... und damit Roberts Nachfolger!
Als solcher wurde er heute von Mark Forrest auf Radio Scala interviewt. Die Tatsache an sich hat Libera selbst nicht offiziell mitgeteilt, also manchmal ist es so seltsam! Sie wurde offenbar nur während der Vorstellung von "if" als Album der Woche an einem der vergangenen Tage auf besagtem Sender erwähnt. Libera hat das Interview per Tweet angekündigt.
Ich habe, wenn auch mit Lücken, Unsicherheiten und ohne Anspruch auf sonstige Fehlerlosigkeit, eine Transkription erstellt, weil dieses Interview doch extrem wichtig ist. Sehr nettes, viel zu kurzes 15-minütiges, angenehm unaufgeregtes Interview, bei dem Sam dennoch die Freude über die neue Aufgabe deutlich anzumerken war. Ich bin auch sehr froh!
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Mark Forrest:
Let's move to this week's album of the week on scala radio
It's the latest from the all boys choir from South London Libera. The choir has been a regular on TV and shows like "Songs of Praise" for more than twenty-five years. Their albums regularly top the classical and mainstream charts. You'd have seen the boys packing in concert halls and cathedrals both here and all over the world in their instantly recognisable long white robes.Their latest release is called "if" and it's out now and I'm delighted to welcome Libera's musical director Sam Coates to the show.
Sam, for those who've been listening for the last four days, well, they'll know all about this album and what's on it, but for those just joining us today what can we expect?
Sam Coates:
Well, Libera has always been built around the voices. So, all of the albums from the last 20 years have had a slightly different flavour and this one is no different really. There's bits on there that are based on ancient bits of chant, there's things that are based around more famous classical melodies, there's one of the songs, it's built on the second movement of Beethoven's seventh symphony, there are lots of original compositions and of course all original arrangements as well. We try and always showcase the voices we have at any one particular time and show them at their best.
It’s that mix that’s really quite interesting and quite unique to your choir. When you are putting together the 10, 12, 15 tracks then, how much are you concentrating on showcasing the voices, how much are you concentrating on showcasing the style of pieces that you can perform?
Well, the pieces we perform have always been influenced by the singers. We sometimes have absolute superstar soloists come through and we try and find opportunities for them to show them at their best. One of the pieces from the new album, Cum Dederit, which is actually an arrangement from Vivaldi’s “Nisi Dominus”, we heard one of our singers just singing kind of offhand and then record it over lockdown and we were doing the sessions for the album and thought: Oh, that sounds really good, that would work really well as a Libera track and we asked him: “Would you mind if we turned this into a Libera arrangement?” And there is track 4 of the album or something. And other things are led by the particular mix of voices we have or parts where in the world we visited. One of the tracks later on the album, Home, was actually written for the Japanese tsunami 10 years ago. So we released it back then and it's been a 10th anniversary, so we rereleased with a kind of a new arrangement and a new soloist. And lots of the music we do sing reflect the places in the world where we have audiences that really enjoy our music. So, we feel really privileged to be able to kind of pick so widely from different styles and somehow make it into a whole.
It’s been a strange time for all performers, especially choirs and rather paradoxically did appear that the government only unlocked choirs after absolutely everybody else had unlocked. Certainly that’s what we’ve heard on the show from professional and amateur choirs. What about Libera, how did lockdown destruct the usual recording process?
Well, as well as the recording process, with any choir like this, there's the week-in-week-outs just kind of the singing as well as the Libera thing. They sing four times a week, singing music of the great English choral repertoire in order to get their reading up, to get them listening. So, when you don't have that, it's the boys particularly that are coming up from the bottom, that really miss out. We did some things that we were really proud of: Last May we did an online concert like most people, but actually it was on the same day we were supposed to be performing in Ely Cathedral and we sent microphones around to the boys houses in cabs and then stuck a green screen behind them and put it together in post and try and made the best of a bad situation. But we were very lucky that then September came last year and as a children's group there were some exceptions to us, because we work similarly like a school might. Although they all go to different schools. And so we were able to bring back some singing with social distancing and actually amazingly last year after November lockdown, there was a kind of three weeks in the beginning of December, where before things locked down again we managed to do a concert in St. John's Smith Square in that small amount of time. It was quite a feat actually, because I think we unlocked at the end of November, we had two days to rehearse and then we had the concert on the third. So seat of our pants kind of stuff, but it keeps us on our toes.
We can't talk, Sam, about Libera without talking about Robert Prizeman who sadly passed away in September of this year. How integral was Robert to the group?
Libera was Robert's creation. It was his brainchild and to a certain extent it was his life's work. I mean I grew up singing in the group. When I was seven, so when I joined the group, the boys singer. (Sinn stimmt?) And in fact most people who work with the group now have at one point sung. And so, I mean Robert’s legacy is this creation he’s left behind, this Libera that ... it brings boys and their families into the fold, for example as well as all the staff and the people who train up the singers. One of the mums of one of the boys does all our artwork for our albums and our online and that kind of stuff. But his legacy is monumental; he was a fantastic, inspirational leader, I mean that's why I'm still doing this, why I'm here now, you know? But also a really brilliant composer, wonderful arranger and that kind of person that can get the very best out of people. You put him in front of a group of singers and always looking for little jokes or things that can bring, that can galvanise support, and I feel really so thankful to him, but so lucky to be a part of continuing that legacy, quite frankly, and it's a huge loss for us, but I know that he’d be so proud that the group continues, go from strength to strength.
