Diocesan Festival Choir understood the assignment
The first Sunday of the season of Advent was enriched by the presentation of the Diocesan Festival Choir (DFC).
Staged at its St Luke’s, Cross Roads, ‘home’ the annual concert featured Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cantata No 140 Sleepers Wake (Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme) as the main work.
The presentation was dedicated to late presidnet of the Jamaica Guild of Organists Trevor Beckford, who died in September this year, having served some 40 years.
Decked in the liturgical colour of the season, the purple-clad choristers encapsulated the tone and expectation of the pre-Christmas time.
Programme notes offer the staging of the composition but also undergird the seasonal appropriateness of the work.
The choir opened and closed the work with Wake Ye Maids and Glory Now To Thee Be Given, respectively, serving as strong witness statements for the story.
Tenor Quincy Etinoff boldly presents “He comes!” with great richness in the recitative prelude to the first of two duets, Come Quickly, Now Come and Thy Love Is Mine by soprano Nomali Campbell and bass Caylinton Blake.
The two offered creditable deliveries of the work in a display of powerful note production and text representaion. But while they score high marks individually with moments of sweetness, they lacked the magic of a lovers’ duet.
The tenors masterly presented possibly the most popular piece from the cantata, Zion Hears Her Watchmen Calling. A consummate demonstration of fine line singing.
The singers were supported by violinists Gabriel Walters, Jovani Williams, and Paulette Bellamy, with Dareen Young on viola. Cellist Rashida Nelson, flautist Gregory Nicholson, and organist/pianist Livingston Burnett round out the musicians. Special mention must be made of Nicholson’s dexterity in support the second of the duets, the runs and trills added to the texture of the score.
The audience was encouraged to participate in singing the well-know hymn, Lo, He Comes With Clouds Descending, which added to the warmth and feeling of the evening.
The 99-year-old choir then pulled from its extensive repertoire to present the spirituals Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning (Andre Thomas) and Poor Man Lazrus (Jester Hairston), with Khyle Townsend on conga.
The contemporary pieces We Have This Hope (Wayne Hooper), Total Praise (Richard Smallwood/Dave Williamson), and David Clydesdale’s I Am completed the selections.
The choir, under the baton of Director Audley Davidson, did well to deliver good interpretation of the pieces. The sole disappointmnet was the failure of the sopranos to show their strength in the well-known Total Praise.
In all, the DFC truly understood the assignment and prepared its audience for the four-week walk to the season that is at once the culmination of the secular (Gregorian) calendar, but is the start of the church’s liturgical calendar with the theme of hope.
The audience was left waiting more, primed perfectly for Chrsitmas.
