Celebrating 11 years, the Con Brio Choral Society filled the rooms within the Christ the King Roman Catholic Church in Old Lyme April 13 with music and song. Under the direction of Dr. Stephen D. Bruce of Groton, music director and conductor, the society drew from its audience laughter, participation, and an overwhelming applause after each piece.
Helen Barnett, Con Brio’s publicist, stated that the auditioned choir of professional and amateur voices has established a reputation for presenting challenging music and performing each work in the language it was originally written, mentioning examples such as Latin, German, Russian, and French.
“We limit ourselves to 50, because we don’t want to be any bigger than 50,” Bruce said, referring to the number of singers in the choir. “We want to maintain that small group, family feel where everyone in the group knows everyone’s name.”
Bruce said Con Brio sometimes loses members who move away from the area or other circumstances, and that’s why they hold auditions at the beginning of each concert season.
“For the first concert, we audition for the first week of September, and then we have the Christmas concert in December,” he said. “Then we audition for the first week of January for the concert in April.”
Involved since the beginning, Bruce said the group began with very experienced choral singers from Essex and Old Saybrook.
“They were looking to start a new group, and they were also involved in a project called Summer Sings,” Bruce explained.
During the Summer Sings performances, held at St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Old Saybrook, there are five or six sessions where a different conductor is invited to each session.
“I happened to be conducting one the summer [Con Brio] was looking for a conductor,” Bruce continued. “I guess they liked me during the Summer Sing, so they invited me to be the conductor of the new group. That was 11 years ago.”
Describing the society as exciting, dramatic, and encompassing wonderful performances of a wide variety of choral music, Bruce said Con Brio concerts typically feature one big piece that they refer to as a major work, usually accompanied by an orchestra.
“That really just means that they’re long,” Bruce said. “They’ll typically be a half an hour to an hour long.”
He explained that major works are divided into smaller group parts, incorporating some solo movements and then movements from the whole chorus. The second half, he continued, is usually shorter music, mentioning examples such as Renaissance pieces, serious a cappella pieces, and folk song arrangements.
Bruce said he spends a lot of his time picking the different selections for the chorus to sing.
“I go to choral director conventions where you listen and watch the music, and I go to reader sessions and other choirs’ concerts, so I’m always on the lookout for music that would be right for the group,” he explained. “So that’s a fun part of it that I do mostly by myself.”
After consulting with the society’s music committee, he said, the group moves on to the process of learning the music.
“Fortunately most of the singers are experienced, so they’re good sight-readers and they’ve sung a lot of music. So it’s not as challenging as it could be,” he added.
The first piece performed at the April 13 spring concert was J.S. Bach’s “Jesu, meine Freude,” meaning “Jesus My Joy,” a piece Bruce called one of their more challenging pieces. Though it’s a funeral piece, he said he wouldn’t call it sad because it’s also very powerful.
In contrast, during the second half of the performance, Con Brio gently sung “There Will Be Rest” by Frank Ticheli, a piece Bruce said was written in honor of an 18-month-old boy who died.
“It’s kind of a sad piece, but a very strong message of hope,” he said.
A piece that made the audience smile was mountain song “Nelly Bly” written by Stephen Foster and arranged by John Holloran.
“The guys sort of say to their wives [in the song] it’s time for us to start sharing the housework,” Bruce said. “So how about we do this. In saying to the wife he says, ‘You do the cooking and cleaning and I’ll do the banjo playing.’”
“It’s a mixture of work,” Barnett noted, “and some of it is more classical…there’s the ending where there’s the folk spirituals and the other numbers where the audience can join in, so it’s a nice unusual mixture of works.”
A regular member of the Christ the King Roman Catholic Church, Fideles Florkoski of Westbrook said after a dull winter, the concert was an uplifting and delightful experience.
“The molding of the voices was done very professionally, and I think it’s something that any age can enjoy…it was the right performance at the right time,” she said.
“I think [Bruce]’s built that chorus into quite a professional group and I think there is a lot of camaraderie,” Barnett said. “People really enjoy each others’ company, and I think that means a great deal, too. They’re quite a close-knit group and all ages...it’s quite a mixture of people but all coming together and working hard to put on a fine performance, which I think they achieved.”
“We have wonderful people in this group and there’s the music,” Bruce said, explaining his interest in the group. “We’ve really worked very hard on the music and the end product is something that we’re really proud of. Part of it is what you deliver to the audience and part of it is to experience it.”
Performing two concerts a year, the society will make its second international appearance with a concert tour of Germany and the Czech Republic in May.
Barnett said the chorus has also performed in Italy on a tour that included performances in Florence and at St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. She added that she believes this opportunity to perform in European countries holds great appeal for this adventurous chorus, particularly because Germany is the birthplace of many musical geniuses, among them Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Mendelssohn, and Wagner.
“Germany, and especially the cities we will be visiting and performing in, is the cradle of much of the music which we continue to sing today,” noted Bruce. “Naturally a highlight will be to sing in Bach’s churches. When we perform in magnificent venues like the Duomo in Florence, where we sang our last tour, I have the feeling that our voices are mingling with the sounds of music of the last 800 years.”
For more information about the Con Brio Choral Society, visit www.conbrio.org. Non-members interested in joining the tour can call 860-767-8998.