It is a true honor and pleasure to welcome you to this special concert of hope and joy in honor of DCA’s 30th year of choral singing in the East Bay. In planning this repertoire, we looked at favorites over the past 30 years, with no particular theme in mind. When we landed on those favorites, a theme presented itself - a question we had been asking ourselves since the onset of the Pandemic of 2020: How can we keep from singing?  This question is at the heart of what we do.  We sing! We have found singing to be essential to the human experience. Note that the question is not, “How can I sing through all of this turmoil and strife, how do I sing with the threat of illness and death?” Rather it is, “How is it possible to not sing through all of this?”  Our answer is emphatically: we cannot keep from singing!

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A community choir since 1993, Diablo Choral Artists performs significant works of sacred and secular choral music. We are currently welcoming experienced singers in all voice parts. Rehearsals take place on Mondays, 7:00-9:00 pm, and will resume in August, 2023, at Mount Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church, 55 Eckley Lane, Walnut Creek. Send an email to info@dcachorus.org to schedule an informal audition.

Diablo Choral Artists (DCA) relies on the generous support of its patrons to continue providing choral concerts of artistic excellence. You can help support Diablo Choral Artists in a variety of ways: 

Become a sustaining donor or make a one-time contribution. You can easily make a donation to DCA at our website, dcachorus.org, or mail a donation (payable to “DCA”) to DCA, c/o 2095 Stratton Rd, Walnut Creek, CA 94598.

Donate a car – working or not! We work with a Rotary Club to participate in Clunkers4Charity.org and Cars2ndChance.org. Call 1-925-326-5868 to start the process; your car can be towed if it is not working, and forms will be filled out for you. 

Become a business or corporate sponsor.  We would love to talk with you about ways we can help promote your business! 

Join our Board of Directors  We welcome non-choir members to bring new ideas and perspectives to our Board, and we currently have vacancies. 

Volunteer your time in any of a variety of tasks. 

INTERMISSION

The title of today’s program – “How Can I Keep from Singing?” -  derives from the hymn of the same title by Robert Lowry, an American preacher who became a popular writer of gospel music in the mid- to late-19th century. The song is frequently, though erroneously, cited as a traditional Quaker or Shaker hymn. The original composition has now entered into the public domain, and appears in several hymnals and song collections, both in its original form and with a revised text. Though it was not originally a Quaker hymn, twentieth-century Quakers adopted it as their own and use it widely today.

“Earth Song” (Frank Ticheli) so personal to the composer, that it would be an injustice to introduce it using anything but his own words: 

“Earth Song is one of only a few works that I have composed without a commission.” … “I felt a strong impulse to create something that would express my own personal longing for peace. It was this longing which engendered the poem’s creation.” 

… “I knew I had to write the poem myself, partly because it is not just a poem, but a prayer, a plea, a wish – a bid to find inner peace in a world that seems eternally bent on war and hatred. But also, the poem is a steadfast declaration of the power of music to heal. 

In the end, the speaker in the poem discovers that, through music, he is the embodiment of hope, peace, the song within the Song. Perhaps music has the power not only to nurture inner peace, but also to open hearts and ears in a world that desperately needs love and listening.”

“Ubi Caritas” is among the very oldest of Christian hymns, dating at least to the Middle Ages and perhaps even before the Church had arrived at the traditional form of the Mass. It recalls Jesus’ words, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them,” and it remains a frequent part of Maundy Thursday services. Gjeilo originally created this setting for a capella chorus after hearing a performance of Maurice Durufle’s setting of the same text. He later created a recording, adding his own piano improvisations.  In this performance, we have asked our accompanist, Brett Carson, to create a true improvisational element.

Joan Szymko is a composer and conductor living in Portland, Oregon, where she directs the Elektra Women's Chorus. Her music is widely performed and published, and she has received numerous awards and commissions for her work. She is particularly well-known for her choral music, which often explores themes of social justice and environmentalism.

"The Peace of Wild Things", composed in 2007, is set to the poetry of Wendell Berry, a renowned writer and environmental activist. Berry's text contemplates the beauty and solace of nature, and the ways in which we can find peace in its midst.

