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MUSICAL PASSIONS: MUSICOLOGY STUDENT O'TOOLE CONDUCTS CHORAL GROUP IN BOSTON
By Celine Hacobian
The Justice - Brandeis University
http://www.thejustice.org/features/musical-passions-1.2816838
March 12 2012
When Julia O'Toole MA '12 was 16 years old, she begged her piano
teacher to give her just one voice lesson before her audition for
her high school musical. As soon as she finished her first song, her
teacher said, "Yeah, we're not doing piano anymore. You're a singer,"
recounted O'Toole, in her second and final year in the Master's program
for Musicology, in an interview with the Justice. From that point on,
she continued taking voice lessons before she started teaching singing
and conducting choirs.
O'Toole conducts the Boston-based choral group Calliope, which was
founded in the summer of 2006. "Quite honestly, I wanted to get some
podium time, and it's very hard to get an opportunity to conduct
people,"O'Toole said. As a voice teacher, she had access to many
singers who were available during the summer, as most organizations
do not have rehearsals from June to August, according to O'Toole.
"So we had a chorus, and just a couple of instruments, but ...
musicians who were doing it were really psyched to be doing something
in the off-season, so [I thought,] 'what could we add that would be
different?'" With this in mind, O'Toole created a board of directors
and established an organization different than all the other choruses
in the Boston area.
"That's when we decided that we want to give an experience that most
musicians [and instrumentalists] ... don't have: the opportunity
to rehearse with the other," said O'Toole. "This was an opportunity
for musicians from both fields to rehearse together for the entire
season, and so we decided that this would be the number one piece of
our mission, that it would be very collaborative."
Another major factor that sets Calliope apart from other groups is
that its members give back to the community through benefit concerts.
They choose lesser-known organizations to support and do not pick the
same group more than once. O'Toole then coordinates the program based
on the organization they are supporting. "The music that we select
for the concert, we try to have reflect the mission of whatever the
organization is," she said.
On Feb. 4, Calliope chose to give a benefit concert for the Armenian
Heritage Park that commemorates the Armenian Genocide, still under
construction and expected to be revealed in Boston's North End in
a few months. O'Toole learned of the memorial through an Armenian
member of Calliope's board. "We usually plan the benefit a couple of
years in advance ... because we like to work with the organization
before we actually present their performance," O'Toole said.
O'Toole stressed that this most recent February concert consisted of
a complex program that required singing in several other languages
because the song choices represented so many different groups. The
choir is accustomed to performing in multiple languages, but they
still bring in people who fluently speak the language in which they
are performing in order to help the singers with pronunciation, tone
and phrasing. "Singers in general at this level, which is serious
amateurs to professionals, most of them have done Latin, most of them
have done German, French, Italian, as well, so it is a little bit of a
struggle, so it just kind of depends on who you have in front of you,"
O'Toole said.
And while this program wasn't solely Armenian music, it was the
majority of the program. "One of our members is Armenian and so he made
suggestions, and actually the board member made suggestions and when we
met with the [Armenian Heritage Foundation], the chair of their board
[also] made suggestions ... In general, the way that Calliope comes
up with music is all the members are asked for, 'is there anything
you would like to do that you think suggests ... what we are looking
at as a program structure-in this case, it was music about immigrants."
O'Toole believes Calliope really focuses on young musicians, especially
high school students "who need more of a challenge than their school
music program, and a lot of those have even been eliminated, can
offer," she said.
O'Toole chose the name "Calliope" for the group, because she is the
eldest of the nine Greek muses, goddesses that represent the arts,
and the one that is associated with epic poetry and combines text
with music.
The group performs twice a year "because we really want all of
our members to belong to other organizations because it makes them
better collaborators, so we deliberately meet sort of off-season from
everybody else," she said. Their season begins in June, with auditions
held in March and April. Rehearsals start in the beginning of June
and continue throughout the summer, concluding with a concert on the
second weekend in September. The whole process is 14 weeks, longer than
the common 12-week rehearsal period for choirs, according to O'Toole.
The audition process for O'Toole's group is elaborate. Musicians
can be invited to join for one to three seasons, determined by how
much potential they have and what they need to work on before they
re-audition. O'Toole says that most people do both annual concerts.
The board looks first for musicianship in potential members. Members
"have to be at a certain level in order to learn music on their own,
to know how to take care of their instrument well, whether it's a
voice or whether it's a trumpet," O'Toole said.
