The origins of one of Chicago’s finest choral organizations date back to 1946, when a 9-year-old boy soprano from the South Side took first prize in the Morris B. Sachs Amateur Hour with his rendition of the Bing Crosby hit “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral.”
Winning the talent contest convinced William Ferris he had something important to contribute to Chicago music, even if it wasn’t necessarily as a solo singer.
Twenty-five years later he founded the William Ferris Chorale, a group whose central mission has been to introduce local audiences to worthwhile 20th Century choral works, many by living composers. To date the chorus has presented more than 150 Chicago, American and world premieres, often with the composers in residence.
This season the Ferris Chorale is observing a pair of signal milestones–its 25th anniversary season and the 60th birthday of founder-director Ferris. Capping off the silver jubilee will be a fully staged production of Ferris’ comic opera, “The Diva,” at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday in the Edna M. Barber Theater at Northwestern University. The performances, staged by Bruce Hall, are co-produced by the Northwestern School of Music.
Ferris composed “The Diva” in 1979 to a libretto by John Vorrasi as a gift to his friend Eleanor Steber. The late, great American soprano expressed interest in, but never was able to perform, the title role of an aging opera singer who returns to her hometown for a farewell recital. The one-act opera received a workshop performance by Chicago Opera Theater a decade ago. For next weekend’s performances in Evanston, Ferris prepared a new orchestration for 20 players. Frederick Ockwell will conduct. Northwestern University master’s degree students and members of the Ferris Chorale will perform various roles.
The program also holds the premiere of “The Small Hours,” a portrait of Dorothy Parker devised and sung by soprano Sunny Joy Langton after Ferris’ 1994 song cycle on Parker’s poems. (Call 773-325-2000.)
Ferris considers himself a composer and choral conductor, in that order. But he admits that the creative and re-creative roles have been intertwined in his life for so many years that he doesn’t draw distinctions; everything he does is about making music.
Indeed, the busy Ferris wears yet another hat, that of director of music at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church. His ability to juggle successfully the careers of composer, conductor and church musician parallels that of Leo Sowerby, the Chicago composer and longtime director of music at St. James Cathedral with whom Ferris studied composition at the American Conservatory of Music.
“Sowerby once said to me, `You will be a fine conductor if you are a really good composer.’ He meant that this would make me care a great deal about other composers’ music. He was that kind of caring performer himself,” Ferris says.
Like his mentor, Ferris is nothing if not prolific. To date his catalog runs to more than 500 opus numbers, including two operas, more than 70 choral and 15 orchestral works, plus a large amount of church music. “Sowerby believed you have to write a lot of music to be a composer. Sometimes I look back on a year and think it wasn’t such a good year for me because I only wrote 11 pieces,” Ferris says, laughing.
A lifelong resident of Chicago, Ferris discovered early on the twin passions–a love of singing and a love of composing–that were to shape his adult career. He wrote his first music at the tender age of 8, during which time he also sang in a boys’ choir. Because the Ferris family did not own a piano, young Bill wrote directly on score paper, imagining the musical sounds in his head.
Following a path typical of a well-rounded church musician, he studied piano and organ and enrolled at DePaul University, where his teachers included composers Alexander Tcherepnin and Arthur C. Becker. He later became organist at Holy Name Cathedral and was the first American composer to teach at the Vatican.
The Ferris Chorale began as a non-specialist chorus and “sort of evolved from there,” as its director explains. Taking his inspiration from the small choruses directed by colleagues Margaret Hillis, Robert Shaw and Roger Wagner, Ferris gathered a group of young singers to perform a cappella Renaissance pieces and unfamiliar 20th Century works. Audiences liked what they heard, and soon Ferris was bringing to town composers like Ned Rorem, William Schuman, Gian Carlo Menotti and Vincent Persichetti for chorale residencies.
It’s tough for any ensemble to market itself for specialized musical tastes. Even today, despite the chorale’s high reputation, programs of music by the likes of David Diamond, Lee Hoiby, William Mathias, John McCabe and others can be a tough sell. Also, as Ferris points out, local choral competition has increased a thousandfold since the chorale began in 1971. Still, a typical chorale concert draws audiences of 400 to 450 to the group’s regular venue, Mt. Carmel Church.
Although Chicago is blessed with many fine choral singers, not all of them have what Ferris looks for when auditioning singers for the chorale.
“I hate to say this, but singers come to me not as well prepared to read 20th Century scores as they used to be,” the director says. “That means I have to be very conscientious during auditions, really let them know how hard the work is going to be.”
The chorale membership is nothing if not diverse. Along with professional singers and instrumentalists, the roster of 45 includes doctors, lawyers, homemakers, a botanist, a textile craft artist, an industrial-wire salesman and a former beauty queen.
Motivating such a heterogeneous group can be tricky, Ferris says. “I promise my singers there will be that wonderful moment, after months of rehearsal, when we all feel we really are performing a piece of music, as opposed to just singing notes,” he says.
For the Ferris Chorale–as for any of the area’s smaller performing arts groups–the mere fact of having survived for 25 years is, of course, no guarantee of permanence.
“It never gets easier,” Vorrasi sighs. “A lot of funders in the city have pulled back their support of the performing arts. There are certain foundations that will never give us money because we don’t fit their profile–we’re not sexy enough, or whatever. But you can’t remake yourself into the image of what a funder wants.
“Fortunately, we haven’t lost any of our major funding sources. The MacArthur Foundation gave us another three-year grant. In recent years we have brought some younger people onto our 13-member board, people who really know how to go out and raise money.”
“We have been lucky all along to have friends who are constant,” Ferris adds.
Looking a short distance down the proverbial road, Ferris imagines the day when he will set aside some of his church and chorale duties and devote more time to composition–that is, after all, his first love. In that regard he is readying “Angels,” a large-scale “miracle play” for voices and instruments, for performance next season at Mt. Carmel in honor of the church’s pastor, Father Thomas Healy.
He also wants to make more recordings with the chorale, since it is the group’s CDs that have spread the group’s name around the world. Ferris’ Flute Sonata, performed by Chicago Symphony Orchestra principal flutist Donald Peck, recently appeared on the Boston label. Newly issued on Albany is a live chorale performance of Sowerby’s moving oratorio, “Throne of God.”
Says Ferris: “We have worked very hard over these 25 years, sowing the seeds. But all the people I have worked with over that time have really edified me on many levels. It has been exciting to be part of the chorale’s growth. I can’t think of many other cities where all this could have happened.”
