New York Polyphony Presents “Faith and Reason”

Baritone Christopher Dylan Herbert was one of the few Music Academy of the West vocal fellows to span the changeover from Abravanel to Hahn halls in 2007-08, and his approach to his own career underwent a simultaneous metamorphosis during his MAW tenure. Sure, Herbert found his time on Mirafloras campus “enjoyable and fun” and made a lot of lasting musical friendships, and found that it “helped me grow as artist.”

“But it challenged me both positively and negatively,” he said recently. “It pushed my boundaries as a singer, which was great. It’s changed, but the focus back then was a little myopic, as if opera was the only way you could make a career as a singer. What it proved to me was that opera wasn’t going to be most of what I did, which I realized my second summer, like I was trying fit a square peg into a round hole.”

Thank goodness Herbert followed his heart to pursue work as a “vocal explorer” as within three years he had joined New York Polyphony, the two-time Grammy-nominated vocal chamber ensemble that has carved a sizeable niche nudging early music from the 15th and 16th centuries with so-called modern sensibilities.

“One of our missions is to bring music from our genre into the mainstream classical world, and combat the ghetto-ization of early music,” Herbert explained. We’re evangelists for the cause.”

Hence Herbert’s return for his first public appearance at Hahn when New York Polyphony makes its Santa Barbara debut on Wednesday, February 20, with the fascinating program “Faith and Reason” in which the all-male quartet will perform Thomas Tallis’ Mass for Four Voices followed by Gregory Brown’s recent NYP-commissioned Missa Charles Darwin, which honors the conventions of its musical antecedents but replaces sacred texts with excerpts from Darwin’s writings.

“There’s an objective quality in the early music; it doesn’t tell you how to feel,” Herbert said. “I love the democracy in terms of line and balance. Tallis always writes gracious vocal lines where everything makes sense and feels healthy to sing. Historically, he had to be a chameleon because he lived through the Restoration, and had to switch from Catholicism to Anglo-ism and back. We’re doing a Catholic mass in an English framework, so there’s a political component.”

Far more fascinating is Brown’s Darwin piece, commissioned because, Herbert said, “We sing so much sacred religious music, we had an idea to focus on elevating scientific ideas. And ‘Origin of the Species’ is just as influential on human culture as the Bible.”

Besides the lyrical change, the work also incorporates Darwin’s studies in the musical composition, Herbert said. “Brown took part of the DNA sequence of the Darwin Finch from the Galapagos Islands, and turned that into the melody which became the building block for the little melody that mutates and changes for the mass.”

Apparently animals also have an appeal for the baritone. When New York Polyphony premiered Missa Charles Darwin in Berlin, with Darwin’s great granddaughter in attendance, Herbert’s attention was drawn elsewhere. “The coolest part for me was that we got to sing underneath the largest mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world. I was just like every little boy who dreamt of being a paleontologist.”

West Helps Launch Pad Head South 

Playwright Cheryl L. West had a lot of reasons to adapt The Watsons Go To Birmingham – 1963, the award-winning children’s book by Christopher Paul Curtis, into a theatrical work. She wasn’t familiar with it before the artistic director at Chicago Children’s Theatre suggested it might be a fit for a new show, and West found herself “very moved” by the “wonderful family at the heart of the story” when she finally read the 20-year-old book. “The author writes with a strong sense of both humor and love and compassion for his characters,” she said. Then, UCSB’s 15-year-old new play development program known as Launch Pad was contemplating a collaboration with the Seattle Children’s Theatre – where local resident West has previously produced works – and asked the playwright if she had any ideas. Watsons was immediately agreed upon. “All three of them getting on board felt like a vote of confidence,” West said.

But even stronger was West’s resonance with the story about a Michigan family that, seeking a change of environment for its troubled teenager, drives down to their former family home in Alabama in the summer of 1963 arriving just in time for the Birmingham campaign, the massive nonviolent direct action attack on the city’s segregation system via putting pressure on the city’smerchants, led by Martin Luther King Jr. in one of the civil rights movement’s biggest events. 

“Our family is from Mississippi so I related to that idea,” West explained, noting that the ‘60s were only a generation away from the migration of black families from the Deep South to northern states. “Just like the Watsons, I wanted to go to the south to visit my great grandparents, but it has its own set of rules. Even in my day, families would send a troubled kid to get a bit of raising in an environment that was tougher and they had to work harder. It can really affect a kid to see another way of living and a deeper insight to where they come from.”

Kenny, the Watsons’ 10-year-old son, gets much more than that, as he is exposed to violence amid the protest. West – whose previous plays have been seen on and off-Broadway and who counts TV and film projects for Disney, Paramount, MTV Films, Showtime, TNT, HBO, and CBS among her credits – decided to focus on his story as a way to condense the book while staying true to the writer’s intention. “To me, the timeliness was this young child witnessing a world event that is traumatic – the same kind of thing that happens today in Charlottesville or Chicago. How does a child deal with the climate that we are living with now, things like families being separated at the border? How do we prepare a child to meet the world as it is but not be damaged by it?… How can a loving family help you get through anything?”

West will be working alongside director and Launch Pad founder Risa Brainin when The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963 has its premiere this weekend at UCSB’s Performing Arts Theater, with UCSB BFA acting students playing all the roles. The young actors are a plus, West said.

“It’s great because they’re not cynical yet. They come to the project so open and available and are always asking questions which is great for working on a new piece.”

Indeed, Watsons has been in development for a while now, with an initial workshop production with professional actors in Seattle followed by a Launch Pad preview presentation with students on campus last year. “It’s given me time to keep working on the text because we tell the story in a non-linear way, which is challenging. I’m glad I get to figure out what my subconscious was trying to do.”

Also new since last summer is the addition of three new songs in the 1960s fame by Paris Ray Dozier, the son of songwriter Lamont Dozier of Motown fame, which will emanate from the car radio during the show.

The theater piece, which appeals to both children and adults, is meant to induce conversations among families members – and elsewhere, as UCSB is also sponsoring a symposium titled “Timely Intersections: Black History on the Stage and Page” on Friday, February 15 – to discuss the play’s themes.

“We hope families will come and experience it together, and talk about what it means, how what happened then resonates in today’s world,” West said. “What decisions would their children make in a similar situation?” 

(The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963 will be performed February 14-24 at UCSB’s Performing Arts Theater. Tickets cost $12-$20. Call 805-893-2064 or visit www.theaterdance.ucsb.edu.)