URBANA – Great Performances airs Monday, August 21st on WILL-TV and Illinois Public Media’s Clef Notes editor Katie Buzard has a featured role as a soprano with the Chicago Symphony Chorus in Leonard Bernstein’s “Kaddish” Symphony. IPM News Morning Edition host Kimberly Schofield spoke with Katie about the experience.
Schofield: Katie, can you talk to me about what it was like to prepare for this to be filmed for Great Performances? In a live performance, the opportunity that you have in something that is pre-recorded – to make edits, to go back and make any changes if something goes awry- is not there. What was that preparation like for you?
Buzard: For our dress rehearsal…usually the dress rehearsal, you don’t necessarily run the whole thing without stopping. We usually do the bits that you need to do over again, you touch up on spots, and you don’t have to dress in your concert attire or anything. But for this one, they made us come in our concert dress as if we were going to be performing it, just in case something went wrong in the performance, and they needed to splice things from the dress rehearsal. So, we technically had two shots. But really, we only had one performance with the performance energy to get it right. And of course, the lighting would be different because the dress rehearsal was in the afternoon. The concert was at night.
Schofield: Well, I have no doubt that it’s going to be an amazing performance. And even though it was amazing, it does sound like there was some added pressure with that performance-ready dress rehearsal.
Buzard: Yeah, it was also extra stressful because I was carpooling with a friend to get there. And there was an accident on the interstate.
Schofield: Oh, no.
Buzard: And we got there two minutes before the downbeat. So we were running in our heels across the parking lot to get to our spots in the chorus. Because if we were late to the dress rehearsal, we couldn’t sing the performance because if they had to use the dress rehearsal footage, we wouldn’t have been in the dress rehearsal footage.
Schofield: The music in this performance is beautiful. It’s also pretty complex. What was it like having to learn these pieces?
Maestro Marin Alsop conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival in 2022
Buzard: So, Bernstein loves unique rhythms, if you know West Side Story that is readily apparent. So it’s tricky rhythms that go between three and two that you have to get in your mind and get a feeling for. And he also uses twelve-tone rows. There’s this one section that was quite difficult where all eight vocal parts were singing different things at different times. They were in different keys, different meters and we started at different times. And it’s this big cacophony of sound and that was intentional. And then, eventually, Maestra Alsop brought it to a conclusion. But we all had to come in on our own and try to make it work. So it’s just very, very tricky. And the harmonic language is very different. There were some high notes that were quite difficult. And then also, this piece was in Aramaic and Hebrew, which isn’t as familiar to a lot of singers.
Schofield: And for you, Katie, what was the most rewarding part about being in this performance?
Buzard: I’ve long admired Marin as a conductor, I think she’s such a trailblazer. And it was really great working with her just to see how down to earth she was and engaging as a singer’s conductor. Because not all orchestra conductors are very good at conducting voices, or don’t connect with them in the same way that a choral conductor would, but she was really good at getting great sounds out of us and connecting with us. The energy of the whole performance with the extra specialness of it being recorded. Also, the soprano soloist, Janai Brugger. I’ve been a fan of hers for a while, so it was amazing to hear her sing live. It was also especially rewarding to sing in Highland Park where the Ravinia festival is. So little did they know, when they scheduled both the German Requiem and the “Kaddish” Symphony, that Highland Park would suffer this tragic shooting on July 4th of that year. And these concerts were only a few weeks after. So it was especially poignant to sing both of these works, which are sort of requiems, in a community that was suffering after this horrific event. So that was probably the most rewarding aspect of this performance.
Schofield: Katie Buzard is the writer and editor of Illinois Public Media’s Clef Notes, the monthly classical music newsletter. You can catch singing Katie with the Chicago Symphony Chorus on Great Performances on Monday, August 21st at 9pm on WILL-TV, streaming on the PBS app, and visit IPMNewsroom.org for more information. I’m Kimberly Schofield.