ASOC 'Gospel of Choral Discipline': Bringing Your Best Game

Esteemed Members of ASO Board and Woodruff Arts Council:

I ask you to please take a moment to consider another organization you are endangering by your recent actions against the players of the ASO.

Week after week, year after year, ASOC singers commit to the highest standard of musicianship of which we are capable.  In my world, this is not an overstatement. Whenever we rehearse, veteran ASOC singers fall naturally into a rigorous choral discipline, most of which is learned and ingrained in us over many years, and built upon as we approach each separate work for performance.  New chorus members -- we were all new once -- spend the first year or two running to catch a 'moving train' of note, phrase, syllable and textual analysis.  This approach can sometimes be tedious, but it forms the core of our discipline, laying the groundwork for the creation of the ASOC's unique 'sleeve of sound':  our ability to articulate and breathe as a single entity, with no individual voice emerging from the 'sleeve'.

Choral discipline requires research into composition history, past interpretations, the composer's philosophy and world view.  It requires mastering impeccable diction in seven (so far) languages.  The chorus resource page alone is a minor in choral masterworks.  We turn a work inside-out, examine its interior parts and breathe life into them, striving for a refined and nuanced end result, whether the work was written circa 1700 or last year.  When we go onstage with the ASO, under the baton of Mr. Spano or Mr. Runnicles, or any other major conductor, audiences want to hear the composer's wheels turning.

And we deliver.

But this level of commitment isn't just appreciated; it's expected.   We renew our commitment week after week, year after year (see above two paragraphs; rinse, repeat) in order to remain a worthy partner of our fine orchestra.

The ASO Board and the WAC's attempt to resolve financial problems by cutting into the orchestra's core product also makes a mockery of the ASOC's seriousness of purpose.  As did Dr. Romenstein's insensitive, tone-deaf address to the chorus, exhorting us to respond to all questions, should we be asked any, with the party line:  negotiations are ongoing.   No additional information given; no regrets expressed.  It was hard not to suspect that we were treated like chumps because we don't get paid.

We deserved better.  This city deserves better.  The orchestra -- whose last, self-immolating offer on the table still held the promise of maintaining a top-tier organization -- deserves better.  

I respectfully request that when you look into the future, you ponder the ASOC's 'Gospel of Choral Discipline' because the artistic health and growth of an organization making the contumacious assertion that it is on a level with ASO musicians requires your best game.   Ask any chorus member.

Yours sincerely,
Sally Kann
#302