Tonight I saw a miracle, and it left me in tears.

When I was sixteen I started having dizzy spells and fainting. My ears rang and rang. I already wore hearing aids, but something was wrong. Seventeen; I’ve been in an arts magnet program for music for three years and wanted to be a performer badly. But then I was diagnosed with a degenerative hearing loss on top of being born hearing impaired. I was told I would likely be deaf by the time I’m forty. I was devastated, but after reading Beethoven’s letter known as the Heiligenstadt Testament I decided to try my best to keep going.

Well, it was my thirty-ninth birthday this week, much of which I’ve been lucky to spend in my first concert series back with Master Chorale of Tampa Bay since the pandemic started. While I am legally deaf I am lucky: I have hearing aids that greatly help me continue to communicate, to hear and sing. What were we singing? I’m glad you asked: A concert all about Beethoven.

First, we performed a peice about Beethoven’s famous aforementioned letter to his brothers where he laments his hearing loss, set to an entirely perceptive and emotional work “A Silence Haunts Me” by Jake Runestad. He talks about the church bells he can’t hear, and I remember the first time I sat on the beach and realized I couldn’t hear the waves anymore. The desperate clamoring on the keys isn’t the accompianist Dr. Rodney Shores having a bad I-forgot-how-to-piano day but sounds rather similar to when I want to sight-read on my keyboard before I’ve had my coffee and put my hearing aids in. The pleading, the trembling and asking of why, not dissimilar to the one I certainly asked as well. And I’m not anywhere cloooooooose to the scope of what Beethoven’s abilities were and if I was devastated, I cannot even imagine how absolutely crushed he must’ve been.

Hearing loss is an invisible disability in that we are often ridiculed or misunderstood. Especially in Beethoven’s time. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it is easy. So to see people leap up to their feet tonight as soon as Beethoven’s Ninth ended, applauding and cheering with such enthusiasm for a piece written by someone who was deaf… I started crying, and I’m crying as I write this. Because even if you don’t know much about Beethoven, everyone knows he couldn’t hear but still wrote such powerful and passionate (not for you, Napoleon) music. It’s just really wonderful to see hundreds of people appreciate that. Even if it was just for a moment before they go back to the parking garage to be stuck for twenty minutes and then return to their homes and lives - this guy wrote this piece two hundred years ago that people are still talking about.

I wish I could tell them what he might’ve heard, if he was there. If he heard anything at all at the conclusion of this premiere back in his time, it would sound something like a distant rumble of hums of percussion above water and he was in it. Maybe just the vibrations from the applause with no actual pitch to it, which would explain why he had to be notified of the audience’s reaction. But as I said (in my goofy manner, but with every bit of truth to it), my favorite part of the concert would be the end of “A Silence Haunts Me”. For a minute, the audience gets to hear like Beethoven. Like me. Like the entire deaf and hard of hearing community. The notes fade away but the choir is still singing - but there’s nothing to be heard. In a time where we live in social distancing, covered faces, isolation and more it’s important to find the times we are all united. In that moment everyone in the room was together, experiencing firsthand a small miracle. For one minute, Jake Runestad, Master Chorale, Brett Karlin and the opportunity granted by The Florida Orchestra all made the invisible disability, -visible-.

I think back to the time I went to Vienna, Austria in my twenties and visited Beethoven’s grave. It was quiet, and his prominent site was among many of the greats in a spot dubbed “Musician’s Row”. There, I wrote a single word on a bit of paper and tucked it into the flowers I laid on his grave.
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“Danke.” (Thanks.)

Button above links to The Florida Orchestra

• Friday, January 28 - 8:00 PM - Straz Center, Tampa
• Saturday, January 29 - 8:00 PM - Mahaffey Theater, St. Pete
• ​Sunday, January 30 - 7:30 PM - Ruth Eckerd Hall, Clearwater

​Health and Safety
Face masks are required in all concert venues, regardless of vaccination status.
The Straz Center has additional requirements related to performances at their hall. For full details, click here.

