Straight No Chaser live performance

Last night I went to a live performance of a men's a capella group called Straight No Chaser. The 10-voice group was formed at Indiana University about 14 years ago when its members were students there. When the group reconvened for their 10-year college reunion, a video of the group was posted on YouTube and received something like 6 million hits, leading to a record contract, multi-city tour, PBS broadcast, and lots of iTunes downloads. The Chicago concert last night was a bit of a homecoming as the founder (and I believe primary artistic force behind the group) Dan Ponce, is a Chicago native and for a while was a news reporter on the local ABC television affiliate.

The group is very musically polished, with a couple of good solo singers, and a strong overall balance--although in last night's performance I did think the bass voices were over-amplified compared to the lead and inner voices. That's a mixing issue, though, not a musical one.

The primary YouTube clip that has gotten attention is a take-off of the 12 Days of Christmas, which was performed toward the end of the group's second set last night. It is a creative and funny arrangement, playing off a lot of the other Christmas music the group had sung earlier that night.

My primary beef with the group is a petty one--they have the most ill-fitting suits on a doo-wop group ever. They are all black with white shirts and black or red ties. Simple enough. But none of the 10 had been well-fit into these off the rack garmets.

Okay, so you're straight. I get it. That doesn't mean you can't be dressed and fitted a little better by a gay man.

Eric Whitacre American composer

I went to a choral concert last night that included two works by contemporary American composer Eric Whitacre. Whitacre is a bit of the "it" choral composer of the moment--well really longer than of the moment. His popularity began after his "Leonardo Dreams of his Flying Machine" premiered at the National Choral Directors Association convention in 2001. The two Whitacre works on the program I heard last night were the "Leonardo" piece and Five Hebrew Love Songs to texts by Whitacre's then girlfriend now wife. This was not the first time I've encountered the work of Mr. Whitacre; I previously heard his "Cloudburst" written when he was still a student in the late 90s, I believe.

I am intrigued by Mr. Whitacre's compositional style. Descriptions of his works I've read have talked about a "Whitacre chord", primarily a major chord in the root position with an added second or fourth. Certainly he is not the first composer to incorporate these chords into choral pieces, but I guess the point is that Mr. Whitacre often uses them. I don't have a well-enough trained ear to identify these chords when I hear them, so I'm not qualified to speak on that.

What I will say is that Mr. Whitacre's work (as exemplified in the three works I've heard so far) has much to recommend it; it is tonally accessible without being cloying and often includes non-lyrical vocalisms--by that I mean the singers make percussive sounds at times during the pieces to illuminate the text or the story behind the text. An example of this would be the 'plips' and 'plops' of rain in "Cloudburst". Where I have difficulty with the pieces I've heard (particularly the two last night) is that they seem to lack a substantial climax or over-all structure to make them as effective as they might be. That of course could be due to the performance I heard, rather than pieces themselves, however.

The concert I attended was a one-night-only choral event by a local university's choral program, so you will need to seek other opportunities to hear Mr. Whitacre's compositions. If you do, or if you have, please let me know your thoughts about them.