Almost as important is "the ability to collaborate: the ability to
communicate about what [members] are doing, about what they hear from
other people and to do it in a constructive way. We had people who
have auditioned who I have not accepted because even in the audition,
it felt like they were kind of combative, that they wouldn't be a
positive team player," she said.
"They may have been a fabulous singer, or whatever, but ... when you
go into a situation with 75 musicians and anyone can say anything
about you, and you can say anything about anyone, you know, it has
to be a safe environment," O'Toole said.
Calliope currently has about 90 active members. Only 75 perform
at any given concert because some performers are not available for
both seasons.
O'Toole says her experience at the University has enhanced her musical
involvement, especially her involvement with the Brandeis Osher
Lifelong Living Institute, which "offers a broad range of noncredit
educational activities for retired, semi-retired and other adult
participants ... [and] emphasizes peer leadership, individual and
group participation and research, and an atmosphere of sociability and
mutual encouragement," according to its website. "It is basically for
people ... adults, older people ... who want to keep learning and they
offer all kinds of programs there, everything from arts to history
to religion and all kinds of things; but they're college courses,"
O'Toole explains. She had the chance to teach a class for one day
as a graduate student. The class she taught was "Why Sing Plays? -
A Second Collection" in collaboration with Arthur M. Finstein. She
loved that she could "interact with people from a variety of different
backgrounds, people who are retired lawyers, doctors, musicologists,
administrators, all kinds of things, ... and their perspective on
things is so varied."
While O'Toole hopes to continue in school and earn her Ph.D. in
Musicology, Calliope is not something that she will soon leave behind.
"Long term, we'd like to continue to grow, to a certain level. We don't
want to become so big that the collaborative process is hampered by the
number of people. We want to continue to raise the bar on our music,
which we have successfully done since the beginning," she said.
Each year, O'Toole increases the musical difficulty. For the first
concert of the season in September, the goal is to maintain the level
of music, while the second concert in February also entails paying
more attention to detail and being more expressive.
O'Toole recognizes what each member has to offer. "Everybody has a
voice in what we do, you know, people are asked because everybody has
just such a huge variety of experiences, that they all have something
to offer, whether it's a professional, because we have professionals,
we have serious amateurs and we have music students and we have
scholarship students, so everybody [has] a very different perspective."
By Celine Hacobian
The Justice - Brandeis University
http://www.thejustice.org/features/musical-passions-1.2816838
March 12 2012
When Julia O'Toole MA '12 was 16 years old, she begged her piano
teacher to give her just one voice lesson before her audition for
her high school musical. As soon as she finished her first song, her
teacher said, "Yeah, we're not doing piano anymore. You're a singer,"
recounted O'Toole, in her second and final year in the Master's program
for Musicology, in an interview with the Justice. From that point on,
she continued taking voice lessons before she started teaching singing
and conducting choirs.
O'Toole conducts the Boston-based choral group Calliope, which was
founded in the summer of 2006. "Quite honestly, I wanted to get some
podium time, and it's very hard to get an opportunity to conduct
people,"O'Toole said. As a voice teacher, she had access to many
singers who were available during the summer, as most organizations
do not have rehearsals from June to August, according to O'Toole.
"So we had a chorus, and just a couple of instruments, but ...
musicians who were doing it were really psyched to be doing something
in the off-season, so [I thought,] 'what could we add that would be
different?'" With this in mind, O'Toole created a board of directors
and established an organization different than all the other choruses
in the Boston area.
"That's when we decided that we want to give an experience that most
musicians [and instrumentalists] ... don't have: the opportunity
to rehearse with the other," said O'Toole. "This was an opportunity
for musicians from both fields to rehearse together for the entire
season, and so we decided that this would be the number one piece of
our mission, that it would be very collaborative."
Another major factor that sets Calliope apart from other groups is
that its members give back to the community through benefit concerts.
They choose lesser-known organizations to support and do not pick the
same group more than once. O'Toole then coordinates the program based
on the organization they are supporting. "The music that we select
for the concert, we try to have reflect the mission of whatever the
organization is," she said.
On Feb. 4, Calliope chose to give a benefit concert for the Armenian
Heritage Park that commemorates the Armenian Genocide, still under
construction and expected to be revealed in Boston's North End in
a few months. O'Toole learned of the memorial through an Armenian
member of Calliope's board. "We usually plan the benefit a couple of
years in advance ... because we like to work with the organization
before we actually present their performance," O'Toole said.
