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(Martin Dreyer, York Evening Press)
A thrilling adventure
A wag once remarked that to perform Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers is to court disaster. Mind you, he went on to say that to write about it is to alienate some of one's best friends. We are clearly all in dangerous waters here. But the Ebor Singers are courageous enough these days - and talented enough, too - to take on almost any choral challenge. On Saturday, they tackled the Vespers and emerged with flying colours.
Spread in a single line across one side of the Chapter House, with Peter Seymour's chamber organ and David Miller's chitarrone (bass lute) dividing them into two choirs, the 19 singers were fully exposed to this slippery acoustic. But a baker's dozen of them took solo roles, which says much about their individual prowess. Paul Gameson conducted from within the tenor ranks. He hardly needed to: tempo changes in Nisi Dominus, for example, were exceptionally smooth, as if instinctively felt. Some sections even occasionally swayed in unison. Plainsong antiphons were inserted before the five psalms, adding liturgical flavour.
The lion's share of the solo work went to Jason Darnell. His intelligent phrasing made Nigra Sum a highlight, but he also scaled down his tenor admirably in the echo duet and in the trio Duo Seraphim. Bass soloists were sometimes too light, but the sopranos absolutely spine-tingling at stratosphere heights. Of three 'imported' motets by Monteverdi's contemporaries, Cavalli's Salve Regina was most telling. But the dazzling final Magnificat capped a thrilling adventure.
(Martin Dreyer, York Evening Press)
Alive and thriving
We must always be looking to the next generation: the continued health of music demands it. So the Ebor Singers and their conductor Paul Gameson deserve plaudits for their new carol competition for young composers.
The two leading works were unveiled on Sunday in a concert that aligned Britten's A Ceremony of Carols, in its original, treble-voice version, with other carols of the last century.
Topaz Pauls's setting of Hush! My Dear, by the 18th-century hymn-writer Isaac Watts, was a worthy winner. A pretty melody, heard at first from a soprano soloist, framed the piece, with a minor section between: a neat shape, easily comprehended, full of promise. Runner-up Ester Lusty gave Herrick's What Sweeter Music? more hymn-like treatment, pleasingly harmonised.
It was a pity that the opening and closing plainchants in the Britten were not sung in procession, given the ideal surroundings. Still, after a slightly boisterous start, the ladies settled into an easier stride, gentled along by Melanie Jones's harp. Solo voices were relaxed and ensemble was tight. Over-fast, Deo Gracias lost rhythmic excitement. But the overall effect was vividly evocative.
Interleaving the 'O' antiphons with the remaining carols - following the example of St John's College Choir, Cambridge - worked well. Leighton's setting of the Coventry Carol was beautifully delivered, set off by Louise Eekelaar's clear soprano. And the stunning final chords of Howells' A Spotless Rose were impeccably tuned. The carol is alive and thriving.
(Martin Dreyer, December 19 2006, Yorkshire Evening Press)
If this is outreach, let's have plenty more.
Outreach is one of those buzzwords without which no application for arts funding is complete.
But it can have genuine meaning, never more so than on Saturday when the Ebor Singers devoted six events to the Siege of York in the summer of 1644. Walks, lectures and concerts one involving two local schools celebrated what proved a defining event in the English Civil War.
continued...
Music For Troubled Times, the culminating concert, brought the love of Charles I for his French queen, Henrietta-Maria, to the foreground, with extracts from their letters read by Emily Allen and Christian McKay. The backdrop came from composers largely associated with Charles's court, notably William Lawes. His three-part round, See How Cawood's Dragon Looks, reminded us of the Royalist garrison stationed at the archbishop's castle there. Two vigorous psalms must also have roused the troops. But the best of the music symbolised the anguish that divided country and families alike. We felt the pain in William Child's dissonances, tenderly shaped. Still more telling were the raw harmonies of George Jeffreys's How Wretched is the State.
Paul Gameson and his singers deserve warm congratulations. If this is outreach, let's have plenty more.
(Martin Dreyer, May 29 2006, Yorkshire Evening Press)
A feat of stamina and severe test of musicianship passed with flying colours
The growing number of small and chamber choirs in York, already disproportionate for a city this size, makes it imperative that each one should carve out a distinctive niche for itself.
The Ebors, under their founder and director Paul Gameson, are managing with signal success.
Their performance on Saturday of music for All Saints and All Souls by the great Spanish renaissance composer Tomás Luis de Victoria offered shining proof of their prowess. Mass movements from the Missa O Quam Gloriosum (published 1583) and the complete Requiem Mass (1603) may not sound like the stuff of entertainment but they contain much delicious counterpoint.
