“Why, in the middle of an Episcopal liturgy, does everyone stop to perform a cantata that was written over 300 years ago by a devout Lutheran?” Ryan Turner, director of choral studies at Phillips Exeter Academy, is not asking a rhetorical question or trying to prove a point during an interview. Instead, he is relating one of the questions that he posed to the congregation of Boston’s Emmanuel Church on a Sunday morning in 2009 during Emmanuel Music’s search for a new artistic director.
Emmanuel Music was founded in 1970 by artistic director Craig Smith to perform all of J.S. Bach’s sacred cantatas in a liturgical setting. The ensemble-in-residence at Emmanuel Church, the group is celebrating its 40th season. Over the years, the ensemble’s repertoire has expanded to present large-scale and operatic works by Bach, Handel, Schubert, and Mozart, and chamber music by Schumann, Debussy, and Brahms, among other composers.
The repertoire for Emmanuel Music spans the centuries, but the core of their repertoire remains Bach, especially the Sunday Cantata Series. Following Smith’s death in 2007, the group spent two years searching for a new artistic director while Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Harbison served as acting artistic director (he will now be principal guest conductor). Because the artistic director also serves as music director of Emmanuel Church, the search was a comprehensive, detailed process intended to find a leader who would have the approval and active support of four groups of people: Emmanuel Church’s board and Emmanuel Music’s board, singers, and instrumentalists.
A tenor and conductor who joined Emmanuel Music in 1997, Turner credits his time in the chorus with playing a fundamental role in his development as a musician, partly because he gleaned so much knowledge from notable guest conductors such as Seiji Ozawa, former music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra; Jane Glover, music director of Music of the Baroque; Benjamin Zander, music director of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra; David Hoose, music director of the Cantata Singers and Collage New Music; and Harbison.
“It’s important to have many influences on one’s musical ideas. John Harbison always had a unique, and sometimes esoteric and austere, approach to text and how it related to music. David Hoose was such a perfectionist that he often pushed us to sing better and listen in a different way. Seiji Ozawa was incredible with his memory, attention to detail, and sheer intensity and enthusiasm,” Turner says.
Mostly, though, he feels that he developed because of Smith, under whom he learned Handel oratorios, Bach cantatas, Schubert lieder and chamber music, and Mozart operas. “I’ve said from day one that Craig’s finest ability as a conductor was that he was an enabler. He knew what he wanted from a piece, in terms of the ‘big picture,’ and did not spend as much time focusing on individual phrases. He trusted and enabled the musicians to fill in the details and drew the best from the people around him. That was an important lesson for me to learn as a conductor and as a singer,” he says.
Turner began conducting while attending Southern Methodist University in Dallas as an undergraduate student. A local Methodist church offered him the position of director of music ministry, overseeing a large choral program and, a few times each year, conducting members of the Dallas Chamber Players and Dallas Symphony Orchestra in a major choral/orchestral work. Turner earned his master’s degree in voice at the Boston Conservatory, where he also conducted several musical theatre performances—and it was in Boston, thanks to Bill Cotten (a member of the voice faculty at the conservatory), that he became interested in a career of oratorio and recital singing.
“I had come from the viewpoint of ‘it was opera or nothing,’” remembers Turner. “In Boston, I learned that there was a whole new world out there, and that there were professional opportunities for singers outside the opera world. I’ve even found that oratorio and recital singing are sometimes more musically and intellectually stimulating than opera.”
Mezzo-soprano Pamela Dellal, co-chair of the search committee, has been singing with Emmanuel Music for 26 years and praises Turner’s conducting skills. “Ryan’s technique is beautiful, clear, and expressive, both with and without baton, and his technique has been universally praised within the ensemble,” she says, adding that he has found a balance between passionately communicating his ideas and respectfully allowing the musicians to discover their individuality.
“Having been a part of the ensemble for so many years and having learned the repertoire under Craig, Ryan is in a unique position to value and utilize the skills of the musicians and gain their trust as well, in order to bring us to new and different ideas,” Dellal continues. “I have certainly experienced enough performances with Ryan to know that he has terrific ideas about Bach and about a large body of repertoire, and he has the ability to put his stamp on the music in his own way.”
According to Emmanuel Music executive director Pat Krol, Turner has been named artistic director for a number of other reasons: familiarity with the history and traditions of the Emmanuel community, involvement with the ensemble, and the benefit of one-on-one access to Smith that resulted from serving as a cover conductor when Smith’s health declined, discussing scores with him in preparation for those concerts. “Those were my final opportunities to absorb as much of Craig’s knowledge as I could,” Turner says.
