Young People's Chorus: Articles



Articles 2003

Copley News Service

November 24, 2003

Review - Transient Glory

After my first listening to this recording I came up with the impression that it is phenomenal.

Well, that's a pretty strong word (don't want to exaggerate).

After my second listening, I came up with the impression that it is - phenomenal! As you can see, this time the "exaggeration" is emphasized.

Yes, it's that good. Really hard to believe. The ensemble achieved - this is astonishing - the ability to sing such complicated invention, the purity of the voices, the degree of accuracy of pitch, the total sophistication of these young artists, you have to ask yourself how they can do that.

The answer must be that these young people were carefully selected because of the quality of their voices, they worked very hard in developing them, and they were superbly trained under the direction of their artistic director/conductor Núñez.

One of the most striking things about this recording is its program: All of these works are given their world premieres. All of them were composed in 2001 or 2002, except the Debussy work that concludes the recording.

The compositions themselves are strikingly inventive. And they represent such a variety of excellent invention. Each could easily make its way into literature for chorus - providing a chorus would be capable of singing it. And that would not be a given. These pieces are exciting, exacting compositions that require a very high-level performance capability. commitment, and advocacy...

Choir & Organ Magazine

November, 2003

Getting them through the door.

by Ken Smith

Francisco J Nunez talks to Ken Smith about his adventurous project with the Young People's Chorus of New York City.

In New York's fragmented classical music world, people who might feel at home at an orchestral concert or piano recital would probably never dream of attending a choral concert, much less a performance by a children's choir - and frequently the reverse is true as well.

No one is more aware of this polarity than Francisco J Nunez, the director of the Young People's Chorus of New York City, a composer and former piano prodigy. "When people go to hear Mozart's Requiem or Beethoven's Ninth they often don't even know who's singing," he observes. "I've spent a lot of time looking for music by the famous composers, but most of them have written for every genre other than children's choir."

So does that situation hold true today too, when most established concert composers have little choral music in their catalogue, and much less for young singers? Even the most performed choral composers still remain anonymous in the musical world at large. Though he could do little about the Mozarts and Beethovens of the past Nunez set out to recify the situation in his own time.

His project, Transient Glory, is a bold step to entice concert composers to write for young singers. With the help of his publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, Nunez has managed to convince a growing number of established composers of he merith of young singers, as well as bringing a number of budding choral composers into the publishing fold.

Nunez best tool for recruitment is his own group, a superb example of young voices larely representative of the city's mix of cultures and socio-economic levels. "They have a full vocal range," Nunez says. "They can sing in parts, and in several languages. I know that once I get people in the door and show them what we can do I can keep them, but it's a challenge just getting them to the door."

A few who've entered - and subsequently signed on to the project - include composers Ned Rorem, Michael Torke, Michael Nyman, John Tavener and David Del Tredici. In addiion to the YPC's concert of Transient Glory commissions, which were inaugurated in 2001 at the 92nd Street Y, where the YPC is in residence, the works themselves are featured on a recording released on Vital Records and will be published by Boosey & Hawkes, except for composers already affiliated to other companies.

Where the concert composers are concerned, the biggest challenge comes in scaling back their expectations from the pay structure of concert hall commissions - $1,000 a minute is the going rate - to accept rather less for their Transient Glory works. This is not to be confused with charity, as Boosey & Hawkes president Jenny Bilfield is quick to point out, since in the choral field the majority of the money comes from sales of printed scored. "The choral world can be a highly lucrative market, and many choral composers do much better financially than many concert composers," she explains. "Choruses, like wind bands, are always looking for new works. The pieces for treble chorus," she adds, "will be marketed to both the children's and adult market."

This will be for composers who can present a delicate distinction more in subject matter than technical issues, as Nunez discusses freely. "I think people forget when they're writing for children that you don't always have to write about floppy bunnies. You have to write about real things, because in exactly the way adults can size up a phoney at a party, young people can size up what is real. They want a challenge, and if they're going to study something for months it had better be worthwhile."

As far as composers finding their own definition of "real", Nunez essentially lets the make-up of his own chorus speak for itself. "We're dealing with an urban child, specifically with a New York child, and that makes a lot of difference," he says. "Not only are they really smart, they already know life. The school system here is highly competitive with lots of pressures, but even on the way to school they have to defend themselves on the street every day. They have to be strong, and they want music with an emotional content that matches the stress levels they already feel. The composer Elena Katz-Chernin asked them what they wanted and they said "a very difficult, fast piece".

Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum, a recent graduate and current administrator of the composition department of the Juilliard School, grew up singing in children's choruses, so she knew very well the strengths and weaknesses of that age group. "Kids can sing anything as long as they can hear it," she says. "They're not limited by tonality, although by the end my piece was pretty standard. My only concern was rhythm, which I had to make sure was very clear. I wasn't too incredibly stressed about the music on the page."

She would rather spend most of her time looking for an appropriate text, which she found in e e cummings. "These texts are playful and see the whole world upside down but at the same time impart their own element of wisdom," she says. "Translating that sense of wisdom into music required being simple without being simplistic. Alhough the vocal lines had some relatively complicated counterpoint, the resolutions needed to be simple."

The results have paid off. "Two Songs" from Days of Innocence by e e cummings for treble chorus, clarinet and piano garnered on of this year's ASCAP Young Composers Awards and has already been taken on by Boosey & Hawkes as the composer's first published composition.

Boosey veteran composer Steve Mackey, however, came to Transient Glory from exactly the opposite direction. Best known for his colourful orchestral works (his recent organ concert Pedal Tones was commissioned by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony) and chamber works featuring the electric guitar, the Princeton University-based composer had no prior experience either with young singers or choruses.

"I came into classical music from rock and roll in my early twenties," he says. "I had no experience as a young classical musician to draw on, and nothing from my life as a student or teaching at Princeton has changed that. Choral music for young people just didn't sound like my thing, and I put it off for a couple of years. But Francisco was persistent, and the fact that he clearly knew who I was, and that this was not an obvious step for me, gave me almost as much faith in myself as he had."

A former camp counsellor, Mackey already knew better than to condescent to young people and instead sought a place where youthful sensibilities overlapped with his own creative leanings. "My music relies a lot less on virtuosity and ornament now and is more concerned with line," he says. "So I thought, let's emphasise line to the point that a 14-year-old can sing it."

In William Carlos Williams's The Attic Which is Desire Mackey found an emotional sentiment that he thought the young singers could relate to, as well as a text that left plenty of room for him to establish his own often ironic musical context. "It helped that I was working with young singers and not trained adults with big vibratos. I want to hear clear vowels and consonants, and how I place the words is as important an aspect of my orchestration colour as how I assign musical lines to certain instruments."

The Transient Glory experience has since worked its way into other writings, Mackey admits, including the substantial four- and five-part vocal writing in Dreamhouse, which was given its premiere at last summer's Holland Festival. "The summer after I worked with Francisco I was invited up to lead a young composers' seminar at Tanglewood on writing for chorus. I asked 'Why me?' and they said 'Precisely because you're not a chorus guy.' If someone from that world had come in preaching the greatness of choral muic no one would have believed it."

Nunez, for his part, has no doubt that great composers in one genre will succeed in crossin over into another. "So far we've struck gold with our commissions," he says. "And, just as important, we're breaking down barriers of what people think are diferent kinds of contemporary music."

Since its inauguration, Transient Glory programming has included not only concerts but a public forum bringing composers, critics, orchestral conductors and music publishers together. "That," he says, "has served to clear up many misconceptions on all sides, as well as offering everyone a wealth of new perspectives.

"Kurt Masur compared our [education] programme to the youth choirs in Germany," Nunez recalls. "He said he'd expect to see something like this in Minnesota, but not New York. John Schaefer from WNYC [New York Public Radio], who was also on the panel, has asked us to be the station's chorus-in-residence, like the radio children's choruses in Europe."

Future composers who have signed on to the project include Richard Rodney Bennett, Louis Andriessen, Bright Sheng, Judith Weir, Thea Musgrave and David Soyer, the former cellist of the Guarnieri String Quartet, now a composer with Universal Edition.

"I'm still holding out for John Adams or Steve Reich, but they're so busy that it's hard to get to them. Right now we have composers set till 2007. Once the money runs out, we'll see where we go from there. We may find a new way of doing it - or maybe we'll stop after 20 or 30 pieces. At that point, someone may want to take over the project and bring it to a different level."

New York Daily News

October 29, 2003

Chorus Has Something to Sing About

By CELIA McGEE
DAILY NEWS FEATURE WRITER

The Young People's Chorus of New York City has a whole lot of firsts to its name.

The first children's chorus with a recording deal for a high-powered series of CDs.
First American chorus to win first prize in major competitions in Spain, Czechoslovakia and British Columbia.
First, multicultural chorus to work with the New York City public schools.
First contemporary choral group to commission and present works written for children by living American composers. They also count Denyce Graves and Celine Dion among collaborators.
Now YPC has become the city's first resident radio chorus.
WNYC yesterday broadcast the first of four quarterly programs - excerpts from "Brundibar," the children's opera written and sung by Jewish inmates in the Terezin concentration camp.

