The Choir- Ken Burton - 17th Feb

[ardcarp]

Next Sunday at 5pm

Choral conductor Ken Burton presents a selection of gospel music.

Gospel might not be to everyone's taste, but Ken Burton is a fine choir director and should be a good exponent of The Choir's new (temporary?) format.

[ardcarp]

I feel unqualified to pass comment, so perhaps I should shut up. It's not a style of singing and especially of voice-production that I know anything about.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qqfhp

I can see that hybrid forms of Gospel, especially with full 'rock' backing, might appeal to a wide audience, though I find attempts to 'gospelise' such things as the Hallelujah Chorus truly grotesque.

But most puzzling of all was to devote nearly half an hour of the programme to a big chunk of Tippett's A Child of our Time. I'm delighted they did, 'cos Hickox's recording is magnificent, but Deep River (the link with 'gospel' presumably) only occupies the last few minutes; whereas Tippett's highly complex textures and challenging harmonic language seemed totally at odds with the anything else the programme stood for.

BTW the Hallelujah extract comes right at the end (a terrible shock after Tippett) so if you want to be shocked pleasurably or (as in my case) otherwise it's easy to find.

[DracoM]

I'd love him to have talked ab out how they train such a choir, what level of improv happens, do all these finely skilled choirs read music effortlessly i.e. the arrangements etc that are being set up for them, or what? Loved the rhythms, and the sense of community.

If it is as Mr Burton said, a largely unfamiliar genre for R3 listeners, then maybe a more technical breakdown and exegesis of method? Otherwise, it was just a series of tracks and biogs. The Tippett actually sounded a bit dull against what we had just heard, and the Handel..............ahem.

But thanks indeed to ardcarp.

[ardcarp]

I'd love him to have talked about how they train such a choir, what level of improv happens, do all these finely skilled choirs read music effortlessly i.e. the arrangements etc that are being set up for them, or what?

Yes indeed. I was trying to grapple with why the programme had 'missed a trick' for the average The Choir listener...and you've put your finger on it, Draco.