- Total Praise war der heutige Song, irgendwie passend zu der tollen Ankündigung!
A little insight this morning on how that amazing and unique sound actually gets to happen. Libera, the choir, Robert Prizeman, the late Robert Prizeman conducting that recording Total Praise by Richard Smallwood from their latest album “if”. It's just out, it's been our album of the week, and this is the 5th track we’ve heard from it. The musical director who’s taken over from Robert is Sam Coates. Sam’s our guest on the show today.
[...]
Sam, I was just doing the maths: You were born in 1988, got involved when you were seven with the choir in 95. You must have been there pretty well at the beginning. I wonder what are your memories of first getting involved with Libera?
Well, I suppose when Libera became a creation, they started recording and releasing probably about 1999/2000 or so, but my early memories were very much kind of as one of the youngest boys, a mini-boy we called them. Everyone just being kind of in awe of these older singers singing silly high notes or being a bit daft and they become your role models. And then Rob as well of course is a role model as a younger singer. So my early memories ... ah, gosh ... that’s a good question actually. I remember just being in awe of the kind of style of singing and thinking: Gosh, you didn’t know that people could sing like this. I went to a states school in South London like lots of the rest of our boys and I would never have been exposed to that kind of singing, if it hadn’t been for the group and for Robert.
Let's just pick up then on that point because boy choirs in the great churches and cathedrals of our land have been around for years, decades, centuries. Why was this choir, when it began in the mid-nineties, different?
I think because the choir had been singing in some shape or form for many years before that, doing these lots of the English choral repertoire. But it was different because of Robert’s experience in radio and broadcasting and kind of TV, and his ear for arrangements always were looking for the next thing. And so whereas perhaps other choirs would showcase them in their lovely cavernous acoustics, with Libera it was always "I wonder what happens if you combine this with some unusual instrumentation or some synthesizers" or "Let's close mike then and let's use parts in an interesting way". And it gives us really amazing creative control as producers, which is my role working alongside of Robert for all these years has been. And it kind of allows us to do things with the voices, they are very hard to recreate live actually, that’s our biggest challenge in some ways, but it allows us to experiment with textures and timbres that I think would be very hard, if we didn't have that experience.
(Dieser Abschnitt hat mich etwas herausgefordert, vielleicht kann ja wer helfen. Edit: Jetzt ist es schon besser.)
And the other thing that is actually the sheer amount of TV. Just looking at your own blog, Sam, and the list of the TV show you have done over the years. Just “Songs of Praise” alone, there are dozens of them as well as special carol concerts. What’s that experience like? Because that’s very different from turning up and singing at a church service.
Yeah, it is exactly, and I think you just have to normalise it to a certain extent. But it is the singing week-in-week-out that kind of deescalates the idea of performance, if you will, and I think that the younger ones, the younger singers are much more resilient than some of us older folk, who might get a bit nervous about that kind of thing. Sometimes we’re just sticking in front of 4,000 people in a concert hall in Manila or something and it's water off a duck's back. I think you just have to normalise it and whilst ... well have a certain amount of media training. Essentially, it's just the boys, it’s the role. What you see is what you get. That we try not to say you need to do this, you need to this. Their personality is what kind of hopefully shines through a little bit in their singing, in their performance.
And you have done concerts with this choir all over the world. There are hundreds of them, and this is gonna be tough: Can you pick out a couple, two or three, that absolutely stick in the memory?
Oh ... quite a few, so ... I think the first time we have performed in Japan, probably about 15 years ago now, we’d just come from Korea and there had been an ecstatic response there, it was our first big international tour to the Far East and kind of screaming girls that was over (???), like boy bands style, reception. We go to Japan and expecting the same thing and very reserved applause that ended very quickly, and we thought: Oh gosh, what are we doing wrong, what's going on? And then we thought: No, we screwed it up. But then at the end of the concert they just didn't stop clapping for twenty minutes, they just didn't stop clapping and then we were half changed in the dressing-room downstairs and we had to come back up quickly throwing robes and stuff back on just to take a final bow, because we thought the hadn’t really enjoyed it, but that is just the way in which they receive groups over there.
Another one, I suppose, when we go to different parts of the world we sing music that reflects their heritage to a certain extent. We sang Bayan Ko in the Philippines for a very big concert hall there and when the chorus came in, they realised what the song was. That reception was thunderous tumultuous, and you don't forget that very easily.
Amazing. And you mentioned that you could be seven years old when you join this, you probably got to leave by the time you 16. If that's gotta be tough when finally someone touch you on the shoulder and says: “Sorry, it's over.”
That doesn't happen. So the boys that have changing voices, they stay on with us, it's kind of like big kind of uncle's, they help train the younger ones and they sing lower parts in our concerts. And across the album as well there's all lower parts just performed (???) by boys whose voices have had recently changed and they stay with us generally through to their 18th. Some of them then go off to university and that kind of thing, most of whom do music and we’re so proud of that. And then some of them come back and help with the group again and we feel that once you're in the folds, you're in for life. There is no point at which you are asked to leave. We very much foster kind of familiesque tradition.
Great to talk to you today, Sam, it’s been wonderful to talk a little more and learn a little more about our album of the week. It's called “if” from Libera, the musical director is Sam Coates. Sam, many thanks for your time.
Thank you, Mark.
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Es folgte noch ein Ankündigung der Dezemberkonzerte "with tracks from the new album as well as a whole host of Christmas carols”.