Choral group Tapestry will fill St. Paul’s with beauty
Glorious voices lifting music from throughout the centuries to the rafters of one of Chattanooga’s most beautiful churches—what could celebrate the spirit of the season better?
Boston-based female choral ensemble Tapestry comes to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church downtown on Friday with a program created originally for performance at Los Angeles’s Mount Wilson Observatory. “Starry Night” will be performed as “Starry Night: A Candlelight Holiday Celebration” for this evening that’s part of the ongoing St. Paul’s Artists Series Concerts.
As Tapestry’s website describes it: “The program opens with a solar eclipse as the world teeters on the edge of a black hole in medieval France, and then takes flight, weaving together 16th-century Spanish Villancicos with works of David Lang, Hildegard von Bingen, Alan Hovhanness, Claude Debussy, Ivan Moody and Patricia Van Ness.
“Hovhanness’ beautiful melody, ‘In Early Dawn Song,’ serves as a common thread through the concert as Tapestry explores the cycles of the moon and stars, as well as human life from childhood to young love, and finally to the wisdom of age.”
The Los Angeles Times said, “They sing beautifully separately and together with a glistening tone and precise intonation.”
The three founding members of Tapestry, Laurie Monahan, Cristi Catt and Daniela Tosic, met at the Longy School of Music at Bard College in Cambridge, Mass., where Monahan was teaching and
Crist and Tosic became students. Monahan had already founded the music group Ensemble Projects Ars Nova (PAN), and as Crist and Tosic began performing with it, eventually the idea for Tapestry emerged, according to Crist.
Today, the three collaborate with different guest artists for the various programs they do; in the case of “Starry Night,” they will feature clarinetist James Falcone.
The Mount Wilson Observatory asked Tapestry to “design a program around the stars,” says Crist. Specific music was not requested, so it was up to Tapestry members to envision and then create the program.
Crist notes, “We love to mix together very early, medieval and Renaissance music with modern music written for voice. We find a theme and then begin to weave the music together.”
Sometimes finding the right music is like detective work, she agrees. “We spend a lot of time in libraries, looking at texts that refer to music.” Modern composers sometimes write specifically for Tapestry as well, she says, citing Patricia Van Ness as an example.
This will be Tapestry’s first visit to Chattanooga and St. Paul’s, and group members are looking forward to it, says Catt.
“We begin working with specific spaces as soon as we arrive,” she explains. “We work out the resonances, find the sweet spot in the space if it exists.”
They have already heard good things about the lovely old church’s acoustics. “We move around quite a bit in performance, and often that movement changes each time we do a concert,” she says.
The 90-minute “Starry Night” will be performed without an intermission, mirroring a theatre trend.
“The program really does tell a story. It’s not a play, but it’s a story told through voice,” says Catt.
“Starry Night: A Candlelight Holiday Celebration”
Friday, 7:30 p.m.
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
305 W. 7th St. (at Pine)
(423) 266-8195
stpaulschatt.org/concert-season
$30, $20, $15 (seniors)
Tickets will also be available at the door