The chorus premiered the work in New York last year and will reprise it on Sunday, with a new English libretto by Tony Kushner and sets by Maurice Sendak, at the 92nd Street Y.

"I travel with the kids all over the world," says Francisco Núñez, 38, who founded YPC in 1988 because he wanted to bring vocal music to a full spectrum of the city's kids, "and everywhere we went we'd meet resident radio choirs. It's a unique way to hear live music - and spread musical knowledge.

"Music is a means of fellowship," he says. "But it can also change the life of a child with low self-esteem, who maybe grew up in the projects, had no friends, wasn't good-looking or tough - and within two years is a YPC soprano, soloing at Carnegie Hall."

The music Núñez promotes through the chorus is a conscious reflection of the diversity of children involved in YPC, which has 250 8- to 18-year-olds in its five divisions and 250 more in its school programs.

The chorus has singers from upper East Side private schools as well as far-flung public schools and centers for at-risk kids.

Núñez grew up in Washington Heights, where his parents moved from the Dominican Republic, and even then he mixed Latino dance music and Mozart, pop songs and Beethoven.

John Schaefer, host of "Soundcheck," the program that features the chorus, heard about YPC from Kurt Masur and the New York Philharmonic.

"There's been a longstanding interest here in having some kind of resident group," Schaefer says. "In Europe, all the larger radio stations have entire orchestras. Americans are getting the short end of the stick."

Fable has a nightmare story of its own

It's classic Maurice Sendak, the book "Brundibar."

Until a second glance.

The setting has the twisty spires and plum-cheeked domes of "In the Night Kitchen," the kindly daytime faces and grimacing nightmares of "Where the Wild Things Are," the furry antics of his "Little Bear" books.

The words, by Tony Kushner, are as fanciful as any in Sendak's other tales.

But why do the police suggest Nazi brownshirts, or the organ grinder sport an iron cross? Why does the villain of the piece about two children trying to find milk for their sick mother closely resemble Adolf Hitler in a tricornered hat? Are those Stars of David on the children's chests?

The children's opera "Brundibar," which inspired the book, was written by the Jewish Czech composer Hans Krasa in the Prague ghetto. It was performed by children for visitors to Terezin, the Nazi concentration camp, until singers and songwriter were sent to their deaths at Auschwitz.

A brave parable, a tragic history lesson and a warning, "Brundibar" came to Kushner's attention when he heard it sung by the Young People's Chorus. He translated the libretto into English, and convinced Sendak to work with him. Published by Hyperion Books, it comes out this week.

Originally published on October 29, 2003

The American Record Guide

September/October, 2003

Review - Transient Glory

The term Transient glory could describe a number of life's chapters. At the 92nd Street Y, where the Young People's Chorus of New York City is in residence, it is the name of a commissioning project for children's voices, whose ethereal quality and soaring range are as transient as childhood itself.

No adult choir would take time to bring more than two hours of premieres to performance level, let alone sing from memory, as the chorus of two dozen young teenagers did in April. Directed to a fare-thee-well by Francisco J. Núñez, who prepared not only notes but phrasing and details down to hairpin crescendos, the concern was a far cry from the adorable peeps and near-misses of the average school chorus.

The third annual installment included commissions from Pulitzer Prize winner Dominick Argento and David Del Tredici, as well as Michael Nyman and others. Canny writing made use of children's ability to disregard competing instrumental dissonances. Vocal lines had their share of scales, angelic thirds, and graceful melodies; but the works as a whole form a contribution to this section of American repertory.

There were several takes on aspects of youth - children seen from an adult's distance, not from the inside out. But in NYC Play Ground by Kevin James, commissioned by the Police Athletic League, poems by children in a PAL program are layered into taped speech fragments and song, bolstered by brass quintet and percussion. Sassy rhythmic modules feel like West Side Story, but 'My Weird Life', 'The Animals in Me', and 'Gun Shots' are gritty originals. Tough music, but well, life in New York is difficult for kids that the system calls "underserved."

Argento considers his elegant Orpheus, set to Osbert Sitwell's poem of fabulous creatures like unicorns and griffins", an easy piece. Possibly for him it is. He steers off awkward intervals and tricky entrances, but the work slides in and out of tonality and bursts with contract of staccato and legato. Nyman's Child's View of Colour is what the title says, from Walter Benjamin's 1915 poet's perspective. The words patronize, but the music is substantial and non-pandering, with string quartet interludes and the highest vocal range. (It's lovely that children without scored don't fear high A.)

Geoffrey Burgon's evocative Shirtless Stephen and the Children's Crusade is in several movements, encompassing a march with unison refrain, a broken, slow piano chord, and tamborine and sticks played by children. 'Stephen's Final Resolve', a lilting 6/8 song, was a nice highlight. (Burgon, in case one has forgotten, wrote the score for Brideshead Revisited.)

