Dakota report

A report by Jim Feiszli, ChoralNet's President:

**

Many of you know that I have been in Germany for the past month as part of the quincentennial Symposium on Heinrich Isaac's "Choralis Constantinus" - the music composed for one of the finest choirs in early Renaissance Germany, the Konstanz Domkantorei. I prepared most of the music for the weekend and also presented workshops and lectures at the symposium and surrounding universities. My own group Dakota Voices joined me in the last week to perform at the concluding concert. Last Saturday evening we walked out from the sacristy of the Konstanz Münster and looked at the entire cathedral completely packed - not just in the pews, but sitting on the floor and standing in the aisles. According to concert organizers, there were over 1700 tickets sold.

The concert was something absolutely fantastic and unreal. We began by performing the alleluia-sequence pair for Christmas as Heinrich Isaac intended - with the organ, played by Münsterchordirektor Markus Utz, alternating with choral sections. This was followed by a famous jazz artist, Bernd Konrad, playing three solos, one accompanied by vocal improvisation by our bass, Chris Bannwarth. Then we sang the Isaac "Ave Maria" unaccompanied. The final number - the sequence for Pentecost, "Sancti Spiritus", was a collaboration between Markus, Bernd, and Dakota Voices. We sang the choral sections, Markus and Bernd doing the chant improvs and joining us on three of our choral sections. We repeated the last section a total of eight times, with the sax and organ improvising and then with us as well on the last time through. BTW, this is probably *why* the Council of Trent in the late 1500s abolished sequences from the liturgy. The musicians kept turning church services into concerts!

You can access many photos of rehearsals and the concert in the Münster online at:
http://music.sdsmt.edu/faculty/Feiszli/Europe2008
Yesterday South Dakota Public Broadcasting aired an interview about the event on their "Dakota Digest" at 6:30am and 4:30pm. You can find it online as well, at:
http://www.sdpb.org/Archives/ProgramDetail.asp?ProgID=7088