Campion College launches chapel choir

Michael Reckord, Gleaner Writer

There's a new school choir in town, one that shows lots of promise. It's the Campion College Chapel Choir, which, with the help of "friends" from another school, was launched at the Sts Peter & Paul Roman Catholic Church, St Andrew, on Sunday.

In introducing the choir and 'An Evening of the Classics', as the launch was termed, Campion's principal, Grace Baston, stated that the event signalled "an exciting rebirth" of the group.

Years ago, she said, the school had a very successful chapel choir led by faculty member John Binns, but it died with Binns' retirement.

"This (new) choir," she continued, "will give the school another vehicle for sharing the rich, powerful music of the Christian Church."

She quickly added, however, that the repertoire would not only be sacred music. Indeed, "the choir intends to present the beauty of a wide range of music - from Chronixx to Mozart."

Her remarks served to usher in the 16-strong choral group consisting of not only Campion College students (mostly fifth- and sixth-formers, according to the printed programme), but also four students from Jamaica College.

Those boys, The Gleaner was told later, were former members of the now-dormant Jamaica College Chapel Choir, which was founded and led for 31 years by Randall Campbell, the founder, choirmaster, and conductor of the new Campion College choir.

The first few sung items were barely heard by the lamentably small audience in the large church. Those pieces were Mozart's Ave Verum, sung by the choir; O Divine Redeemer (Charles Gounod) and Agnus Dei (Georges Bizet), sung by guest soprano Carole Reid; and Charles Parry's Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, also sung by the choir.

Why the inaudibility? Was it a weakness of projection by the singers? Was it the building's poor acoustics?

It was a bit of a mystery as while the newly formed choir might not have known how to project, the professional singer and teacher, Reid, certainly did.

Additionally, the instrumental music by piano accompanist Audley Davidson and two student pianists, third-former Jacqueline Wang and fifth-former Megan Morgan, was loud and clear.

Blowing away music

Then, after the Parry hymn, an announcement was made: "We were asked to turn off the fans because they were blowing away the music."

The mystery was solved. When the fans to the choir's left slowed and stopped, there was no further trouble with voice projection.

The item that followed the choir, John Williams' Remembrances, played by second-form violinist Sydnae Taylor, was one of the two outstanding instrumental pieces in the first half of the concert.

The other was Wang's playing of Antonio Soler's Piano Sonata in B.

We later heard that both girls had got distinctions in their recent Grade 8 Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music exams. (The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, the world's leading examining body for music, conducts more than 650,000 exams in more than 90 countries each year.)

Providing a sort of balance to those instrumental pieces were two equally delightful vocal items. One was the singing of Cesar Franck's popular 'classic' Panis Angelicus by second-form treble soloist Saviaun Grant.

Campbell told The Gleaner that Grant, whose song effortlessly poured from him like the pure high notes of a Stradivari violin played by Paganini, has won gold medals in Jamaica Cultural Development Commission song competitions and is also heard in television commercials.

The other was a well-received duet by Campbell and Reid. While the two professionals did a good job, as expected, it was the novelty of Campbell's counter tenor singing that made the song memorable.

Reid, a member of the National Dance Theatre Company Singers and an actress/singer who has appeared in Jamaica Musical Theatre Company musicals, ended her solo presentations with her own arrangement of Amazing Grace.

Not surprisingly, considering Reid's background, it was full of dramatic moments.

The concert ended with a rousing offering by the choir and soloists of a Ralph Vaughn-Williams hymn.

Wisely, Davidson left the piano to accompany the singers on the organ for the item as the instrument's resonance helped the concert end on a powerful note.

According to Campbell, the choir will next offer the public a Christmas concert, an event that he intends to be annual.

Will that song by Chronixx which Baston promised be part of the Christmas fare?