David Del Tredici, who became famous for antic, charming studies of Alice in Wonderland, contributed Four Heatfelt Anthems, composed for children instead of about them - and high time too. In the solos and chorus-in-thirds of 'Sabbath's Child', ("bonny and blithe, good and gay") the last word is shouted out repeatedly, Del Tredici being a gay activist. 'Alphabet', from a New England primer, runs and leaps through words beginning with successive letters. He somehow manages to create a sound and structure that is both contemporary and exactly right for the 300-year-old text.

Robert Burn's well-known poem 'Highlands Farewell' makes a lengthy and excellent score. The sweeping melody, with occasional exposed chromatics, was impressively sung by Emilia Hakes with child-soprano sweetness. Jon Holden, pianist for the evening, was more than able in the quick triple figures. Other works were Nils Vigeland's motoric, peppy Miracles and Núñez's close-harmony Kadiq, with a showtune-like piano part and a text ending in "Dona nobis pacem", "Shalom", and "Salaam". The simple, memorizable line of Beauty in a Moment, by the young chorus alumna Elizabeth Ziman, is that cute mix of pop and New Age that passes as lite classical.

A panel with Kurt Masur and others discussing the value of this project seemed redundant after the ample demonstration. The music is being published by boosey and Hawkes and recorded on the Vital Records label. From now on, getting into this group is going to be major tough. The glory of the child's voice is transient, but the chorus is introducing some music that deserves to be sung by future transient voices.

Latina Magazine

July 2003

The music man

by Mireya Navarro

Nervousness filled the air. At their annual concert at New York City's 92nd Street Y, before an audience of 900, the kids of the Young People's Chorus of New York City filed onto the stage one by one, dressed in long, blue shirts and multi-colored ties and scarves. Many of them were young Latinas, and they stodd in a half-moon four rows deep, waiting anxiously for their conductor and artistic director, Francisco J. Nunez, a dominicano with green eyes and Ricky Martin good looks.

As Francisco raised a hand, the chorus filled the room with sublime sounds. Among its rapt listeners were such music-world luminaries as maestro Kurt Masur, the music director emeritus of the New York Philharmonic, and parents such as Margarita Flores, 51, a single mother from the Bronx who was in tears as she listened to her teenage daughter sing.

Only a few years ago, Margarita says, her now 15-year-old daughter, Virginia Creary, had been a lonely child suffering from low self-esteem. But as a member of the Young People's Chorus that Sunday afternoon last April, Virginia performed a solo in a robust alto voice and confirmed to her mother that the girl's life had changed in ways neither of them had ever thought possible. "I was at the point where I didn't know what to do with her," Margarita says of the Virginia who joined the chorus at age 12. Now, however, Virginia has friends, keeps up with her schoolwork, and aspires to attend the prestigious Juilliard School to pursue a career as a composer and conductor. "I get really emotional," says Margarita, a school administrative assistant who is raising four daughters alone. "She's trying so hard, and she's really getting there."

This story of salvation is common among Virginia's fellow chorus members. Some of the children once did little more than hang out, while others were on the verge of quitting school. Now, they've been completely turned around by Francisco and his chorus, which is as devoted to making beautiful music as it is to changing lives.

The group, which sings and swings to a repertoire that includes jazz, pop, classical, contemporary, and opera, has won major international competitions, performed a landmark venues such as Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, and wooed some highly respected composers to write for it. A nonprofit organization, it now has a nearly $1 million annual budget and several divisions for ages 8 to 26. But perhaps most impressive is the groups ethnic mix: The chorus is divided almost half-and-half into white kids and children of color. Mostly female - girls outnumber boys more than three to one - it includes Jews an Muslims, African Americans and Latinos, kids raised in housing projects and those growing up in the gilded environs of Park Avenue.

Because he himself grew up in Washington Heights, one of New York City's most solidly Latino working-class neighborhoods, Francisco, 38, knew the importance of building such diversity: Too many children in the city never leave their segregated enclaves, he says. So he wanted to expose kids from different neighborhoods, backgrounds, and income levels to high musical standards, connections among New York's elite circles, and above all, each other. "You need something that you have in common to give you the opportunity to meet kids from other backgrounds," he says. "Plus, I wanted to catch kids young and let them in on my secret: that while many of my buddies ended up with very nice blue-collar jobs, I've gotten to travel the world through scholarships and friends."

Francisco's father, an engineer, died when Francisco was 14. Francisco and his older brother were left with their mother, who worked as a piano teacher and seamstress while raising them. She insisted on fostering her son's musical talents by buying him his first piano, giving him lessons, and forcing him to practice.

