Chestnut Street Singers and the "Midnight Sun'

As we plod through the Western world's current economic downturn, we can take some comfort from the fact that Philadelphia continues to generate new music organizations. I've attended only two concerts by the Chestnut Street Singers during their first two seasons, but they're clearly a worthy addition to Philadelphia's great tradition of volunteer choruses.

The Chestnut Street Singers fit into that tradition because they sing without pay but call themselves a "cooperative chorus." When I questioned their chief spokesperson, Jen Hayman, after the concert, she said they've chosen this designation because they operate without a designated conductor or artistic director.

Hayman and another group member, Michael Johnson, fulfill many of the functions of a music director, but all the members participate in program planning and the other high-level tasks normally assigned to a music director.

That type of freewheeling organizational structure probably wouldn't work with large choruses like the Mendelssohn Club and Choral Arts Philadelphia. But applied to a small, 14-voice chamber chorus, it produces results that should gratify the most fanatic critics of hierarchical organizations.

Who gives the cues?

The Chestnut Street Singers manage to get along without a conductor even though they're usually coping with complex pieces that require tight coordination. They sing without accompaniment. Good a capella composers maintain interest by creating complicated interactions among the different sections of the chorus, playing one section against another, much the way orchestra composers exploit the tone colors of the different instrumental sections.

In the absence of a leader, Hayman and Johnson take turns beating time— but that's all they do. Their colleagues must make their entrances and exits without a conductor to give them cues.

For their season closer, the Chestnut Singers ventured into novel territory. As befitting a concert titled "Songs to the Midnight Sun," the program featured works inspired by the long days of the Northern European summer and the months of darkness that surround it. Half the composers hailed from Northern Europe, and their scores included odd harmonies, pieces based on unfamiliar folk traditions, and borrowings from other traditions, such as the Tuvan throat-singers of southern Siberia.

Cossacks attack

The Finnish piece that opened the program depicted an exuberant ride into the rising sun, with the lower voices creating a pulsing gallop while the upper voices sang above them like Cossacks on the attack. Other pieces evoked the sound of bells and the feeling of clouds racing across the sky.

All the pieces on the program emphasized ensemble singing, but an occasional outburst from a soloist provided a reminder of the quality of the individual voices creating the ensemble effects.

The two soloists who received credit lines on the program possess notably pure voices. Soprano Ellen Gerdes added a beautiful, sudden solo to a song about summer rain by a contemporary Icelandic composer, Hildigunnur Runarsdottir. Mezzo Rachel Haimovich contributed a similar moment to a touching traditional Finnish song that mingled loneliness with the cries of the wild duck.

Vocalists in volunteer choruses work without pay, but they earn their places through auditions and maintain their positions through the quality of their work after they join the chorus. Most of them have made significant investments in training and practice time. They're amateurs in the oldest and best sense of the word—people who do something for the love of it.