NCOJ’s 2023 concert delights audience
Published:Friday | November 24, 2023 | 12:06 AMMichael Reckord/Gleaner Writer
The 2023 concert by the National Chorale of Jamaica (NCOJ) which delighted audiences at the Hope United Church, St Andrew, on Sunday was an example of “all’s well that ends well”. Owing to the heavy rains and flooding that the island has been experiencing recently, it almost didn’t happen.
“Up to Friday (of last weekend), people were saying we should cancel,” PCOJ conductor Winston Ewart told The Gleaner in a chat after the 4 o’clock matinée performance. However, because of the difficulties that rescheduling performers and venue would likely have posed, Ewart argued against a postponement and, happily, prevailed.
“I’m glad I did,” he said. “We had a lovely turnout.”
He was referring to both the audience’s size and enthusiasm. Their enjoyment was expressed with laughter, cheers and applause for the many items on the roughly hour-and-a-half-long programme.
Part one started off with soprano Yanique Leiba and the male chorus – accompanied superbly on the piano by the in-demand Stephen Shaw-Naar – giving us Verdi’s La Vergine degli Angeli (translated as The Virgin Mary Protects us). Leiba followed up with a solo of the cheerful Bernstein song I Feel Pretty from the musical West Side Story.
It was then time for mezzo-soprano Christine MacDonald to perform two songs from an opera by Bohemian-Austrian composer C.W. Gluck, Orfeo ed Euridice. They were Cara Sposa, Euridice and Che Faro sensa Euridice.
Before she sang, MacDonald summarised the tragic story of the two lovers for the audience, then, having deepened the sombre mood with her sensitive singing, she took us to the other emotional extreme with a comic song. The hilarious Someone’s Sending Me Flowers from Harnick and Baker’s Shoestring Review never fails to evoke laughter, what with its surprising twists and turns and unexpected climax.
After a short intermission, the evening’s main item, the 30-minute-long Gloria by Antonio Vivaldi, was performed. Though structurally complex and demanding much of the four parts of the choir, the work is always joyful. It, of course, is a hymn of praise, with the well-known biblical opening being the announcement by angels to shepherds of Jesus’ birth: “ Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will.”
The singers delivered with assurance and gusto. They had been rehearsing since September, Ewart told me after. He also lamented the shortage of basses and altos, and said that though he couldn’t complain about a lack of commitment by members of the choir (now celebrating its 51st year of existence), there had been changes and adversities.
These included an unsurprising but substantial turnover, a shifting from 7 p.m. rehearsals to 6 p.m. ones “people want to get home early” because of a rise in violence in the society and, in the past couple of weeks “rain days” which hampered rehearsals.
Unfortunately, too, the enjoyable programme closed on a sad note. This was the announcement by Master of Ceremonies Donna Parchment Brown that earlier that day a former NCOJ member, Professor Winston Davidson, had died.