Szymko's loves to use text painting, or matching the music to the meaning of the words, and this is particularly effective in this piece speaking to our need for connection with nature. Szymko's skillful setting of Berry's poetry, combined with her inspired musical language, creates a work that is both emotionally powerful and spiritually uplifting.

Morten Lauridsen is Professor Emeritus of Composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music and served as composer-in-residence from 1994 to 2001 for the Los Angeles Masterworks Chorale, but he seems to do much of his musical thinking and planning on a remote island in the San Juan archipelago in the Puget Sound, north and west of Seattle (Listen for the soft lapping of waves on a pebble beach.)

“Dirait-on” is the final movement from his choral cycle, Les Chansons des Roses, based on poetry by Rainer Marie Rilke (1875-1926). who wrote a vast number of poems in French and in German. Lauridsen describes his selection of Rilke’s poetry as follows: “These exquisite poems are primarily light, joyous and playful, and the musical settings are designed to enhance....and capture their delicate beauty and sensuousness.” 

Paul Basler is Professor of Music (teaching Horn) at the University of Florida where he has been on the faculty since 1993. Prior to his appointment at UF, he served as the Fulbright Senior Lecturer in Music at Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya, taught at Western Carolina University, and was the North Carolina Visiting Artist in Residence at Caldwell Community College. Basler is a frequent guest performer, lecturer, and composer at national and international music festivals, horn society workshops, and educational institutions.

Gabriel Navar is a California artist, poet, and college arts educator from the San Francisco Bay Area.  He describes his main focus in his work as the interconnectedness he feels with his natural and urban environment as well as with his culture (he is of Mexican descent), our planet, and the phenomenon and celebration of existence.

Basler’s initial introduction to Gabriel Navar’s poetry was in 2000, when he was commissioned by a Texas high school choir to write them a work based on a Spanish text – Navar’s “Portones abiertos y rostros brillantes.”  Basler was “immediately struck by the incredible imagery of the poetry as well as the obvious joy in life, nature, and love that is so present in Gabriel’s work.”  The collaboration that followed, in that piece as well as a number of subsequent works, was natural, considering the two artists’ compatible outlooks on culture, the human condition, and art itself.  Magnifying the artistic breadth of Navar’s work is his frequent creation of companion paintings for his poems, each set with the same name as the music:  Thus, with Basler’s added musical framework, music, painting, and poetry all interweave to create a rich world, which is, in Navar’s loving words, “about this great and often absurd human theatre we are currently living!”

“Adorable flujo”, was written for and commissioned by the ACDA Junior High/Middle School Honor Choir at the 2001 National Convention in San Antonio, Texas, and their conductor, Dr. Lynne Grackle.  The text by Navar, and the painting that goes with it, is about positively connecting with and truly appreciating the flow of history through our present and on to the future.  It is about “grandchildren to be.”

This is what Rosephanye Powell says about her setting of “I Dream a World”

“I Dream A World is a setting of the poem “To You” by Harlem Renaissance jazz poet, playwright and social activist Langston Hughes (1902-1967).  In this song, the composer depicts musically Mr. Hughes’s juxtaposition of the world that is and the world that could be.  The world of which Langston Hughes dreams is characterized by joy, peace and freedom; yet the one in which he lives is full of the “wretchedness” of racial prejudice and avarice.  

…  The beginning of the song is, for Hughes, a pleasant dream, in which “our world” is one where love, joy and freedom rule.  However, as the song develops, the dream becomes dark, representing the present state of being.  This is heard in a shift from consonant chords to the use of dissonance in the piano, as well as rhythmic agitation in both the vocal and piano parts. As Hughes’ dream develops further, the poet chooses to believe that “joy, like a pearl” will one day “attend the needs of all mankind”.  Because of this, he will continue to dream for a better world, heard in the passionately repeated phrase “I Dream” near the end of the song.  “I Dream A World” ends with a final climactic statement of “our world,” followed by two accented and strident piano chords which depict the poet startled awake–only now aware that he has been dreaming.”