O'Toole stressed that this most recent February concert consisted of
a complex program that required singing in several other languages
because the song choices represented so many different groups. The
choir is accustomed to performing in multiple languages, but they
still bring in people who fluently speak the language in which they
are performing in order to help the singers with pronunciation, tone
and phrasing. "Singers in general at this level, which is serious
amateurs to professionals, most of them have done Latin, most of them
have done German, French, Italian, as well, so it is a little bit of a
struggle, so it just kind of depends on who you have in front of you,"
O'Toole said.
And while this program wasn't solely Armenian music, it was the
majority of the program. "One of our members is Armenian and so he made
suggestions, and actually the board member made suggestions and when we
met with the [Armenian Heritage Foundation], the chair of their board
[also] made suggestions ... In general, the way that Calliope comes
up with music is all the members are asked for, 'is there anything
you would like to do that you think suggests ... what we are looking
at as a program structure-in this case, it was music about immigrants."
O'Toole believes Calliope really focuses on young musicians, especially
high school students "who need more of a challenge than their school
music program, and a lot of those have even been eliminated, can
offer," she said.
O'Toole chose the name "Calliope" for the group, because she is the
eldest of the nine Greek muses, goddesses that represent the arts,
and the one that is associated with epic poetry and combines text
with music.
The group performs twice a year "because we really want all of
our members to belong to other organizations because it makes them
better collaborators, so we deliberately meet sort of off-season from
everybody else," she said. Their season begins in June, with auditions
held in March and April. Rehearsals start in the beginning of June
and continue throughout the summer, concluding with a concert on the
second weekend in September. The whole process is 14 weeks, longer than
the common 12-week rehearsal period for choirs, according to O'Toole.
The audition process for O'Toole's group is elaborate. Musicians
can be invited to join for one to three seasons, determined by how
much potential they have and what they need to work on before they
re-audition. O'Toole says that most people do both annual concerts.
The board looks first for musicianship in potential members. Members
"have to be at a certain level in order to learn music on their own,
to know how to take care of their instrument well, whether it's a
voice or whether it's a trumpet," O'Toole said.
Almost as important is "the ability to collaborate: the ability to
communicate about what [members] are doing, about what they hear from
other people and to do it in a constructive way. We had people who
have auditioned who I have not accepted because even in the audition,
it felt like they were kind of combative, that they wouldn't be a
positive team player," she said.
"They may have been a fabulous singer, or whatever, but ... when you
go into a situation with 75 musicians and anyone can say anything
about you, and you can say anything about anyone, you know, it has
to be a safe environment," O'Toole said.
Calliope currently has about 90 active members. Only 75 perform
at any given concert because some performers are not available for
both seasons.
O'Toole says her experience at the University has enhanced her musical
involvement, especially her involvement with the Brandeis Osher
Lifelong Living Institute, which "offers a broad range of noncredit
educational activities for retired, semi-retired and other adult
participants ... [and] emphasizes peer leadership, individual and
group participation and research, and an atmosphere of sociability and
mutual encouragement," according to its website. "It is basically for
people ... adults, older people ... who want to keep learning and they
offer all kinds of programs there, everything from arts to history
to religion and all kinds of things; but they're college courses,"
O'Toole explains. She had the chance to teach a class for one day
as a graduate student. The class she taught was "Why Sing Plays? -
A Second Collection" in collaboration with Arthur M. Finstein. She
loved that she could "interact with people from a variety of different
backgrounds, people who are retired lawyers, doctors, musicologists,
administrators, all kinds of things, ... and their perspective on
things is so varied."
While O'Toole hopes to continue in school and earn her Ph.D. in
Musicology, Calliope is not something that she will soon leave behind.
"Long term, we'd like to continue to grow, to a certain level. We don't
want to become so big that the collaborative process is hampered by the
number of people. We want to continue to raise the bar on our music,
which we have successfully done since the beginning," she said.
Each year, O'Toole increases the musical difficulty. For the first
concert of the season in September, the goal is to maintain the level
of music, while the second concert in February also entails paying
more attention to detail and being more expressive.
O'Toole recognizes what each member has to offer. "Everybody has a
voice in what we do, you know, people are asked because everybody has
just such a huge variety of experiences, that they all have something
to offer, whether it's a professional, because we have professionals,
we have serious amateurs and we have music students and we have
scholarship students, so everybody [has] a very different perspective."