Chicago Classical Review

The Apollo Chorus was founded in 1872 in the immediate aftermath of the Great Chicago Fire. On Saturday night, the venerable volunteer ensemble performed for the first time at Old St. Patrick’s Church, which was founded in 1846 and had its cornerstone laid a decade later, making it the city’s oldest public building and likely the only downtown venue that predates the Apollo. 

This historical intersection made a fine backdrop to Saturday’s accomplished Apollo Chorus program, “From the Earth to the Stars,” deftly led by longtime music director Stephen Alltop, who is concluding his 28^th year leading the group.

The first half comprised seven short selections that offered an array of terrestrial imagery. Randall Thompson’s The Last Words of David opened with a stirring declamation, the singers responding nimbly to Alltop’s direction and supported assertively by assistant conductor Cody Michael Bradley on piano. Healey Willan’s brief Rise Up, My Love, My Fair One provided contrast with its earnest expression of time passing as the seasons change.

Eric Whitacre sets E. E. Cumming’s i thank You God for most this amazing day with upwardly striving lines that capture the poet’s paean to nature (“a blue true dream of sky”), which Alltop led with spiritual resolve. Caroline Shaw’s and the swallow (from Psalm 84) followed with solemn, forthright feeling, its ethereal humming giving a taste of the composer’s trademark extended vocal techniques.

The singers gave an ecstatic account of Jake Runestad’s Wild Forces,a jubilant setting of a paragraph from St. Francis of Assisi, which was again gamely supported by Bradley’s dynamic keyboard work. Barber’s Sure on this shining night lent a luminous sheen to James Agee’s poem, which the chorus sang with a warm collective timbre. The short first half concluded with Craig Courtney’s jazzy Let There Be Light, sending the audience to intermission with its final crunchy gospel wail.

The second half was devoted to Kile Smith’s The Consolation of Apollo, a six-movement cantata the Philadelphia-based composer wrote in 2014 for The Crossing. The work’s text alternates between excerpts from Boethius and transcripts of the crew of Apollo 8, including their famous Christmas Eve broadcast from 1968, in which they read the first ten verses of Genesis. The result is an imaginative, curiously stirring 35-minute work that the Apollo delivered with commitment and poise.

After playing a recording of the 1968 transmission, The Consolation itself opens with a bass drum shock and an austere opening “Thou may’st know, if thou wilt notice,” almost dour in mood. The ensuing “Yes, it’s beautiful” sets a conversation among the Apollo 8 astronauts, with the basses singing the words of Commander Frank Borman, the tenors Commander Module Pilot James Lovell, and the altos Lunar Module Pilot William Anders. The music’s close harmonies capture the feeling of awe and wonder of the three men as they become the first human to leave the Earth’s orbit.

“Wings are mine” lent a certain regality to another text of Boethius, though at times Smith’s writing feels generalized, albeit proceeding in a comely tonal vein. “While the bright sun” has an ABA form, with driving outer sections framing a more expansive central episode.

Smith’s work builds to the fifth movement, which sets the Apollo transmission itself. Twinkling crotales suggest stars, and the dense polyphonic writing captures the distortion of the famous recording. The final movement, “The stars shine,” returns once more to words from Boethius, ending on a note of solace.

The Apollo singers gave their all to this involved work, which Alltop led with intelligent assurance, clearly trusting his charges. As an encore, they reprised Courtney’s Let There Be Light to end the evening in raucous high-stepping style.

The Apollo Chorus will be joined by Grace Chorale of Brooklyn for Brahms’ A German Requiem, 7 p.m. Saturday June 7 at Glenview Community Church. apollochorus.org

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