Bella Voce's concert: a gift to the community
 

by Dan Wolfe

Bella Voce Women's Chorus of Vermont is a professional-grade women's chorus founded and conducted by its music director, Dr. Dawn O. Willis, who has set very high standards of performance.

I attended the first of two spring concerts on Friday, May 18 at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in St. Albans Vermont.  Their program featured the work of Gwyneth Walker, who is, I believe, a resident of Vermont.

Before turning to the music, a few comments about the performance are in order.  The technical abilities of the chorus members are obviously being maximized by Willis.  This covers their diction, their sense of pitch, their rhythmic certainty (especially in the duple against triple sections of some of the works, or the switch from duple to triple rhythm sequentially), and their ability to change styles whenever necessary on the program.  It does not include their ability to transmit the meaning of the text through these technical abilities. The chorus achieved this goal as well throughout the program.

The program featured music of Gwyneth Walker.  Walker has a genuine gift for choosing texts and then capturing at least one possible interpretation of the text with the certainty of execution that is awe-inspiring.  The first movement of the new Cantata that Walker has been commissioned to write for Bella Voce, a setting of texts from Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gifts from the Sea was programmed, as was a set of three spirituals under the title of "The Spirit of Women".  In the second half of the program that was a setting of the e.e. cummings poem that begins "I Thank You God", and "Six Songs for Women's Voices", a compilation of six poems by the American poet May Swenson. There was a miscellany of other single titles, including Three Songs from Terezin and a song from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers. Styles ran from the religious to the very popular standards (Misty) to folk music to more classically-oriented forms.

Walker freely employs techniques such as organum, parallel and at the fifth, very beautiful unison lines, sound clouds a la Charles Ives, and a myriad of chords based on all kinds of techniques. Walker's gift is principally lyrical, and this goes hand in hand with her choice of text (the group is currently preparing to record all of Walker's music for women's chorus, and the CD is due out sometime in the fall).  It will be good to have a recording available in these works.

In summation: Bella Voce and Willis gifted the Vermont community with an impeccably prepared and executed concert that exhibited freedom of nuance within the restrictive demands of the music.  Brava to the ensemble and its guiding spirit!
Vermont Times, May 23, 2007