The choir's 17 members were ranged in a semicircle, with Gameson himself, singing tenor, on one end.
These youthful voices were mainly well aware that in such a warm and vivid acoustic the building must be entrusted to do the work. Only the sopranos, so often a glowing beacon, occasionally overstepped the bounds of stridency, as in Guerrero's Trahe Me Post Te.
The gem of the evening was the motet Versa Est in Luctum, its low, anguished harmony swelling and then subsiding into a neat decrescendo.
But overall a feat of stamina as well as a severe test of musicianship were passed with flying colours.
(Martin Dreyer, October 31 2005, Yorkshire Evening Press)
One of the most exciting professional vocal groups to emerge in the UK for many years
October 28 2005, Yorkshire Post
'Good start to festival. As a first salvo in this year's York Early Music Christmas Festival, this was just what the doctor ordered: Charpentier savouring all the holy fun surrounding the birth of Christ.
The Ebors, under Paul Gameson, were on terrific form. When you consider that 12 of the 15 voices were involved in testing solo work, you get an idea of their standard. They are celebrating their tenth anniversary this year, while also commemorating the tenth anniversary of Charpentier's death.
They had a top-notch instrumental group on hand - string quartet, theorbo, organ - to enliven the composer's imaginative backcloths. Words were the only casualty: the choir's Latin was rarely distinguishable in this slippery acoustic.
The best was kept till last, the Nativity Dialogue between the angels and the shepherds, with the yokels bustling down the hillside, only to turn prayerful at the manger. All this just after the solo angel had delivered a stunning message.
The amazing Magnificat on a four-note ground bass was the pre-interval highlight. The ladies, alone, were slightly hesitant in Sub Tuum Praesidium, and the six sopranos tended to overpower full-choir textures. But their lovely straight tone was huge compensation. Tasty instrumental Noels leavened a tasty evening'.
(Martin Dreyer, 10 December 2004, York Evening Press )
'The Ebor Singers, led by Paul Gameson, brought their own special pleasures. They fielded a larger group - seventeen voices rather than eight, with the different voice parts jumbled among them. No one, in that arrangement, can ever sleep on the job.
Another benefit is the tapestry of sound, evenly spread across the choir. They began, thrillingly, split into each division of the church's Greek Cross shape, filling the building with Gibbons's Hosanna to the Son of David. Then they fused for psalm settings, a lament and a bristling round by the always remarkable William Lawes, killed in the King's service at Chester, with letter readings and other musical delights sprinkled inbetween.
This was an imaginative, well-researched presentation. And a robust, effective choir: I'd be happy to hear them any day, in early music, late music, even something in the middle'.
(Geoff Brown, The Times, 15 July 2003, 4 stars)
'The Ebor Singers, directed by Paul Gameson, are a bracing young choir which ventures boldly into new repertoire. It comprises sympathetic and sensitive singers who are well capable of taking on solo roles, and whose full-bodied ensemble maintains a beautiful clarity of individual line and controlled inner-part singing.
Indeed, it was the competent singing of the tenor line that impressed me from the outset of their concert in St Olave's, York, for the York Early Music Christmas Festival. Gameson, a tenor himself, usually steers the choir from the sides with a minimum of gesture: the result is a finely tuned, mutually supportive chamber ensemble.
In this recital of seasonal music by the early 17th-century Languedoc composer Guillaume Bouzignac and his contemporaries (notably the rarely heard Jean-Baptiste Boesset, c.1604-85, composer to Anne of Austria), two tenor duets were among the greatest pleasures.
Bouzignac (c.1587-1660) is little-known, partly because his music languished unpublished for nearly three centuries. His name has been connected with Narbonne (where he was a boy chorister; he was already composing at 17), Grenoble, and Tours, where a number of manuscripts finally surfaced last century.
Most astonishing of the half-dozen Bouzignac Christmas pieces aired was the opening of 'Dum silentium', which tells of the angel's appearance to the shepherds - as hushed as the onset of light in Haydn's Creation, with a pent-up tension the Ebor Singers captured here, pianissimo, to perfection.
I had few cavils about this incisive approach to the Baroque: just two hesitant soprano leads, and the odd shy solo. Mutual tuning (though occasionally corrected by organ) was first class. So assured were these performances - one contralto solo was especially memorable - that these singers might contemplate exploring 'authentic' pronunciation, as do groups like William Christie's Les Arts Florissants, who have recorded a disc of Bouzignac for Harmonia Mundi.
I particularly enjoyed Gameson's intelligent programming of other French composers who placed Bouzignac into context. A concert of real imagination'.
(Roderic Dunnett, Church Times, January 14 2003)