Ramblin’
Saturday, April 26 & Monday, April 28, 2025
Bel Canto Company
Welborn E. Young, Artistic Director and Conductor
Virginia Somerville Sutton Theatre, Greensboro, NC
Digital Program Order, Texts & Translations
(PDF – Zoomable for Low Vision)
Conductor’s Ruminations
Too many times in my life I have found my mind more fancifully “ramblin’” when I should have been paying attention, much to the frustration of colleagues, friends, and family. However, as I have matured these ramblings have taken me to creative places I would have never thought to explore when narrowly and intentionally engaged in a task. Such is the case with this evening’s program, Ramblin’. The more adventurous approach to programming this concert led me not just to location specific titles, although that could be a blast, such as Loch Lomond or Harlem Night Song, but also allowed me to be introspective, questioning, and fanciful. Explanations as to the combination of titles tonight is, at times, as wildly fanciful as my mind allows but, at other times, focused and intentionally programmed. I hope you will lose yourself in the performance and enjoy familiar and unexpected works that challenge and delight you.
For every concert planning session, my mind and my heart work as a team. My mind, a researcher’s mind, pulls together titles, often hundreds of titles once my heart has informed my direction. So it was with Ramblin’. Two titles resonated with me and informed my mind to begin the search. North, opens the concert. North encourages us in a subtle way to be open, to explore, make stories for ourselves. Know that the stories we make are possible because of the place you call home, the place of bread, salt, and wine. The final work of the program is and makes an excellent bookend for all the works after North. The turmoil and rancor I see and experience in our world causes me much distress which I respond to with a desire to isolate and protect. Blake Morgan’s (Voces8 tenor and arranger) setting of This Is My Song set to the tune Finlandia is a balm that calms my troubled mind and heart and allows me to continue to be open, vulnerable, to explore and make stories.
There could be no Ramblin’ without sightseeing and finding places of interest to visit. Trust me when I say that the number of choral works about other locations in America or the world is too many to represent in one program. So, I selected a small handful of titles which I’ve wanted to program but couldn’t quite work them in during past concerts. Loch Lomond, Feller From Fortune, Harlem Night Song, and Moonlight In Vermont each create a vignette or picture of a location. A love story in the highlands of Scotland is the theme of the text in Loch Lomond. Jonathan Quick uses not just a traditional melody but also a percussive ostinato built on a perfect fifth interval in the tenor and basses. The overall effect calls to mind a drum, fife, and dare I say bagpipes. Langston Hughs’s short but descriptive poem Harlem Night Songs, describes a stroll down a Harlem street by lovers. In the poem the night sky and a jazz club impress the narrator. I have heard Moonlight In Vermont used in several movies, the earliest of which was Baby Boom, a 1987 film starring Diane Keaton. The text evokes an idyllic mystical image of evenings in Vermont. The jazz-influenced arrangement by Darmon Meader enhances the magic of the words.
Four works use “mode of transport” as vehicles (pun intended) for the composers. Train, is a frenetic short work that may accelerate your heart rate much like what you experience if you are trying to catch a last-minute train. The Sea Shanty Medley – I am not a big fan of medleys but, the combination of these four sea shanties, Wellerman, What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor, Leave Her, Johnny, and Away Santiana, gives you a taste of the sailor’s life. Set for men’s voices, this is a nod to the old fashion glee club tradition. With a decidedly French compositional flair, La Nuit En Mer by Henk Badings describes nights out on the ocean for fishermen. They know where the best fishing will occur and when they make their big haul, they will return to their port victorious. The piano is as poignant and descriptive as the text, the beautiful opening measures in the piano depicts gentle lapping of waves against the ship. The entrance of the sopranos and altos crash against the calm portrayed in the men’s voices. The final and dramatic “triumph” ends the journey for them. The James Taylor song The Lonesome Road is a beautiful arrangement by Simon Carrington, a former member of the King Singers. The song’s protagonist is alone because he did not listen when confronted by his love but instead was argumentative, over-talking, and ultimately regretful.
Although I could have grouped several of the works previously mentioned here, there are three works that cause us to listen with heart and mind. Salutation as a prayer to God with the final line of text being, “let all my life take its voyage to its eternal home in one salutation” reminds me that our life’s journey is to an ethereal home (refer also to North). The balladic text of Come To The Woods encourages, invites, implores us to “come to the woods” when we struggle “for here is rest.” Finally, I have pondered the meaning of the text for Swimming Over London for the entire time that I have rehearsed this work with Bel Canto. A recent conversation with both Christy Wisuthseriwong and Sean Toso assured me that I was not being dense. Terms like “magical realism” and “british pop” were exchanged. Sean mentioned that his imagination conjures paintings by Dali and Picasso. I leave it to you to define the meaning of the beautiful and somewhat bewildering work.