Spoleto Festival USA 2019: Path of Miracles by The Westminster Choir

There are rare but important artistic experiences that serve as spiritual pilgrimages. This year, in a kind of riches of Grace, we have shared in two at Spoleto Festival. Compagnie Hervé Koubi crafted a work that used in part the language of street dance to carry us on a journey of healing. Joe Miller and his famed Westminster Choir has reimagined the art of a choir “concert,” and, in the course of it, created before our eyes – for forty-one singers and an audience that filled the Galliard Auditorium – something of his own miracle.

Holy pilgrimages are an important element in many faith traditions. Millions following Islamic tradition have made a hajj, on the road to Mecca.  Recently, a tally of those treading the several hundred miles of the Camino de Santiago brought in 2017 the annual count up to 300,000. Many were Christians, called as in centuries past to journey to the site where St James’ bones are said to be buried. But many are called who are not church bred or bound, and the roots of this path reach farther back to a pre-Christian Celtic tradition and even beyond.

A Celtic spirit pervades Path of Miracles, inspiring both the composer and the director, who in the Notes wrote,  “There is an old Celtic saying that heaven and earth are only three feet apart but that in ‘thin places’ they are even closer.  Here, it is supposed that the veil separating us from the infinite is lifted…”

There are several remarkable aspects of this work.  For composer Joby Talbot, more known for his cinematic and balletic scores, this was only his second time writing for choral music. This hour-long score is not set in a 4- or 8- part more typical organization of church choir music. Rather, it is composed for seventeen voices, organized in four major parts representing four sites that serve as key markers on the journey. Talbot drew on texts sung in seven languages and called on some unusual vocal techniques, including Taiwanese overtone singing, similar to Tibetan throat singing, to conjure such “thin places.”

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He wrote it originally for the Tenebrae Ensemble, a gifted choral group. His polyphonic “Path to Miracles” was intended to be performed in churches, with movement, if any,  limited to a liturgical procession. The music is contemplative more than dramatic, beautiful and shimmering, with parts coming together then drifting apart, that evoke moods that shift and are heightened by the arduous pilgrimage without being bound by a literal narrative.

Staging such a work may have posed almost as many challenges as the walk itself and would not be for the faint of heart.

Joe Miller is a fearless artist. His bold leadership and trust in these young singers enabled his choristers to forego the “stand and deliver,” score-bound habits of their genre and ‘walk with him’ on this special journey. Not only did the singers need to memorize their parts, no mean feat, but follow his baton’s bid from any part of the auditorium and sing in any body position. Miller constantly challenged them in the process and inspired them to work confidently, well outside their comfort zone.

In this work, he found an able, indeed brilliant partner.  Stage Director John La Bouchardière was himself a chorister in the Anglican tradition, one that carried him from young boy to manhood. He was able to coach the Westminister Choir members in a preparation that required both arduous physical as well as vocal discipline from the group but also called on each member to dig emotionally into his or her private storehouse. So singers became, if not trained actors, fully engaged artists.

Silence meets us sitting in the auditorium. It holds us for a long time, until it is almost unbearably uncomfortable. On the stage are strewn various-sized rocks, symbols of what we carry literally and figuratively on life’s walk. An eerie drone rumbles in deeply pitched notes with almost other worldly layers emanating in the darkness. Two long lines of men, dressed casually as modern hikers, emerge and process in single file down the two aisles of the auditorium.  The men gather on stage and walk amongst the stones. There is no trace of artificiality or discomfort in the ensemble, intent as the members are to prepare themselves for a transformative journey.

Female voices fill the auditorium, and suddenly we become aware as they stand that from seats throughout the hall they too have been “called” from amongst us to go on such a pilgrimage. The sonic experience is immersive.  Having a choir move in and around us brings us into the heart of the work and becomes a tactile experience.

The female singers join the ensemble on stage but all remain in their self-contained worlds, walking amongst the stones, carefully observing them, choosing, then picking one up, all the while singing.

Rocks are central, ever-present and transformable “props” in this event, and the resonances of how rocks feature in the ‘path of life’ play out. Sometimes they are held gently, cradled in palms like rescued birds or something equally precious and life-filled. At other times, they weigh people down. (The trial of Sisyphus comes to mind, where man is fated to push a rock up a hill.) Rocks built the magnificent Cathedrals to glorify God. Rocks strew our every path and force us to stumble and fall to the earth as these singers do.  We try to lay down our burdensome rocks but life pilgrimages require us to pick them up and carry them on.

How each of us in the audience interprets the rocks as symbols (and indeed this work as a whole) has been wisely left open by the creators of the production.

One does not need to be Christian or in any way even religious to succumb to the power of the text.  “God help us now and evermore.”  This is a piece about petition, and as we immerse ourselves, we are drawn into the power of the universal petition to be released from pain and our pasts.

The next part depicts in sound and movement the slogging time where we come face to face with all the difficulties on our arduous journey. Bodies stumble, fall and rest, still clutching their rocks, then somehow finding it in them to rise again and go on. Bodies continually move from stage right across the stage, facing into the harsh relentless light that nonetheless draws them on.  Dispirited they sing, “Inn keepers cheat us; the English steal…We are sick of body, worthy of hell.”

Slowly, pilgrims reach the high place where all who have walked look down on their destination, the great church Santiago de Campestola. Individuals respond in different ways. Some twirl in happiness or gasp in awe. Others lie down, overcome by their ordeal. People finally release their rocks. There is much hugging and some tears.

The veil is lifted from our eyes too as the white screen upstage is lifted to unveil the structure of the theatre itself right to the back wall, revealing stage lights and all.  I can only report that many cheeks, as mine, were, mysteriously, wet.

I wonder if the singers have been moved as we were.  What a journey we have gone on together.  What a path of miracles indeed is that of the human spirit through art.

Spoleto Festival 2019  – Path of Miracles. Music by Joby Talbot. Libretto by Robert Dickinson. Conductor Joe Miller. Director and Set Designer John La Bouchardière. Costume Design by Amanda Gladu. Lighting Design by Scott Zielinski. With the Westminster Choir. Reviewed by Susan Galbraith.

Time: 1 hour performed without an intermission.