Vocal Music

Some music careers travel an orderly path - an early stylistic niche opens up a series of unfolding opportunities, which are followed by more growth and more opportunities. Robin Holcomb's career is more unusual. A gifted pianist who spent most of the '80s with the New York Composer's Orchestra in Manhattan's flourishing "downtown" free-jazz scene, Holcomb found herself writing poetry a few years ago. Then she started putting that poetry to music. Then she and husband Wayne Horvitz, a keyboard player, composer and producer, moved to Seattle, where she began recording this vocal music.

Alysia Lee can already hear the voices of the Sister Cities Girlchoir. She can see the faces of young women from Camden and Philadelphia as they harmonize with and help each other and their communities. "We'll start with 60 middle school students in Camden and another 120 in Philly in September," says Lee, who has spent the last six months enlisting support from civic leaders, musicians, and educators in both cities to launch the group. "We're looking for people who like to sing.

Artistically talented teenagers will have an opportunity to expand their study at the New Jersey School of the Arts when its fall semester gets under way in September at Glassboro State College. Auditions for high school students interested in taking part in the program will be held Saturday and Aug. 12 at the college. The School of the Arts was started by the state Department of Education in 1979 "to offer an opportunity for additional study for students with talent in the arts," said Jacqueline Goldberg, coordinator for the school's South Jersey program.

Artistically talented teenagers will have an opportunity to expand their study at the New Jersey School of the Arts when its fall semester gets under way in September at Glassboro State College. Auditions for high school students interested in taking part in the program will be held Saturday and Aug. 12 at the college. The School of the Arts was started by the state Department of Education in 1979 "to offer an opportunity for additional study for students with talent in the arts," said Jacqueline Goldberg, coordinator for the school's South Jersey program.

Programs offered Neighborhood and citywide high schools offer various specialty and vocational programs. Parents should contact individual schools to get information about specific programs, which include: Creative/performing arts Programs: drawing, painting, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, and crafts; and in the performing arts, which may include instrumental music, vocal music, dance and drama. Schools: Fels, Frankford, Germantown, Gratz, Lincoln, Northeast, Olney West, Overbrook, Roxborough, Mansion, Washington and West Philly Junior ROTC Programs: United States Army, Air Force or Navy Junior ROTC academies and programs Schools: Bartram, Germantown, Gratz, Lincoln, Swenson, West Philly, Frankford, King, Overbrook, Military Academies at Elverson and Leeds, Roxborough, South Philly, Mansion and Franklin Agriculture/environmental /natural resources Programs: horticulture, animal science, greenhouse management Schools: Lincoln Automotive technology Schools: Edison, Mastbaum, King, Randolph, Swenson, West Philly Business/finance Programs: accounting, banking, computer software, office administration Schools: Bartram, Bok, Dobbins, Edison, Fels, Furness, Germantown, Mastbaum, Philadelphia High School for Business and Technology, Overbrook, Rhodes, Roxborough, Washington, West Philly Cosmetology/barbering/ fashion design Programs: cosmetology, barbering, fashion...

As intricately crafted as Eric Sessler's Songs of the King may be, it communicates its emotional messages as clear as a bell. Premiered last night by the Music Group of Philadelphia, the choral work, whose text is taken from Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Idylls of the King," is heraldic one minute, poignant the next. Sessler, 25, a resident of Feasterville, takes great care in choosing the right music for his Arthurian text. There are few universally recognized connections between the words and music - a Stravinskyesque trumpet blows as the poem proclaims Blow, trumpet, and the Dies Irae appears when the subject of death comes up. No, Sessler is interested in something much more subtle and instinctive, reflecting meaning in his music the way composers like Britten and Faure were able to do so well in their vocal music.

Joseph R. Carmitchell, 44, of Bala Cynwyd, an instrumental music teacher in the Lower Merion school system, died Jan. 31 at Metropolitan Hospital in Philadelphia after a lengthy illness. Born in Lancaster, Pa., in 1942, Mr. Carmitchell was the son of William H. Carmitchell and Ruth Carmitchell. He received his bachelor's degree from the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, N.Y., in 1964, and his master's degree in performance from Temple University in 1967. He taught instrumental music in elementary schools including Merion, Cynwyd and Narberth Elementary from 1965 until 1980, when he became the instrumental music teacher at the Welsh Valley Middle School in Narberth.

It's amazing how a little bit of show business can break a trance. Wednesday at the Academy of Music, in a Mellon PSFS Jazz Festival concert that was conceived in Tin Pan Alley heaven, vocalist and pianist Shirley Horn, bassist Charles Ables and drummer Steve Williams achieved a peerless group empathy early in the set, and sustained it through a program of substantially re-invented standards. They painted expansive ballads such as "Soothe Me" as if in slow motion - Horn's voice teased out each line with a patient, passionate restraint that lingered over every nuance.

Bolivia can be a cultural blank to Americans, perhaps better known as a producer of coffee and natural gas (and coca) than as a country so musically rich that even remote villages echo an exalted past with present-day accomplishments. The latter is what Philadelphia's Renaissance band Piffaro discovered 18 months ago when it was invited to play the International Renaissance and Baroque Festival there. Now it has brought some of those riches back to Philadelphia in "East Meets West: Spanish Pipers in the New World," which it will present in three area concerts this weekend.

"Vision," the hot new CD of the music of Hildegard von Bingen, isn't the first time this fun nun has gained the attention of contemporary artists. Although she's been dead for 850 years, Hildegard has been an inspiration to others, including several composers (Steven Paulus' choral work "Visions of Hildegard" and Aaron Kernis' "Musica Celestis"). Add to that an animated video performance opera, weekend conferences, a dance piece by Karen Bamonte, a one-woman play by a Texas nun, and a show by a German performance artist.