Despite the imprtance placed on the arts, money was tight at home, Francisco says, and he remembers sometimes being shut out of play simply because he couldn't afford the right skateboard. "At 11 I took a job working at a doughnut shop on Saturdays to make money and afford stuff other kids had," he recalls.

After attending both public school and private Catholic schools, Francisco went on to earn a bachelor's and a gaduate diploma from New York University and the University of Calgary in piano performance and music education respectively. Today he is a composer and conductor who writes mostly classical pieces for solo instruments and major choruses and orchestras internationally.

If composing and conducting satisfy his artistic and professional sides, then it is the chorus, which he put together in 1988 while working as a music teacher at a Lower East Side community arts center, that ignites his passion. He makes himself accessible to every one of the chorus members during and after their many rehearsals. Through his organization, he gives them free voice lessons so they can earn spots in university music programs. He pushes girls to apply to college and move away instead of staying in the city and getting stuck on their boyfriends. He writes letters of recommendation and arranges for counselors to help the chorus's high school students prepare for the SAT and apply for financial aid.

"He once pulled me aside because I had missed a couple of rehearsals, and he wanted to know how I was doing," says Elizabeth Wagoner, 18, a high school senior and soprano who joined the chorus when she was 14. "He wants to know how you live."

Says Virginia, Margarita's daughter, "Francisco would talk to me and say, 'Why are you so shy? Speak up!' He introduced me to other kids, and tha helped a lot. He also made me more confident about my singing. He made me realize I'm good."

And Eliana D. Raviv, a 15-year-old alto-soprano, recently went to Francisco when her mother warned her that she would have to quit if she did not devote more time to her schoolwork. "He told me to organize myself," Eliana recalls, "and to create a detailed schedule."

Francisco's work with the chorus is in stark contrast with some of his other duties. recently hired as director of choral activities at New York University, he also conducts the 120-man University Glee Club of New York City, a 109-year-old institution that draws in lawyers, CEOs, and other corporate who enjoy belting out songs like "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" at the end of a workday.

He navigates the two worlds with ease. At a recent glee club rehearsal, which took place in an ornate room at the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society, he stood on a dais surrounded by row after row of men ages 20 to 80, some of them wearing bow ties and suspenders. "You're speeding up," he admonished a section of tenors. Just several days later he said something very similar ("We're having a lot of trouble with this"), but this time it was to the kids from the youth chorus, who were gathered in a spartan rehearsal room at the Y, dressed in jeans and sweaters and sneakers.

Francisco admits that the children aren't always harmonious angels. "At first it's rough because some of them think they are cooler and better than each other," he says of newcomers. "But then they realize that if this child doesn't sing as well as this other child, they're not going to succeed. So they have to get along."

The chorus holds auditions twice a year to recruit new singers, who must have good voices and enough devotion to put up with a sometimes grueling schedule of rehearsals and concerts. The core concert chorus, for instance, has some 30 performances a year.

"I've gone to places that I would have never imagined,"
says Shaiita Torrado, 16, who has been a chorus member since she was 8. Shaiita, an aspiring merengue singer, has traveled to Vancouver and Walt Disney World for chorus appearances and sang with Celine Dion at a concert at which the chorus was asked to perform.

Francisco has also been able to convince major composers to write special pieces for children's voices, often for the first time. Collaborations with composers such as Pulitzer Prize-winning David Del Tredici have been so successful that Francisco is now editing a new series of children's choral-music publications based entirely on works commissioned by the Young People's Chorus. The chorus also has three CDs to its credit; the latest one, scheduled for release in July on Vital Records, is called Transient Glory. In an effort even closer to Francisco's heart, the chorus is now being used as a model for miliar programs across the country, and he is traveling to urban cities to teach others how to replicate it.

With so much going on in his life, the young conductor makes sure he takes time out in the summer to travel to Europe just to study and write his own music. He says he also plans to spend more time with his girlfriend. "When we travel, a lot of other choruses go, 'He's sooooo cute!' " says Elizabeth, the 18-year-old whom Francisco pulled aside after she had missed a couple of rehearsals. "I remember one mother even said, 'Oh, my God.'

New York Times

April 24, 2003

Seeking Top Composers for a Children's Chorus

by Anne Midgette

It was a scene familiar from elementary school through high school: children standing on risers, ear-nestly delivering their spring concert. But there were a few differences.

The children were singing the complicated music from memory. The group varied widely, from 10-year-old boys to 17-year-old girls. And rather than standard school fare — seasonal songs, Broadway arrangements, madrigals — they were singing pieces by Michael Torke, John Tavener and Ned Rorem, the kind of composers Boosey & Hawkes, the music publisher, used to call "serious."

