MUSIC

SINGING THE SONG

THE VOLUNTEER SINGERS OF THE NORTH CAROLINA MASTER CHORALE DELIVER PROFESSIONAL VOCAL PERFORMANCES

BY KURT DUSTERBERG ⅼ PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE NORTH CAROLINA MASTER CHORALE

Bradley Layton is an epidemiologist. His work days are spent pouring through data science and biostatistics, evaluating the safety of new medications. But when it’s time to call it a day, he has his go-to stress reliever. “I get in my car and drive away, and I have 25–30 minutes,” he says. “Then I show up and I get to sing for a couple of hours.”

Layton is a member of the North Carolina Master Chorale, a 170-voice symphonic chorus, which serves as the resident chorus for the North Carolina Symphony. But the organization also produces a full season of its own projects, held at Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts’ Meymandi Concert Hall and other venues. All of the vocalists are volunteers, so performing with the chorale is an avocation for nearly all the members. “I never thought music would be my career, but I just couldn’t give it up,” says Layton, who played piano as a child and sang in his collegiate choir. “I needed it as part of my day. I needed to have something that wasn’t just sitting with a textbook, studying on my own.”

Al Sturgis has served as the music director and conductor of the chorale since 1993, auditioning talent and staging as many as 40 performances per year with different groupings of personnel and musical styles. During the season, which runs September through May, the large performance group rehearses every Tuesday. On a performance week, they meet as many as six nights. “I have such appreciation for them and the sacrifices and the commitments they make,” says Sturgis, a Cary resident. “We have a lot of educators. I don’t know how you get out of rehearsal at 10 o’clock at night, then you have to get up at 5 o’clock in the morning and teach kids all day. I really marvel at folks like that. They really love it. And I’m proud to say that what we have in Raleigh gives them opportunities a lot of other places can’t.”

Gina Difino sang in three choirs in high school and continued in college. She joined the chorale in 2003 when she moved to the Triangle. “It’s something I knew I always wanted as part of my life,” says Difino, who directs the study abroad programs and fellowships for the Honors Carolina program at the University of

North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “In some ways it’s therapeutic. For me, it’s the act of community singing, creating excellent music with people as a group.”

FINE TUNING PERFECTION

All members of the chorale must audition with Sturgis, who uses the experience to gain a working knowledge of each singer’s skills. “I take careful notes for each singer’s audition when they come in,” he says. “I’m also looking back very carefully at their experience and their background. Who was their conductor that they sang with in college? If I know that program, the kind of experiences they had and the repertoire they were singing, I know what they can do.”

Sturgis sang in opera and musical theater before taking up the baton as a choral director in school settings. He has served as guest conductor for the New York City Ballet at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, among other guest appearances with operas and ballets. His enthusiasm for conducting shines through in the details of his craft.

“It’s all about where you apply a straighter tone, where you add a decrescendo, or holding this note a little longer, the rhythmic attack,” he says. “All those things happen in the rehearsal. When we all manage to do something as an ensemble that gets us closer to our ideal for that piece, you can see the light in everyone’s eyes. It’s so rewarding.”

The vocalists say their conductor deserves credit for the fine tuning. “Al is a very encouraging force,” Difino says. “He makes people at ease, and he can help you bring out some of the best of your performance skills. He inspires people to bring more to music than just the technicalities.”

Sturgis also decides what music the North Carolina Master Chorale will perform. While his singers can perform the most challenging masterworks, he must also appeal to a general audience. “If I’m doing something like our Halloween show, I can do a nice mix of things that might challenge the audience a bit with stuff they don’t know,” Sturgis says. “In the second half, we will do lighter things like “Phantom of the Opera.”

I think it’s fun to do that for both ends of the audience, so a more classically inclined listener will come and enjoy things from musical theater or the vocal jazz spectrum, and some of our more commercially leaning listeners might come in and be surprised at a piece that they didn’t know, like a really beautiful piece by Bach or Brahms.”

For the volunteer members of the chorale, there is indeed a payoff for all those hours of singing their hearts out. “It’s something the audience gets one time, but it’s something you’ve been living with for months,” Layton says. “There is still something about putting on your tuxedo and walking on stage with an audience there. You get one shot at it, and then it’s done. There’s an adrenaline rush to that experience. I absolutely love it.”

Difino agrees, even if she is preaching to the choir. “There’s something about being in front of people that makes you want to bring your best to that moment,” she says. “The power of being in sync and producing music in that way is absolutely emotional. You’re immersed in it, you’re surrounded by it, you’re breathing it. That definitely makes it magic.”

DONATIONS AND GRANTS HELP THE CHORALE WITH COMMUNITY OUTREACH

BY KURT DUSTERBERG

The North Carolina Master Chorale plays a key role in the Triangle’s music community. You might call it the “unsung” hero of the local fine arts scene.

Cary resident Chris Kastner is the executive director of the nonprofit organization. It’s her job to make sure the chorale has funding to cover a wide range of financial needs. The chorale must hire instrumentalists, purchase music and rent performance venues, necessitating an annual budget of nearly $400,000. In addition to ticket revenue, the budget is supplemented with donations, as well as city and state grants.

“We do have a wonderful product to offer, but what we do is so much more than just that,” says Kastner, who joined the Master Chorale in 2019 after eight years with the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra.

The chorale also sponsors the North Carolina Master Chorale Youth Choir, a professionally directed program that allows high school students to prepare and perform choral music. Another initiative, the Vocal Impact Project, is led by retired choral music teacher Diane Covington, who works directly with the Wake County Public School System to enhance high school choral programs. “Our ticket revenue has been anywhere from 35–50% of our annual budget,” Kastner says.

“The money we get from ticket revenues, grants and donations helps support the high school Vocal Impact Project that most people don’t know anything about, but it’s a wonderful resource for those students who are getting it.”

Ticket sales for the upcoming season are meeting expectations, but they are running behind pre-pandemic levels, Kastner says. The chorale maintained some momentum during the pandemic by recording virtual choral performances that reached a wide audience online during the extended layoff. “Our donors and supporters were so generous,” she says. “I think people want to see these organizations survive. They want to be there when we can all be out enjoying them again.”

To learn more about the North Carolina Master Chorale and its upcoming season, visit ncmasterchorale.org.

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