Also important was the search committee’s conviction that Turner would maintain the artistic level that Smith had developed. “Craig Smith was beloved, and he was the ensemble. He nurtured and developed the singers and instrumentalists, and he elevated Emmanuel Music to a level of local and international acclaim,” Krol says. “Ryan is a consummate musician with experience in choral and solo singing, he performs different musical genres—opera, oratorio, and musical theatre—and he conducts other area choruses. His extensive repertoire is very impressive.”
That emphasis on choral and solo singing is vital, because Emmanuel Music is a “chorus of soloists”—depending on the music in a given concert, singers either sing in the chorus or take the spotlight as soloists. None of the soloists is a guest artist from the national or international music scene.
“The sense of ensemble is very strong because you are aware of the quality of the singers and you know the kind of music you’re able to perform,” Turner says. “Having an ensemble in which all of your members are of solo caliber really opens up the possibilities of what you can do, in terms of repertoire, and the depth of expression that these singers are able to bring to the ensemble is stunning and rich.”
In Turner’s view, the weekly interface with Bach’s music provides the best training ground a singer could have. As a testament to that, he names several renowned American singers who began their careers at Emmanuel Music—bass-baritone Sanford Sylvan, baritone James Maddalena, and the late mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.
During his 13 years singing in the group, Turner has learned a great deal about style, interpretation, and technique from his colleagues. “Living with Bach cantatas and wrestling with thorny, challenging texts that are set to the most sublime and difficult music have given me in-depth experiences,” he says. “Bach is some of the most demanding repertoire for any singer, so singing Bach has improved my breath support, German, vowel and vocal placement continuity, sight-reading, and musicianship.”
Those insights contributed to the answers he offered to the congregation in the aforementioned 45-minute lecture. “Bach, more than any other composer, challenges us technically, musically, and intellectually, and the biggest strength of Emmanuel Music is this core of musicians who engage in a weekly dialogue with Bach,” Turner offers, answering his own question. “There is no other musical organization in the United States that—every week—rehearses, explores, learns, and performs a new Bach cantata.”
The topic of the lecture was Turner’s choice, but the cantata he had just conducted on that Sunday morning was chosen for him based on the liturgical calendar. Preceding the lecture, he also conducted a Schütz motet, which he did choose. In fact, Turner spent the entire weekend rehearsing and conducting these two pieces, for which he also wrote the program notes. This way, the search committee tested nearly every aspect of his interaction with the Emmanuel community.
“We’re so excited about Ryan because of his energy, adventurous manner, genuine regard for the history and traditions of the ensemble, and very thoughtful one-on-one interactions with the musicians,” gushes Krol. “He pays careful attention to everything that a soloist needs so that he can support that soloist to do his or her very best in performance.”
Turner considers Emmanuel Mu-sic’s vast repertoire one if its most distinguishing characteristics. “This is an ensemble that can perform chamber music, opera, Bach, Schütz—you name it,” he says. “It’s the most versatile ensemble in Boston.”
To continue Smith’s legacy, Turner plans to not only cultivate that versatility, but also re-establish and expand the ensemble’s rich history of collaborations, which have included such figures as stage director Peter Sellers and choreographer Mark Morris. Partnerships also exist between Emmanuel Music and Boston-area schools and performing arts organizations to offer arts and music education to more than 1,000 young people each year. Outreach activities include masterclasses, recitals, workshops, and collaborative performances.
To reflect the strengths of Emmanuel Music’s past combined with Turner’s vision for the future, the 2010-11 season is titled “Where Tradition Meets Innovation.” Evening concerts will present Handel’s festive ode Alexander’s Feast, featuring a large orchestra and numerous soloists, and Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. For the next several seasons, the chamber series on Sunday afternoons will highlight Beethoven’s songs, piano trios, string trios, and other works. There will also be a Bach birthday celebration in March 2011.
As he begins this new venture, Turner is singing less and conducting more, but he intends to remain as active a singer as he can. This December, he will be appearing with the Handel and Haydn Society in “A Bach Christmas,” and he and his wife plan to continue singing in the annual 16-day Carmel Bach Festival in California as soloists and as members of the Festival Chorale.
“One of the most beneficial activities for me is performing on the other side of the podium,” he says. “It’s educational because it reminds me what it’s like to be a singer. Plus, conductors often forget that they can learn the most from other conductors.”
Singers interested in arranging an audition for Emmanuel Music can find more information at
www.emmanuelmusic.org.