Alysia Lee can already hear the voices of the Sister Cities Girlchoir. She can see the faces of young women from Camden and Philadelphia as they harmonize with and help each other and their communities. "We'll start with 60 middle school students in Camden and another 120 in Philly in September," says Lee, who has spent the last six months enlisting support from civic leaders, musicians, and educators in both cities to launch the group. "We're looking for people who like to sing.

Bolivia can be a cultural blank to Americans, perhaps better known as a producer of coffee and natural gas (and coca) than as a country so musically rich that even remote villages echo an exalted past with present-day accomplishments. The latter is what Philadelphia's Renaissance band Piffaro discovered 18 months ago when it was invited to play the International Renaissance and Baroque Festival there. Now it has brought some of those riches back to Philadelphia in "East Meets West: Spanish Pipers in the New World," which it will present in three area concerts this weekend.

Programs offered Neighborhood and citywide high schools offer various specialty and vocational programs. Parents should contact individual schools to get information about specific programs, which include: Creative/performing arts Programs: drawing, painting, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, and crafts; and in the performing arts, which may include instrumental music, vocal music, dance and drama. Schools: Fels, Frankford, Germantown, Gratz, Lincoln, Northeast, Olney West, Overbrook, Roxborough, Mansion, Washington and West Philly Junior ROTC Programs: United States Army, Air Force or Navy Junior ROTC academies and programs Schools: Bartram, Germantown, Gratz, Lincoln, Swenson, West Philly, Frankford, King, Overbrook, Military Academies at Elverson and Leeds, Roxborough, South Philly, Mansion and Franklin Agriculture/environmental /natural resources Programs: horticulture, animal science, greenhouse management Schools: Lincoln Automotive technology Schools: Edison, Mastbaum, King, Randolph, Swenson, West Philly Business/finance Programs: accounting, banking, computer software, office administration Schools: Bartram, Bok, Dobbins, Edison, Fels, Furness, Germantown, Mastbaum, Philadelphia High School for Business and Technology, Overbrook, Rhodes, Roxborough, Washington, West Philly Cosmetology/barbering/ fashion design Programs: cosmetology, barbering, fashion...

Few operas have the wow factor of Turandot, and the Opera Company of Philadelphia's opening-night audience Friday was definitely wowed - remarkably so - despite near-appalling artistic lapses. Giacomo Puccini's final opera came at a time when the composer hadn't enjoyed a clear-cut hit in years, and had endured scandal after his upstairs maid, falsely accused of dallying with the composer, killed herself. The opera's scenario - an imperious Chinese princess who beheads her suitors, a conquering prince who wins her, and a self-sacrificing slave girl - is a triangle with obvious personal parallels.

Demurely slanted rays of winter sun set pensively over New York City's Corpus Christi Church a few Sundays ago, the delicately colored hues of the stained-glass windows shimmering in muted conspiracy with the radiantly clarion voices issuing forth from early-music group Lionheart. Except this time, when the Latin text reached the concluding "Amen," it came out sounding like "Ah-MOAN" (as in that sound you make when contacted by the IRS). A collective slip of the tongue? A crackpot academic wrinkle?

Robert W. Jones, 66, whose musical programs provided an inspirational sound track for the spiritual lives of congregants of the Second Baptist Church of Germantown, died Sunday of injuries he suffered in an automobile accident. Police said the accident occurred about 8 a.m., near Island and Elmwood Avenues in Southwest Philadelphia. Mr. Jones, the organist and choir director for Second Baptist, was alone in his 1991 Chevrolet Prizm, on his way to pick up a choir member before proceeding to church, where a rehearsal had been scheduled before Sunday services.

Rodney Grant Somerville, 43, a vocal-music teacher and choral director at Red Bank Regional High School in Little Silver, Monmouth County, and former choral director of the First Nazarene Baptist Church of Camden, died Thursday at his Willingboro home. A Willingboro resident for the last two years and before that a Westampton resident for six, he was born and raised in Camden. He was a 1971 graduate of Camden High School. Although Mr. Somerville sang for most of his life, it was in high school that his interest became serious, according to family and friends.

As intricately crafted as Eric Sessler's Songs of the King may be, it communicates its emotional messages as clear as a bell. Premiered last night by the Music Group of Philadelphia, the choral work, whose text is taken from Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Idylls of the King," is heraldic one minute, poignant the next. Sessler, 25, a resident of Feasterville, takes great care in choosing the right music for his Arthurian text. There are few universally recognized connections between the words and music - a Stravinskyesque trumpet blows as the poem proclaims Blow, trumpet, and the Dies Irae appears when the subject of death comes up. No, Sessler is interested in something much more subtle and instinctive, reflecting meaning in his music the way composers like Britten and Faure were able to do so well in their vocal music.

"Vision," the hot new CD of the music of Hildegard von Bingen, isn't the first time this fun nun has gained the attention of contemporary artists. Although she's been dead for 850 years, Hildegard has been an inspiration to others, including several composers (Steven Paulus' choral work "Visions of Hildegard" and Aaron Kernis' "Musica Celestis"). Add to that an animated video performance opera, weekend conferences, a dance piece by Karen Bamonte, a one-woman play by a Texas nun, and a show by a German performance artist.

Throughout the odyssey of the African-American, vocal music has been a source of inspiration and a sustaining life force. Highly prized are those blessed with a gift of song and the remarkable voice to make it manifest. Marian Anderson, Mahalia Jackson and the Clara Ward Singers loom as giants among those so possessed. From the church choir to the concert stage, these women personified a height and breadth of talent that cultivated adoring and appreciative audiences of international scale.