September 1, 2004
Church choir tours overseas
Traverse City Sanctuary Choir performs concerts in four northern European countries
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Singing below golden domes and amidst soaring arches of majestic churches and cathedrals, members of the First Congregational Church's Sanctuary Choir recently returned from a tour of four northern European countries.
Forty-two people completed the twelve-day tour in August that included performances in Russia, Sweden, Finland and Estonia. Of the tour participants, approximately 35 were singers led by choir director Mel Larimer and tour co-director Russ Larimer and accompanied by organist Sally Lewis.
Lewis, who has been the church's organist for 40 years, found the settings inspirational.
"It gives you a real feeling of awe to be in some of these older churches," she said. "It is hard to say if it was more inspiring for the performers or the listeners."
The construction design and techniques of these buildings catered to choirs and musicians in times before sound amplification, she noted.
"Of course, the acoustics were phenomenal," Lewis noted.
Adapting to new organs is one of the highlights of these tours for Lewis, who relishes the challenge of and exposure to different instruments. Her modus operandi is play and pray, she said.
"It is just a trick to figure out where things are, when you pull stops to figure out which keyboard they will play on," Lewis said.
"One of the organs I played on was in Skansen, Sweden, a sort of a Greenfield Village where they have recreated what Sweden was like," she added. "At a little church where we gave a concert, I played on a small organ built by a layperson in 1777 because he thought the congregation should have accompaniment. That was a very unique organ."
Under Mel and Russ Larimer's direction, the choir performed a range of sacred music as well as a repertoire of African-American spirituals. European audiences enthusiastically received this indigenous American art form.
"It's a type of music that choirs from other countries have difficulty singing so they really enjoy having Americans sing spirituals because they don't hear them that much," Russ Larimer said, noting his father has included these songs for years in his performances and that both love these pieces. "Only the bravest take them on, not because they are unusually difficult, but because they are intimidating, stylistically intimidating."
The Sanctuary Choir also sang one song in Russian, "Bogoroditse Bevo," learning the verses phonetically. Larimer searched for an appropriate song to present to audiences during the choir's four-day stay near St. Petersburg, which included two concerts. The second performance included eight members of a Russian choir singing with the group.
"When we picked music for something like this, we try to custom fit it to the locations we're going to perform in," said Larimer, who is choir director at Traverse City West Senior High School.
Steeped in history, the cities on their trip fascinated attendees such as David Russell. An amateur photographer, Russell returned with more than 1,000 images of people, buildings and places in the four countries visited.
"That's the amazing part of the trips, it's a walk through history," he said. "You visit a place like The Hermitage in St. Petersburg or the castles and cathedrals and you can stand three feet from a Rembrandt or a Monet and it is just amazing."
Another example is St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg. In addition to the beauty and history of this site, the cathedral still bears the scars of World War II. Russell noted that St. Petersburg, which until 1991 was known as Leningrad, was the site of a 400-day Nazi siege.
"Because of the high Jewish population in the city, Hitler decided to obliterate it," he said. "The columns in St. Isaac's Cathedral still have damage from shell fragments, which they chose not to repair."
The Sanctuary Choir has a history of touring and three years ago it completed a singing excursion to Italy and Austria. In 1999, the group traveled to England and Scotland to perform.
History, travel, Christian outreach, music - the motivations for going on these trips were as varied as the attendees.
"There are many people who just enjoy the company and the opportunity to perform in those kind of places and just love to sing in meaningful circumstances," noted Russ Larimer. "Others on the trip like the mission aspect, especially this year in Russia and their emerging freer social setting. I think St. Petersburg has 50 some denominations of churches now and that was important to several people in the group."