Rehearsals for Voices in Rhapsody are well underway, and I find myself doing what I always do at this point in a concert cycle: standing at the front of the room watching something that six weeks ago existed only on a spreadsheet gradually become a real, living programme.
Putting together a Canto Mundial concert is a different proposition from building a programme for any of my other groups. The choir's singers come from around seven different countries, which shapes everything from the choice of repertoire to the way I approach rehearsals. What works beautifully for a group of native English speakers does not always land the same way when half the room is hearing the lyrics through the filter of a second or third language. That challenge is also, I would argue, what makes Canto Mundial concerts so interesting to attend.
Choosing the repertoire
The song list came before the title did, which is sometimes how it works. Once the programme had taken shape, the name Voices in Rhapsody suggested itself — a nod to Bohemian Rhapsody, but also to the idea of many different voices finding a common language through song.
Bohemian Rhapsody is, on paper, a strange choice for a choir. It is a song most people know from car journeys and karaoke nights, and it carries a lot of baggage. But that is also exactly why it works in a live choral setting. Hearing it performed by a full choir changes the relationship an audience has with a piece they thought they already knew. It becomes something new, and that moment of recognition followed by surprise is one of my favourite things to create.
Bella Ciao presents a different kind of opportunity. It is a song with a long history as a resistance anthem, and it has enjoyed a remarkable second life in recent years. In Canto Mundial's hands it takes on a dimension that feels genuinely international, which suits the choir perfectly. Placed alongside the gentle warmth of What A Wonderful World later in the programme, it creates a contrast that says something about the range of human experience without anyone having to articulate it.
An American Trilogy is another piece I have been wanting to give this choir for some time. It weaves together three songs from different periods of American history into something that feels both intimate and vast. Audiences who are familiar with it will know why I have included it. Those who aren't are in for something special.
The language question
Singing in a language that is not your own requires a particular kind of trust. You have to let go of the instinct to understand every word intellectually and allow the music to carry you instead. I spend a significant portion of early rehearsals working on exactly that — helping singers find the sound inside the language rather than approaching it as a linguistic exercise.
For this programme, the multilingual element appears most prominently in Bella Ciao, which the choir performs in Italian. The vowels in Italian open naturally when you sing them, which makes it one of the more forgiving languages to work with, but it still requires the choir to adjust how they produce certain sounds. A few weeks in, the difference in how confidently they are singing it compared to the first read-through is already noticeable.
What audiences can expect
I always feel slightly reluctant to describe a concert in too much detail before it happens, because half the pleasure of a live performance is in the discovering. What I can say is that Voices in Rhapsody has been designed to take an audience on a genuine journey over the course of an evening. The programme moves through different moods and tempos, and there are moments in it that I think will genuinely surprise people who come expecting a straightforward choral concert.
Voices in Rhapsody comes to Albir Social Centre on Thursday 29th October at 7pm, and to The Comm in Alfaz del Pí on Wednesday 4th November at 4pm. Tickets are available now at the box office — and if previous Canto Mundial concerts are anything to go by, I would not leave it too long.