It was May 2001, and the Young People's Chorus of New York City was presenting the first concert in a project called "Transient Glory." The goal of the chorus's director, Francisco J. Núñez, was to persuade concert composers to write serious pieces for children's choir.

People tend to think of children's chorus as a marginal form of music, Mr. Núñez said. "What's unique about this," he explained, "is that composers are studying this instrument and taking advantage of what this instrument can do."

On Sunday at 3 p.m. the Young People's Chorus will perform its third "Transient Glory" concert. On the program are six world premieres, including new pieces by Michael Nyman, Dominick Argento and David Del Tredici.

Mr. Del Tredici, like many composers Mr. Núñez approaches, was reluctant to write for children's chorus. He underwent quite a conversion. His work for the concert, "Four Heartfelt Anthems," is 17 minutes.

Part of the attraction for composers, said Jenny Bilfield, the president of Boosey & Hawkes, Mr. Del Tredici's publisher, is the technical ability of Mr. Núñez's choir. "A lot of composers who were uninitiated in the medium were blown away by the sound Francisco was able to create," she said.

But Boosey & Hawkes hopes that the "Transient Glory" project will reach far beyond the Young People's Chorus. The company is taking the unusual step of working with other publishers to create a new series of "Transient Glory" publications. Mr. Torke's "Song of Ezekiel," which was given its premiere by the Young People's Chorus in 2001, appeared in March; soon to follow are Mr. Del Tredici's piece, Mr. Argento's "Orpheus" (also to be performed on Sunday) and four other titles.

It is not that treble choruses do not already sing contemporary music. They do, lots of it. Choral music is one of the three top-selling divisions in Boosey & Hawke's market, and it is a lucrative field for composers, too. Financially "many choral composers do much better than concert composers," Ms. Bilfield said.

But the composers who specialize in choral music are not the same ones who write pieces for, say, the New York Philharmonic. Take David L. Brunner and Stephen Hatfield, two prolific choral writers whose names figure prominently on national repertory lists. In New York's concert halls they are probably not as well known as Mr. Torke, Louis Andriessen or Bright Sheng, who have all written or are writing pieces for Mr. Núñez.

"Orchestra composers are not known in the choral world," Mr. Núñez said. "Orchestra composers are the ones winning Pulitzer Prizes and Grammys. I went after that category, what America considers a serious composer."

While the general public is thought to resist con-temporary concert music, concert composers may also look down their noses at writing works for bands or choruses. "Transient Glory" intends to break down some of those perceptual barriers.

"It's important to me that composers not be pigeonholed, that composers who write concert music write a band work," Ms. Bilfield said. "There is no orchestra lineage that's guaranteed, no automatic ascent through the ranks of the finest chamber ensembles. The more conservatories can encourage compos-ers to develop facility in all different styles, the better off they'll be."

Mr. Torke was already looking into the choral market when Mr. Núñez contacted him. A composer who makes his living from his work, he was exploring new, possibly lucrative markets. "I was talking to Jenny Bilfield a couple of years ago," he said. "And either she or the print people said, `If you write something for, not elementary, but junior high choral age, that's a really good market.'

"This may be too hard for that," he added, referring to "The Song of Ezekiel."

Lucrative as the choral market can be, it is hard to lure big-league composers with the relatively modest commission "Transient Glory" offers. The going rate for a significant commission is $1,000 a minute, Mr. Núñez said. The "Transient Glory" rate is somewhat lower, enough for a modest choral work but not for the kind of piece Mr. Núñez regularly gets for it, like "A Child's View of Colour," Mr. Nyman's eight-minute piece with string quintet. (The chorus will perform it on Sunday.)

The money lies in the sales. "Transient Glory" is also path-breaking as a brand that crosses company lines. Other publishers will apply its logo to works Mr. Núñez commissions from their composers: Mr. Nyman's "Orpheus," for example, is published by Chester Novello.

Whether the concept will catch on remains to be seen. It helps that choral directors are constantly looking for new music. A possible downside is the difficulty of some of the work, which may be too challenging for an average children's chorus. But Boosey & Hawke plans to aim for the adult market as well. The standard treble chorus, usually represented by the letters SSA — soprano, soprano, alto — runs the gamut from boys' choirs to adult women's ensembles.

Mr. Núñez's own concert chorus, the 10- to 17-year-old division of the Young People's Chorus, is made up of both. This mix has helped shape the chorus's sound: a timbre blending the innocence of children with the warmth and fullness of a women's choir.

