Noteworthy News, April 24, 2020
Virtual Sing: Monday, April 27 at our usual start time of 7 pm. We will be using Zoom with the access code https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82530842970, Meeting ID: 825 3084 2970. Remember, if you have the option, you will want to use a device with the largest screen. The Laptop/Desktop version is the most user friendly. We have found the Zoom application to be "watered down" for Tablets and really abbreviated for Smartphones. If you plan on using a Tablet or Smartphone, please download the app before our meeting. You will also want to create an account with Zoom before the meeting. Most of us are using the free version.
Notes from Alissa: It was such a joy to see so many people at the Virtual Singing Meetup on Monday night. If you couldn’t join us last week, please drop in this coming Monday. We are preparing Biebl’s Ave Maria, working on some technical bugaboos, and keeping our voices in shape. The sheet music, pronunciation, and markings are attached to this email, but you can also access these resources from our new Members page on the pschoir.org website. Click on Members and use the password: pschoir.
About using Zoom:
When you sign on, please feel free to chat and catch up. However, when we are ready to start singing, the director will ask you to mute your microphone. The unavoidable issue with online group rehearsals is latency -- the time delay that takes place when moving data from one place (or singer) to another. It doesn’t matter how fast your connection is, latency will still be an issue. In order to work around that factor, we have to mute everyone when we sing as a group, so you will only hear yourself as we practice.
If you want to make a comment during the rehearsal, use the chat function in Zoom. We will talk about that on Monday night so that everyone knows where it is and how to use it.
The most important thing to remember as we start our online singing collaboration is to be patient! Zoom is new, exciting, and different for most of us so everyone's understanding is appreciated and we'll figure it out.
I’m looking forward to seeing and hearing you on Monday!
From our Board chair, Katherine Lefever: Thanks to several generous gifts, we’ve raised $1,200 so far toward our $10,000 goal. We’re off to a good start! Can you help us get a bit closer by making a donation? Every gift makes a difference. Please help PSC and make your donation online here or by mailing a check to Portland Symphonic Choir, PO Box 1517 Portland, OR 97207.
And from Wendy: To help us stay in touch and feel connected, we would like to send an email with photos and updates from you on how you’re all doing at home. Examples of photos or updates might be:
Photos spending time with your family
Photos of you studying or making music
A song or piece of music that has brought you comfort
Photos of meals or recipes you’d like to share
A book, movie, or TV show that you’ve enjoyed
A funny or meaningful story about something that has happened to you recently
These are just a few examples and we are open to ideas. A compilation of updates will be sent next Monday. Depending on responses, we might continue this photo album weekly. Here's a link to last week's contributions: Album You may submit your photos and/or updates to jayde@pschoir.org
We are still looking for a volunteer or two to assist with video editing for a future Zoom-based project. Please respond via email to president@pschoir.org.
Upcoming Choral (musical) events of Note: This week's edition of The Shows Must Go On YouTube Channel will feature the production of Love Never Dies, a sequel to Phantom of the Opera, (last week's show) set 10 years later. It's available to view free on Friday beginning at 11 am, Pacific Time for a limited 48-hour period online. LINK
Special from Choir member, Willa Perlmutter: I don’t know how many of you I’ve told about this, but I had a life before Stoel Rives. Between 2006 and about 2015, I was deeply involved in a project that ultimately resulted in the completion of a documentary film, Defiant Requiem, and the creation of a non-profit foundation, the Defiant Requiem Foundation.
Defiant Requiem tells the story of Rafael Schachter, an opera conductor and hero who was imprisoned at the Nazi concentration camp Terezín (not a death camp, but a camp from which most of the prisoners were deported east to Auschwitz). For reasons explored in the film, Rafi Schachter assembled a group of prisoners into a chorus that ultimately gave 16 performances of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem Mass while they were imprisoned at the camp. The last performance was ordered by the Nazis as a cynical propaganda effort meant to distract a Red Cross delegation from their mission of observing conditions at Terezín. After that last performance, Rafi Schachter and most of the prisoner-musicians were rounded up and sent to Auschwitz, where they died. Rafi Schachter himself did not survive.
An old and close friend of mine is a symphony conductor who learned the bare outline of the story and made it his life’s work to learn more. He (his name is Murry Sidlin – a name that may be familiar to you who attended the Oregon Symphony in the late 1980s and early 1990s) put together what he called a “concert-drama” to tell the story of Rafi Schachter and his chorus of heroes. Under his baton, that concert-drama, the Defiant Requiem, has been performed numerous times all over the world. (Coincidentally, it had its premiere with the Oregon Symphony and the Portland Symphonic Choir – many of our current members participated in that performance).
In 2006, Murry brought a chorus and orchestra to Terezín itself, where they (we) performed Defiant Requiem on the site of a former Nazi military academy. I was privileged to be a part of that group and to work with Murry over the next several years as we brought the concert to a number of other communities and established the Defiant Requiem Foundation to both tell Rafi Schachter’s story and educate new audiences about the power of the arts in the face of inhumanity. My then-firm set up the 105(c)(3) Foundation and I was privileged (truly privileged) to be the Foundation’s first general counsel. I’ve sung Defiant Requiem about a dozen times, if I’m counting right, including three performances at Terezín itself, at the Kennedy Center, in Budapest, and in Jerusalem with the Jerusalem Symphony as part of the Israel Festival.
Which brings me to this. When we went in 2006 we were accompanied by a documentary film crew. The footage they shot formed the central core of the Defiant Requiem film. It took many years, but ultimately the film was made and aired, among other places, on PBS a couple of years ago. It was nominated for an Emmy for best full-length documentary film when it was released in 2013.
I’ve just learned (see below) that the movie is now available for free on Amazon Prime and also via the link to the Foundation’s website, below. I’d encourage you to watch it. It’s quite a good film and I’m very proud of my role in making it happen. If you look closely, you’ll see me in a few of the shots (including the footage taken when we sang in the basement where Schachter rehearsed his chorus, on the day I learned that it’s possible to weep and sing simultaneously). And the interview of Felix Kolmer, one of the Terezín survivors, was filmed in the living room of our house in D.C.
I’d be happy to talk further about any of this with any of you. This is one of the things in my life of which I’m most proud and most passionate. I’m glad to be able to share it. (And please feel free to share this with anyone else).
Thanks for reading. Go watch the movie. Then wash your hands and stay well, my friends.
Willa.