Bangor choir leaving for singing tour of England

BANGOR – Summer in England isn’t that different from summer in Maine. Urbanites leave the cities for the countryside and the seashore, the choirs in most of the Anglican cathedrals and churches go on holiday, and, instead of song, the magnificent edifices are filled with silence.

This year the choirs of St. John’s Episcopal Church will spend three weeks in England exploring the musical roots of their faith tradition and filling in for vacationing English singers on its “Sing With Joy” tour. This will be the fourth time in 20 years the choir has traveled to the British Isles.

St. John’s is one of fewer than a dozen Episcopal churches in the United States whose choirs are considered to be proficient enough at Anglican music to sing in the Church of England’s cathedrals. It is the only choir in the diocese to perform in Anglican churches.

Over the past five years, church members have held many events to raise money for scholarships for choir members. The cost of the trip is more than $2,000 per person.

While traditional fund-raisers such as bake sales and bottle drives raised $25,000 for the 1996 trip, money for the 2001 tour was raised through the sale of a CD, “Sing My Soul,” performances of “Godspell” and “Joseph and the Amazing Technical Dreamcoat,” and other events, for a total of more than $60,000.

The choir will give a performance at 7 p.m. July 15, at the French Street church to thank the community for its support. The group will perform much of the music it will sing in England on its “Sing With Joy” tour at the concert, according to Fred Jones, choirmaster and organist at St. John’s since 1980.

“The July 15 concert will be almost a duplicate of the Bristol noontime service,” he said. We will sing all the anthems and the two canticles, the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis, that are always sung at Evensong.”

Choral Evensong has been a monthly tradition at St. John’s for more than 100 years, according to Corris “Corky” Smith, parish administrator and a member of the choir who will be making the trip.

The text of the music comes directly from the Bible and would be familiar to Christians of all faiths. The order of the service is taken from the 1662 Prayer Book of the Anglican Church, still used in most cathedrals in England.

Sixty-seven choir members, ranging in age from 9 to 70, will leave Bangor on July 22. They will sing Evensong at Bristol Cathedral, St. John’s Church in Glastonbury, Buckfast Abbey in Devonshire and St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, and will perform a lunchtime concert at St. Mary Redcliffe Church in Bristol. Five years ago, the choir sang in Durham, Edinburgh, York, Cambridge and London.

“To be invited to sing in St. Paul’s Cathedral is a great honor,” Smith said. “St. Paul’s is one of the biggest and most famous of all cathedrals, and it is just huge – four times the size of St. John’s. The acoustics are so phenomenal that the delay is 15 seconds. That means that after we stop singing it takes 15 seconds for the sound to stop traveling.”

Jones said that in Evensong services, traditionally held at dusk as the day ends and night begins, the Psalms are sung in a set order each month. The style in which they must be sung “is extremely demanding.”

“Within one note, three to 30 syllables may have to be sung. They must be sung in a certain style that sounds perfectly natural. That sound is not easy to achieve. It took me about 10 years to get this choir up to an acceptable level of quality in Psalm singing,” he said.

The choirmaster said that as a result of the trip, singers will return able to perform at a much higher level. In England, the group will rehearse for at least an hour each day, compared with once or twice a week at home. Jones also said the trip also helps singers put the work in context when they hear other choirs performing the same music. And, there will be opportunities to hear a few other choirs in England, he said.

Karen Keim of Cornith will serve as manager for the tour. Now an employee of the University of Maine, Keim worked in the travel industry for several years. The group of 67 includes three nurses, a doctor, four chaperones and numerous “camp followers” or family members who are accompanying choir members on the trip.

This is the youngest group that’s ever gone on the trip, according to Jones. Fourteen choir members will be under 14, and 11 between the ages of 14 and 21. There will be fewer adult male voices in choir, which means skeleton alto, tenor and bass sections, the choir director said.

The choir will be housed in college dorms in England. They will spend two weeks at the University of Bristol and one week at King’s College in London, according to Keim.

The trip will include sightseeing, including stops at Wells and Exeter cathedrals, the New Globe Theater, zoos, castles, museums and Covent Garden.

“The first day on route to Bristol from London, we’ll stop off at Stonehenge and Avebury, a spectacular set of Bronze Age structures,” Jones said. “The kids will have a chance to run around and get tired out. We plan to wear them out, pour them into bed at Bristol, then, get them up the next morning to sing.”

But the singing will be the hub around which everything else revolves.

St. John’s Episcopal Choir will perform at 7 p.m. Sunday, July 15. For more information, call 947-0156.