Bel Canto Chorus Will Perform First Show Under New Artistic Director

Jonathan Laabs. Photo courtesy of Bel Canto Chorus.

Fifteen years after he joined baritone section of the Bel Canto Chorus, Jonathan Laabs will take the podium as artistic director of the organization on Sunday, Oct. 20. Laabs succeeds Richard Hynson, who retired as music director earlier this year after leading Bel Canto for 36 years.

A chorus member and section leader for Bel Canto while teaching in metro Milwaukee, Laabs most recently was professor of music and music division chairman at Martin Luther College in New Ulm, Minnesota. He also serves as artistic director and conductor of Canticum Novum, a Midwest-based chamber choir.

Laabs aims to “create programming that stays in touch with Bel Canto’s traditions while moving into a new era.” Underscoring the mission of the 93-year-old chorus, to “build communities by connecting people through music,” Laabs chose the theme Voices United for Bel Canto’s 2024-25 season. The inaugural Voices of the Earth concert features five compositions that celebrate our shared experience as inhabitants of our planet.

Several major works are on the program. In the Beginning, written in 1947 by Aaron Copland (1900-1990), is based on text from Genesis 1:1–2:7, the Biblical account of the seven days of creation. Sung without accompaniment by the chorus and soprano soloist Rebecca Whitney, the polytonal work shifts seamlessly among keys. Before a 1980 performance, Copland exhorted student singers at Brown University: “Creation was quite a stunt, so make it grand.” As Laabs observes, the piece is “not for the faint of heart.”

The second pillar of the Oct. 20 concert is Midwinter Songs, written in 1980 by tremendously popular and prolific American composer Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943). The Songs are musical settings of five poems by English writer Robert Graves (1895-1985) that use allusions to winter to express Graves’ romantic feelings toward his mistress and his second wife. The composer achieves a “lush, beautiful, serene sound, with lots of innovation and experimentation,” Laabs said.

“Lauridsen’s music typically goes for a note of rapt contemplation,” wrote Steve Schwartz for Classical Net. However, Midwinter Songs “gives you something more disturbed and agitated…. [T]he poems are about love, sex, and death.”

For American choral composer Jake Runestad (b. 1986), “Finding the text is the longest part of my [composing] process.”  Hoping to embody the persona of Wisconsin-raised conservationist and naturalist John Muir, Runestad scoured the Sierra Club web archive of Muir’s writings, discovering fragments that form the text for Come to the Woods. As the singers announce: “Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue,” Muir frolics down wooded trails, and climbs a tree to observe a windstorm. Piano interludes suggest Muir’s musings and daydreams. As the day ends, “Come to the woods,” Muir invites, “for here is rest.”

Bel Canto Chorus will perform Voices of the Earth at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 20, at St. Sebastian Catholic Church, 5400 W. Washington Blvd. Tickets, with discounts for students and seniors, are available at Bel Canto’s website, which also provides helpful insights about the program.