In 2017, Jake Runestad travelled to Leipzig, Germany to be present at the premiere of Into the Light, an extended work for chorus and orchestra commissioned by Valparaiso University to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Luther nailing his Ninety-Seven Theses to a door in Wittenberg, thereby kicking off the Reformation. While traveling after the concert, Runestad found himself in the Haus der Musik Museum in Vienna, where he encountered a facsimile of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Heiligenstadt Testament.

It was the first time he had read the famous text, which is almost equal parts medical history (including Beethoven’s first admission to his brothers that he was going deaf), last will and testament, suicide note, letter of forgiveness, and prayer of hope. Runestad was flabbergasted and found himself thinking about Beethoven, about loss, and about the tragedy of one of the greatest musicians of all time losing his hearing. Beethoven put it this way, “Ah, how could I possibly admit an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than others, a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection, a perfection such as few in my profession enjoy or ever have enjoyed.”

When the American Choral Directors Association offered the Raymond C. Brock Commission to Runestad for the 2019 National Conference, he took many months to settle on a topic, finally deciding on setting Beethoven’s words. While researching Beethoven’s output around the time of the letter, Runestad discovered that Beethoven wrote a ballet, Creatures of Prometheus, just a year before penning his testament. “Beethoven must have put himself into Prometheus’ mindset to embody the story,” Runestad noted. “Just as Prometheus gifted humankind with fire and was punished for eternity, so did Beethoven gift the fire of his music while fighting his deafness, an impending silence. What an absolutely devastating yet inspiring account of the power of the human spirit. In the moment of his loss —when he wrote the Heiligenstadt Testament — he had no idea how profound his legacy would be” (“legacy” being one of the themes of this ACDA’s anniversary conference).

Because of the length of the letter, a verbatim setting was impractical; Runestad once again turned to his friend and frequent collaborator, Todd Boss, to help. Boss’s poem, entitled A Silence Haunts Me – After Beethoven’s Heiligenstadt Testament creates a scena — a monologue in Beethoven’s voice for choir. The poem is both familiar and intimate; Boss has taken the fundamentals of Beethoven’s letter and spun it into a libretto that places the reader/listener into the same small, rented room as one of the most towering figures of the Romantic Era.

To those words, Runestad has brought his full array of dramatic understanding and compositional skill; A Silence Haunts Me sounds more like a self-contained monologue from an opera than a traditional choral piece. Runestad, who has published three operas to date, shows his flair for melding music with text even more dramatically than in familiar settings like Let My Love Be Heard and Please Stay. He sets the poetry with an intense, emotional directness and uses some of Beethoven’s own musical ideas to provide context. Stitched into the work are hints at familiar themes from the Moonlight Sonata, the 3rd, 6th, and 9th Symphonies, and Creatures of Prometheus, but they are, in Runestad’s words, “filtered through a hazy, frustrated, and defeated state of being.”

In wrestling with Beethoven, with legacy, and with loss, Runestad has done what he does best—written a score where the poetry creates the form, where the text drives the rhythm, where the melody supports the emotional content, and where the natural sounding vocal lines, arresting harmony, and idiomatic accompaniment — in this case, piano in honor of Beethoven — come together to offer the audience an original, engaging, thoughtful, and passionate work of choral art.
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Program note by Dr. Jonathan Talberg

"Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God."

The awe and beauty of Handel's Messiah is not only in its masterful musical and lyrical composition but also in its story telling. From each movement, each of the 3 parts, we are on a journey together, exploring the birth, the sacrifice, and the resurrection. The Hallelujah chorus, which is so familiar to us during the Christmas season, actually comes at death, although Christmas, of course, celebrates the birth of Jesus. 

Through Handel's narrative, we find ourselves among the prophetic ("Behold, a virgin shall conceive"); among sarcastic, sneering crowds ("if He delight in Him, let Him deliver Him"), mocking and treacherous; among blithe, naive people ("All we like sheep"); and also within the precious moments of great love and empathy ("thine has led captivity captive and received gifts for thine enemies"). And in the end, "Part the third" celebrates the resurrection, finishing with a grand and massive Amen. 

Messiah is a musical journey that is part of our collective history. As we move through the holiday season, we often revel in traditions and memories of family and friends, memories of comfort, and opportunities for peace and connection. Moments of reflection and care in the present may be especially important this year as we emerge into venues and gather again to experience the magic of music in this festive season. Michael Francis, conductor of the The Florida Orchestra for the Messiah asks us to "commit to the masterpiece that it is" with our "quorum of knowledge", and each of us on the stage and in the audience commit ourselves to this masterpiece, together. 

