A global Requiem for 9/11

[Times photo: Kinfay Moroti] Tampa Bay Concert Choir altos Jane Patterson, right, of Pinellas Park, and Susan Maholm, of Largo, join fellow chorus members in rehearsal at Unitarian Universalist Church in Clearwater last week.

By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published September 1, 2002

More than 125 choirs - from Florida to New Zealand - will take part in the worldwide ''Rolling Requiem,'' including the Tampa Bay Concert Choir.

After last Sept. 11, a remark often recalled in musical circles was Leonard Bernstein's response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy: "This will be our reply to violence: To make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before."

In that spirit, the anniversary of the terrorist attacks is being marked by more than 125 choirs around the world with performances of Mozart's Requiem on Sept. 11.

The idea was conceived by members of the Seattle Symphony Chorale, which began sending out the word to other choruses last spring. One choral director who heard about it through an Internet discussion group on choral music was Frank M. Wells III, director of the Tampa Bay Concert Choir, which had performed the Requiem in May.

"I really wanted for us to do something on Sept. 11, knowing that there's going to be a lot of emotion surrounding the anniversary," Wells said. "Since we had just done the Requiem, I'm not sure I could pick a better piece."

The worldwide event is called the "Rolling Requiem," because many of the choirs will begin their performances at 8:46 a.m. -- the time of the first attack on the World Trade Center in New York -- starting at the international date line and moving westward into every time zone. As of last week, the first concert is scheduled in Auckland, New Zealand, and the last one in Honolulu. Most are in the United States, with five in Florida.

Some choirs, including Wells' group, are singing in the evening when singers and audience members are more readily able to be there.

"It seems to me about half the choirs are going to do it at 8:46 a.m.; the other half of us are going to do it in the evening," Wells said. "I took an informal survey of the choir about who would be available, and two-thirds of the people had to work that day. And we wondered if there would be an audience in the morning. It definitely came down on the side of doing it in the evening."

Wells, 32, who watched the events of Sept. 11 unfold on the Internet from his home in Tampa (he now lives in St. Petersburg), would probably prefer to perform the Requiem in the morning, when it might well have the greatest emotional impact. But it was more important for him to do something that would allow the largest possible participation. No experience in his lifetime has seemed so necessary to memorialize.

"I remember very clearly things like the Challenger disaster and Reagan getting shot, but even they were not of the same order of magnitude, neither in terms of loss of life nor in the way 9/11 seems to have infected people's consciousness and stayed there."

The Tampa Bay Concert Choir is a relatively new ensemble, with about 20 members performing in last spring's concert. One of the most gratifying aspects of its involvement in the "Rolling Requiem" came from the response to an audition notice Wells put out asking for others to sing in the Sept. 11 concert.

"The phone rang off the hook for several days," Wells said. "I would guess I got probably 30 phone calls, and of those, probably 15 or 20 people have come and joined and will be singing on the 11th. I have one carload coming over from Orlando. One lady is coming down from Crystal River to sing. Somebody is driving up from Naples. People really seem to want to do something on this day."

With the additional singers, as many as 40 will be performing on Sept. 11. There will also be a pianist, a string quintet and a timpanist.

Because Mozart's mass, which was unfinished when he died and completed by his pupil Franz Xaver Sussmayr, runs about 50 minutes, the program will be filled out by three brief pieces: the premiere of Wells' American Testament, which he composed in the aftermath of 9/11; Randall Thompson's Choose Something Like a Star, a setting of a Robert Frost poem; and Benjamin Britten's Concord. There will be no intermission.

"There has been a fair amount of discussion about what other music besides the Requiem to program," said Wells, whose American Testament has been picked up by other choruses to perform for the occasion.

"I guess these pieces tend toward asking us to take a sort of contemplative response. We're hoping to provide a place for people to come and think about what happened and maybe come up with their own reasons why it happened and what our response ought to be."

With May's Requiem performance behind the chorus, Wells is counting on a stellar effort.

"The spring performance turned out very good, and we're better balanced this time around," he said. "We've added a fair number of men, whereas before we were fairly top-heavy with women. Musically, they're very well prepared. Because they've sung it before, we're fortunate now to be able to spend a lot of time polishing as opposed to just learning notes and hoping for the best."

Membership in the choir ranges from college voice majors to church choristers. "We tend to collect the dedicated amateurs," Wells said.

Rehearsals began in July, held every Tuesday night at Clearwater's Unitarian Universalist Church, where the concert will be given in the 500-seat circular sanctuary. Admission is free, and child care will be provided. Donations will be taken for the All Souls September 11 Fund, which supports counseling and scholarships for people affected by the attacks.

Each musician will wear a heart badge bearing the name of someone who died in the tragedy, and Wells expects emotions to run high. "A lot of the singers have said they will sneak a box of Kleenex with them."

Music preview

Mozart's Requiem will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 11, as part of the worldwide "Rolling Requiem," by the Tampa Bay Concert Choir at Octagon Arts Center, Unitarian Universalist Church, 2470 Nursery Road, Clearwater. Free. Child care provided. (727) 688-2787. For more information, see the Web site www.rollingrequiem.org.

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