Whatever Mr. Núñez achieves with this new publishing venture, his empire is already burgeoning. His choir, which includes children from a range of backgrounds (it has branches in three city schools in poor neighborhoods), is outgrowing its home at the 92nd Street Y. Last summer it took first prize in an international competition.

And if its leader is a crusader, its members are loyal followers. "His choir isn't a children's chorus," Mr. Torke said. "It's largely made up of teenage girls, and they all worship Francisco. You can see it in their sleepy, starry eyes, the emotion and adoration."

New York Times

February 18, 2003

Sweet Tale For a Child, But a Dark Side, Too

By ANNE MIDGETTE

Brundibar means bumblebee, and Hans Krasa's children's opera seems, on the surface, as innocent as its title. Two children, assisted by a dog, a cat and a bird, sing in the town square to collect money for their sick mother.

But the opera's title figure is an evil organ grinder who tries to steal the children's money. And "Brundibar," the opera, also has a dark side. Written in 1938, it was repeatedly performed in Theresienstadt, the Nazis' model camp where Red Cross viewers were allowed in to see how happy the lives of incarcerated Jews there were - before, that is, they were sent on to die in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

So no performance of "Brundibar" can be wholly innocent. Staging the work this weekend at the Henry Street Settlement as part of the City University of New York's free series "Great Music for a Great City," Eric Einhorn, the 23-year-old director, placed it in context by making it a play-within-a-play. After listening to Eli Wallach, as their teacher, give a class about the actual history of "Brundibar," the children, members of the Young People's Chorus of New York City, decide to mount the opera themselves.

Mr. Wallach brought out a moving special guest, Ela Weissberger, who portrayed the Cat in the 55 performances at Theresienstadt and was one of the few children to survive.

The production she starred in may not have amplified the soloists, as this one did, but it is doubtful whether you could have heard the children's voices without the enhancement. In the pit, Neal Goren did a fine job leading the small orchestra, despite some inconsistencies from the winds.

The music of "Brundibar" is certainly good enough to stand alone. The composer may have simplified it for children, but he did not write down to them. It has jazzy moments, intricate ensembles and keeps the pace varied for its 45 minutes.

It was a good idea to use members of a chorus rather than professional child actors; it kept the evening from becoming too slick, retaining a spirit of innocence and play. Some of the performers were more experienced than others: Lindsey Kremer's Cat was a stage animal in truth, while Jakira Hill as the Baker, and Jihan McKenzie as a bonneted, smiling, irresistible Milkmaid, enchanted through simple directness.

Everyone did a very good job, starting with theprotagonists, Mitchell Bennett Schor as Little Joe and Eve Levin as Annette. Jared Newmark showed vocal savvy as the Policeman; Andrew McDonaugh was a pugnacious Dog; Jessica Bloom, an able Sparrow; and Meagan Stromer an eye-catching Ice Cream Seller. Zachary Denkensohn excelled in the thankless role of Brundibar, serving as a symbol, Mr. Wallach said, of Hitler himself.

The work ends in a joyful chorus of victory. Hand in hand with the actors, Mrs. Weissberger happily joined in.

New York Times

February 13, 2003

In a Children's Opera, a Holocaust Connection

By ALLAN KOZINN

Were it not for the circumstances of its earliest performances, Hans Krasa's chamber opera "Brundibar" might have become a pleasantly innocuous staple of the children's choral repertory.

But "Brundibar," composed in 1938, had its first performances three years later in Nazi-occupied Prague, at an orphanage where Jews circumvented rules prohibiting them from attending public performances by staging clandestine concerts of their own. When Krasa and most of the original production team were sent to the Theresienstadt camp at Terezin, near Prague, in 1943, they revived "Brundibar" and presided over 55 performances.

Because Theresienstadt was a temporary stop on the way to Nazi death camps, it was free of gas chambers and crematories. And because musical and other artistic activities were allowed there, the Nazis used the camp to create the illusion, for the outside world, that such camps were benign. One of the 55 "Brundibar" performances was attended by representatives of the Red Cross, on hand to inspect the camp. Another was filmed for the Nazi propaganda film "The Führer Gives the Jews a City," which presented Theresienstadt as a paradise ghetto.

Most of the original performers and listeners were eventually shipped to their deaths; of nearly 140,000 people who passed through Theresienstadt from November 1941
to May 1945, fewer than 20,000 survived. Krasa boarded a train to Auschwitz on Oct. 16, 1944, as did Viktor Ullmann and Pavel Haas, composers whose works have also been
revived in recent years. All three were gassed upon their arrival.

When "Brundibar" is performed nowadays - as it will be tomorrow through Sunday at the Henry Street Settlement (466 Grand Street, Lower East Side) in the "Great Music for a Great City" series of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York - its history inevitably weighs on it. But the music itself is the embodiment of innocence and hope, with sweetly harmonized choral writing reminiscent of Zoltan Kodaly, as well as cabaret touches that invoke the spirit of Kurt Weill.

