t.
But Lichte, and many others involved with choirs and music in general, knows our reasons for flocking to choral performances amidst the chaos of the holidays aren’t simply reflex actions rooted in tradition, religious or otherwise. For many of us, perhaps more than at any other time of year, music becomes a need – a crucial complement, and/or a remedy, to everything else going on around us.
“A good portion of our members aren’t church-going people at all. They just love this style of music,” says Gail Suderman, artistic director of Good Noise Gospel Choir, which, like Chor Leoni, plays to its largest audiences during the holidays. Also like Lichte and Chor Leoni, she and Good Noise aim to attract crowds that are as diverse as possible, encompassing all faiths (or lack thereof), with a repertoire that brings together the sacred and the secular, the obscure and the widely known. Specific to Good Noise, this means traditional gospel songs and the genres it spawned: soul, blues, rock, even hip-hop. “Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Al Green, and then more contemporary artists like Kirk Franklin, who are a sort of urban-gospel,” she says. “Aretha: she’s the Queen of Soul, but she grew up in the church singing gospel and she recorded some gospel albums. Elvis – the King of Rock ’n’ Roll – did a couple of traditional gospel albums.”
The result, says Suderman, is that “many audience members say to me, ‘I thought I’d be coming to a church service, but this was like a concert of favourites!’ I’m always looking for those connections. We’ve got a good number of regulars who buy season tickets. But those who come at Christmas – Christmas is a season to celebrate, so people are looking for something to go to that they wouldn’t necessarily go to during the rest of the year.”
“Our Christmas program runs the gamut of styles: We’ve got traditional carols but also popular-song arrangements, modern compositions,” says Lichte. “And we will butt all of those right up against one another, and I think it makes for a fascinating evening of listening. My goal is for people to feel things, and a complex modern work is going to illicit different feelings than a very direct pop song. And yet if they’re about similar things, one can inform another. Somebody who’s more into classical music can come to realize the real craft in certain pop songs. My goodness, if we could all write a perfect three-and-a-half-minute pop song, wouldn’t we all be rich? It’s an art onto itself.”
These are sentiments to which Stephen Williams can relate very well. The director of Capilano University’s Bachelor of Music Therapy program, his work is, in essence, a constant quest to increase the understanding of how music can positively affect people. Many social-media users will have seen videos that show otherwise mute or inert Alzheimer’s and dementia patients suddenly becoming animated when they hear favourite music from before illness set in. These are extreme examples of the art form’s deep potential for mental and neurological healing, but Williams believes music’s power can be as important to the everyday well-being of generally healthy people, and holiday concerts are a prime example.
“If somebody has any inclination toward sadness, it tends to be in December when they feel it,” says Williams. “Being involved in or attending some musical framework can help regulate that, and to find ways to reach out to friends – or to professionals, where needed – so that whatever is going on about this sadness or mild depression or avoidance can be examined, and that people resist any urge to isolate during the holidays, because that tends not to help in any way.”
Lichte echoes Williams’s thoughts. “It can be a very difficult time of year for many people,” he says. “My hope is that for the hour and 40 minutes of our program, this can be a moment of reflection upon the year that’s happened. It can be an acknowledgment that we’re in the darkest – and, if you’re in Vancouver, the wettest – time of the year, and that we’re searching for some sort of renewal and some sort of light in all of that. I think those larger humanistic, and maybe ecumenical, reasons – that’s the prism through which I look at this quote-unquote ‘Christian’ holiday music. I try to find music that speaks to that possibly larger need.”
Chor Leoni performs its Christmas concerts Dec. 16 and 17 at St. Andrew’s-Wesley United Church (1022 Nelson), 4:30pm and 8:30pm daily. Tickets and info: ChorLeoni.org. Good Noise Gospel Choir performs at various venues between Dec. 11 and 24; see GoodNoiseVGC.com for tickets and info.