Join us for our performances with The Florida Orchestra at the Straz in Tampa on December 17 at 8pm, Mahaffey Theater in St. Pete on December 18 at 8pm, and Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater on December 19 at 2pm. 

Rehearsing online has it's silver lining in the sense that we have had more opportunities to connect with and learn from the composers and conductors of the contemporary choral music on our program.  We were delighted that Marques Garrett, Susan Brumfield, and Jake Runestad were all able to join us and lead online rehearsals in preparation for our virtual choir recordings of their music. In addition, each of them presented workshops to our singers on spirituals as a musical genre, non-idiomatic choral music of Black composers, and American folk singing.

​All three virtual choirs will premiere on our American Voices Virtual Concert on April 24, 2021 at 7pm. 

• "My Heart Be Brave" by Marques Garrett
• "No Time" by Susan Brumfield
• "Flower Into Kindness" by Jake Runestad

by Brian Hathaway

“When life hands you lemons, make lemonade”

To me the larger nugget of wisdom in this saying is that things don’t always go our way in life, but when we encounter an obstacle, how we respond is a measure of who we are and what we are made of. We can either accept defeat or we can decide that we will overcome the obstacle by turning it into an opportunity to achieve a greater good.

In March 2020, the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay was handed a big lemon in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic. As we were in the final preparations for a concert of Bach’s “St. John Passion” with The Florida Orchestra, we all went into hiatus as part of efforts to slow the spread of the pandemic. Live singing was put on the back burner as arts organizations around the world cancelled rehearsal and concert schedules. 

The Master Chorale of Tampa Bay celebrates the diversity of our singers, audiences, and community through music. Our staff and Board fervently oppose all forms of hatred, bigotry, and racial injustice and we commit to using our voices and programs to support a just, loving, and accepting society. We are appalled, outraged and heartbroken by the anti-Black discrimination, hate, and violence that has led to the death of George Floyd and so many others, and we are disturbed by the unconscionable violent response toward peaceful demonstrations.

Although we actively seek to expand the diversity of our membership, our Master Chorale membership is mostly non-Black. As a result, no matter how hard we try, we can never fully comprehend what Black Americans face every day.  Although it will take time, we are committed to reflecting inwardly to identify actionable steps that we can take as an organization to participate in positive change, and we are determined that any intentional and unintentional racial bias in our organization will be eliminated.  Earlier this year we adopted the slogan, “The Voice of Tampa Bay.” This line is aspirational for us considering there are still many voices not represented in our Master Chorale. We commit to actively recruiting more people of color to every aspect of our organization.  

Music has the power to connect us all, to affect change, and to transcend all societal barriers. One of our singers reminded us that “We’ve sung music that expresses the suffering of an entire people. We’ve cried in shared grief at the raw emotion these works force us to experience for the barest glimpse into some of the worst kinds of human suffering. How can we sing these things yet not boldly say ‘it is intolerable’?”   It is intolerable! And we hope that, in sharing that glimpse into the Black American Experience through song, we help lift up voices left unheard for far too long. With that in mind we humbly share our recording of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (informally known as the “Black National Anthem”) from our Peace Project CD recorded in 2012 and featuring soloist Sharon Scott.

The Master Chorale of Tampa Bay Board and Staff

LOSS IN INCOME:

• Concert cancellations have resulted in an immediate impact of a significant loss in contract and admissions revenue.
• These funds would have gone towards program administration, Education and Outreach and Community engagement programs, and general operating expenses. 

FUNDING GAP:

• We are seeking $48,000 to secure three months of operating & marketing expenses, and payroll costs for artistic and administrative personnel through June 30th.
• We are committed to paying our artistic and administrative staff without salary reductions.

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OUR INTERNAL STRATEGY:

• All operations expenses are being limited and staff are working from home
• Artistic staff are working on creating online content for our community
• Events that can be made into virtual experiences are being re-envisioned and organized for online platforms, including our rehearsals and our Bravo End-of-Season fundraiser (stay tuned for more details)