Innocence and hope are the qualities that both Eric Einhorn, the stage director, and Caroline Stoessinger, who is producing, propose to underscore in their staging, which is to be presented in English.

"My primary motivation to produce `Brundibar' is the knowledge that if I lived 60 years ago in Czechoslovakia, one of those children singing in the Terezin `Brundibar' could have been my daughter," Ms. Stoessinger said. " `Brundibar' can help students to very personally understand and combat racism and hatred. When children learn this music, they learn history and sing passionately for those whose little voices were silenced. I want to try to open up people's thinking about bigotry and what it does. This puts a true face on it."

The opera, which has a libretto by Adolf Hoffmeister, is the story of two children, Little Joe and Annette, who have no money to buy milk for their ailing mother. Seeing passers-by giving coins to the organ grinder Brundibar, the children try to earn money by singing on the street corner. Brundibar chases them away, but a friendly Dog, Cat and Sparrow help them round up the other children in town, who form a choir large enough to compete with the organ grinder. When Brundibar steals Little Joe's hatful of coins, the children overpower him.

" `Brundibar' was very popular in the camp because peopleliked to see the children sing," said Ela Stein Weissberger, 72, of Tappan, N.Y., who sang the Cat in all 55 Theresienstadt performances and is to join the actor Eli Wallach in a prologue written for the performances this weekend. "And the `Victory Song' that ends the opera was very strong. We always had to repeat it many times. It was part of our resistance against the Germans. That's what we were feeling."

Not all survivors remember "Brundibar" as being so clearly symbolic. Suzana Justman, who now lives in New York, has written and directed several documentaries about Theresienstadt, including "Voices of the Children," heard "Brundibar" both in its original Prague staging and at Theresienstadt, and she sang in the chorus for three of the Theresienstadt performances. Although she was in her early teens at the time, about the same age as Ms. Weissberger, she remembers taking the work at face value.

"I know it's said now that the evil organ grinder was Hitler, and that when the children defeat him it's about overcoming the Nazis" Ms. Justman said. "But truthfully I think children my age just enjoyed it because it was so melodic, and our friends were in it. The grown-ups may have thought of it differently of course."

Mr. Einhorn, 23, is charting a middle course in his staging. He became interested in "Brundibar" while researching his senior thesis at Oberlin College, which included mounting a production of Ullmann's "Kaiser von Atlantis," a pointedly allegorical work composed in Theresienstadt in which Death is so repulsed by the limitless killing by the psychopathic Emperor Überall that he refuses to allow people to die until the emperor gives up his own life. (The Ullmann work is to have a New York performance in a three-concert series devoted to music of the Holocaust at Central Synagogue, St. Bartholomew's Church and Carnegie Hall on March 23, 24 and 26.)

"So many `Brundibar' productions force context onto the opera by putting the kids in prison uniforms or surrounded by rifles and searchlights," said Mr. Einhorn, who began discussing the production with Ms. Stoessinger in the summer of 2001, soon after his graduation from Oberlin. "That makes sense for `Kaiser' because it's so blatant. But `Brundibar' wasn't written to show the Nazis persecuting the Jews, it was written to show hope and have a moral. I'm taking a very literal view and showing the story for what it is."

Yet the production will not be without context. "We didn't want to have a pre-show lecture," Mr. Einhorn said. "So we have written an introduction in which Eli Wallach speaks to a class of kids about World War II, the Holocaust and `Brundibar,' with Ela as a special guest, telling the kids about her experience. During the overture, which Krasa wrote in Theresienstadt, the kids in the class will set up the stage to perform `Brundibar' themselves."

Ms. Stoessinger and Mr. Einhorn had planned to hold auditions for the singers - mostly 11 to 13 years old - in the principal roles to achieve their goal of a multiracial, multireligious cast.

"But we didn't want professional children coming with their agents," Ms. Stoessinger said. And the scheduling became complicated. In the end, they found the ethnic blend they were seeking in the Young People's Chorus of New York City.

"The kids know each other, they have a performing dynamic,and they have a lot of experience," Mr. Einhorn said. "And their director, Francisco Núñez, has wanted to do `Brundibar' for some time, so it was a natural fit."

The children have been rehearsing since January and learning how to move onstage. But for Ms. Stoessinger stagecraft is the least of what the singers will learn.

"I've been giving them other materials," she said, mentioning Anne Frank's diary as an example. "I think the more they know that the original cast were real children, the better they'll sing it. I think the lesson of `Brundibar' is important everywhere in the world now.