The Madras Guild of Performing Arts performs debut solo concert ‘Lift Every Voice‘

‘Lift Every Voice’ concert by MGPA, held at Mutha Venkata Subba Rao Hall, Chennai.
| Photo Credit: VELANKANNI RAJ B

On a night when 45 diverse voices come together in harmony, silence, in the right pinch, can be just as powerful. Conductor Atul Jacob Isaac demonstrates this with a choral rendition of ‘And So It Goes’ – Billy Joel’s famous ode to silence as self defence.

The song comes early on in ‘Lift Every Voice’, the Madras Guild of Performing Arts’ (MGPA) solo debut concert, held recently at Sir Mutha Venkatasubba Rao hall. Conducted by Atul, it featured Avinash Mario Grubb on the piano, Donan Murray on the guitar, Keith Peters on the bass and Rahul Gopal on the drums and percussion, along with 45 choristers, from the ages of four to 80.

“I started MGPA last year based on the talent I had seen in Chennai’s musicians, who come with years of experience. If each musician has this much talent, imagine what we can achieve when all of us come together in mind, body and soul,” says Atul. The MGPA consists of established choral singers, senior musicians as well as junior singers (whom he has affectionately nicknamed Shorts). This is their first solo performance after previous collaborations with the Stop Gaps from Mumbai. “We are trying to set a higher standard of performance and play to our strengths, to showcase the best we have,” he adds. The MGPA’s repertoire is a diverse setlist that the group has been rehearsing for the past six months — it featured different genres, countries, composers and eras. So while the song list included classics such as favourites from Sound of Music and Mozart’s Gloria, it was also peppered with new-age crowd pleasers — a surprising rendition of the ‘The Addams Family’ theme song by the junior choir and, smack in the middle of the setlist, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by Queen, a playground for the tenors and the accompaniments. “The MGPA has wonderful tenor singers. For ‘You Are The New Day’ by John David, the guys sang in falsetto. All of them have been learning to use their voices like they never have done before,” says Atul.

‘Lift Every Voice’, the solo concert hosted by MGPA, held at Sir Mutha Venkata Subba Rao, Chennai.
| Photo Credit:
VELANKANNI RAJ B

Repertoire in place

Atul spent the past year selecting, adapting, arranging and refining the repertoire they have today. Sure, the pop hits might draw in the outsider, but the setlist also had a solid foundation of musically-intricate pieces, not commonly performed in India, including songs from Africa and the Shakers community in the U.S.

The finale of Beethoven’s ‘Choral Fantasia’, originally a 20-minute full orchestral piece that takes you on a woodland journey, was arranged to be a conversation between the soloists and the piano. The repertoire also pulled off introducing the listeners to songs they might have heard but not known about, unless they were musically inclined. The ‘William Tell Overture’ by Rossini, one of the most performed pieces in pop culture, drew the evening to an end. Depending on your age, you might have heard different sections of The Overture as either the theme song to Lone Ranger TV series, as background music in Princess Diaries 2, or even in Flintstones, as Fred wakes up Wilma with an anniversary song. Atul’s adaptation of the piece got the choir to sing as an orchestra would have played it. “Whenever a piece of music is performed, it is like poetry — it is subjective, no two choir conductors would ever approach a piece of music in the same way. My approach is based on not just the music, but the literature, on what is being said, its context. I look at the background of the music as well,” says Atul. This focus on the poetry behind a song led to the performance of ‘The Old Mill’, Kenneth Rigg’s haunting rendition of the poem by Thomas Dunn. With the piano ebbing and flowing like the river that flows beside the mill, the flavourful harmonies had you introspecting about the transitive nature of life and was one of the highlights of the evening. However, Atul does not want to limit the MGPA to choral music. “The premise of MGPA is that we can work with anybody who wants to do theatre, a musical, a Broadway show; we want to collaborate with Carnatic and Hindustani singers, dancers — they all come under this umbrella.”

Atul expects the Guild to keep growing, with new talents from all these genres, in the next few years. “At our debut concert, we had three generations of a family. A 90-year-old woman, who doesn’t step out much, had come to watch her son perform, and he had his two granddaughters in the junior choir. That is the literal sense of community and family we hope to build,” he says.