PREVIEW: Garden Sound Choir Presents "The World Beloved" Bluegrass Mass by Carol Barnett
10/25 @ St. Mary’s Church, Glens Falls
“It's composers who historically haven't been represented and the composers that we picked to spotlight are just so innovative…”
Tommy Socolof’s Garden Sound Choir will be teaming up with the Lower Adirondack Regional Arts Council (LARAC) to present The World Beloved: A Bluegrass Mass by Carol Barnett at St. Mary’s Church in Glens Falls this Saturday evening at 7:00. The event will include a choral mass featuring a live bluegrass band followed by a concert showcasing the music of American female composers including Sarah Quartel, Abbie Betinis, Rosephanye Powell and more.
Socolof, who founded the Garden Sound Choir about two years ago with local songwriter and composer Ben Rowley, sat down with me to discuss the event and the goals behind the group.
“Essentially, it's just a group of local singers. A lot of them are teachers, a lot of us did community theater growing up and things like that. I think we started with around 16, and now we’re up somewhere in the mid-20s which is pretty cool.”
The choir typically puts on a couple of shows per year, but the group is hoping to become a more full-time outfit. The event this Saturday will also include a five-piece bluegrass band including banjo, mandolin, guitar, upright bass, and viola. He also told me that the church has been incredibly receptive to the idea of creating a mass with a bluegrass element. “St. Mary's is incredible,” he said. “They've pretty much let us have full creative control over what we do and what we program.”
The progressive nature of that relationship with the church has inspired him to pursue some long term visions as a creative. He described the bluegrass mass as a bucket list item. The ceremony of the mass itself is overall pretty similar to the typical, classic forms. It’s within the selection of the music that the innovation lies.
“It's composers who historically haven't been represented and the composers that we picked to spotlight are just so innovative,” he explained. “There's this one piece called Laus Trinitati that is all about the Holy Trinity and praising the Trinity. But it's so dramatic and almost cinematic in a way that you wouldn't normally expect, almost like an opera.”
One of the primary goals of the Garden Sound Choir project is finding new and interesting ways to tell these stories, and to innovate within those classic forms. “One of the most inspiring pieces to me is called Considering Matthew Shepard, written by Craig Hella Johnson. It's full-on choral theater, which I've never really seen before,” he explained. “It's like a multi-movement work; there's movement and props and costumes and things like that, but it's a true choral work. It's all just the choir.”
Doing things like blending the elements of choral music within the church with elements of Greek theater, is what the Garden Sound Choir is all about. “With Greek epics and things, they have a Greek chorus. So choral music has always had elements of storytelling, and we get to tell these beautiful stories in such cool ways.”
If you’re a fan of choral music, bluegrass, and innovative storytelling, this would be a terrific event to experience.
Find more information for the event and RSVP here!