“Sleep”, composed in 2000, was originally set to the poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” by Robert Frost. However, at the time of composition, the Robert Frost Estate did not allow the poem to be public domain, so Whitacre decided to ask his friend and brilliant poet Charles Anthony Silvestri to write new words to the music he had already written. Eric has recently stated that, even though the Frost poem has passed into the public domain, he will not be releasing the original.

“Et conversus sum ut viderem vocem” (“Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me”)            

Our Music Director writes: “Brett Carson’s biography and many credentials may be found elsewhere in this program, so we’ll focus for a moment on this work. I have been privileged to work with Brett for several years as the accompanist at Mount Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church, where I am currently the Music Director.  Brett has often astounded me with his technique, knowledge and creativity.  Then I began listening to his compositions. I was floored! This was an entirely new musical language to me.

A few months ago, Brett came to me with the idea of writing a new work for Diablo Choral Artists.  Without checking in with anyone, I immediately said “YES!”.  I knew that this would be a once in a lifetime opportunity for us to learn a new musical dialect. And the Choral Artists have risen to the challenge.”

The composer writes, “I have had a fascination with the Biblical book of Revelation for many years, its imagery and dramatic intensity, its wrathful deity, great multitudes, cosmic cataclysm, and its theater of absolute universal transformation. For me, the actual “meaning” of the book is secondary. Scholars agree that it is one of many texts in the ancient genre of apocalyptic literature, forecasting the end of time (or perhaps the end of Rome) and seemingly written in a “code” to be understood by a select few, replete with number symbolism and references to the Jewish scriptures. Divorced from both the era and the culture of its intended audience, Revelation serves me as a continuously refreshing repository of images and ideas, an archetypal well of beasts and dragons. Almost every piece I’ve written over the last several years contains a reference or literal quotation from the book, but this is the first piece I’ve written that actually uses an excerpt as its sole libretto.”

“This composition combines choir and electronic sound, as a dramatization of a portion of the introductory chapter of the book, in which God reveals himself to John in a terrifying symbolic manifestation, declaring, among other things, the mind-boggling “I am the First and the Last”. As such, I’ve aimed for a sound-world both ancient and futuristic, at times reverent, at times overwhelming, invoking the transcendent majesty and impossibility of such a God. The choir serves as a collective One, speaking simultaneously as totality and plurality, the voice of a God who is not bound by our conventional understanding of space and time.”

We are honored to premiere this wonderful music today.

We conclude with “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord”, a traditional spiritual arranged by Moses Hogan, an African-American composer, pianist, and conductor of international renown.  This joyful song celebrates anchoring one’s soul in the Lord – perfect peace, perfect love, perfect joy.  

No matter the circumstances and burdens that may have followed each of us here, we hope this music has given you reason to leave this place uplifted and more hopeful.

Lifetime Members: Anne Burcell, Sue Cevasco*, Stell Eriksen*, Ann Kenfield Graf*, Lynn Finegan*,  Susan Lipscomb*, Genia Pauplis, Bob Dixon, Joanne Brady, Ellen Schloenvogt, Pat Cooper, Laurie & Dave Neuenschwander, Dottie Hoorneart, Mary Rinehart, Mary Wallace Honorary Members: Chuck Brady*, Bob Rezak*, Claire Schloenvogt  *=deceased

Diablo Choral Artists (DCA) is a community chorus now in its 30th year.  The mission of DCA is to present significant works of secular and sacred choral music, inspire and uplift audiences through live performances of artistic excellence, and nurture the appreciation and enjoyment of choral music in people of all ages and cultures. Established in 1993 as Voices of Music Sacra, and now under the direction of Mark Tuning, DCA has become known for performing innovative programs of significant choral works in Contra Costa County.

Diablo Choral Artists has taken concert tours to Europe, recorded Christmas repertoire, and been the guest of the Diablo Symphony Orchestra, the Contra Costa Performing Arts Society and the California Symphony. Most recently, in 2017 DCA joined the Diablo Symphony Orchestra and three other choirs in performing a holiday concert under the direction of well-known conductor David Drummond of London.

We thank the generous donors who have supported Diablo Choral Artists in 2022-2023

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