Seraphic Fire explores water themed choral music in candlelight concert

Seraphic Fire has been presenting candlelit choral programs for two decades—long before the recent wave of branded “candlelight concerts” made the ethereal experience seem like something new.

“We’ve been doing these for quite some time,” says Patrick Dupre Quigley, the founder and artistic director of the Miami-based, Grammy-nominated professional choir. “What I will say is that choral music has been performed by candlelight since the beginning of, well, choral music.”

For its annual candlelight concert, guest conductor Arianne Abela brings a water-themed program for four concerts in Florida, first in Naples on Thursday, March 19, then on Friday, March 20, in Coral Gables, Saturday, March 21, in Fort Lauderdale, and Sunday, March 22, in Boca Raton. The settings are church spaces across Florida.

“When I found out it was candlelit performances, I thought more about creating some kind of experience,” says Abela, adding that she wanted to showcase the different sides of water — from calming to tumultuous.

Abela is director of the Choral Program at Amherst College, Amherst, Mass., and artistic director of Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble. She made choral history when she led her Connecticut-based 3 Penny Chorus and Orchestra to the semifinals of Season 8 on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” in 2013 surprising judges who expected a stuffy classical piece instead with an arrangement of Carly Rae Jepsen’s pop hit “Call Me Maybe.” The chorus then performed the song for the soundtrack of Elizabeth Banks’ 2014 film “Walk of Shame.”

It’s that kind of vision she’s bringing to Seraphic Fire. “Yes, there are going to be more pop-related pieces towards the end of the concert. One of them is the encore, so I’m not going to give that away. But the other one is ‘Little April Shower’ from ‘Bambi.’“ which will be near the closing of the show, too.”

She deliberately begins by conducting the chorus in a chant, “Hegyi ejszakak (Mountain Nights): No. 1, Assai lento,” because, she says, it grows out of the ancient practice of singing in church. “You think of monks singing Gregorian chant,” which she calls the beginning of Western notation and the roots of Western music itself.

“I think in those spaces there’s nothing like it – to just sit and listen in those spaces.”

For those who haven’t experienced a concert that features purely voices and no instruments, Abela says it adds to the intimacy. “Singing is such a part of being human because it is our own voices as our instrument. You make yourself vulnerable when you sing. You know any imperfection or anything that happens when you perform, whether it be good or bad, is coming from your body. I think it’s just really personal. I don’t think there’s anything like hearing people sing together without any instruments. The vibrations of singing are just really special.”

Abela speaks of this intimacy not only in music but in her own journey. She was born with a congenital hand difference, with missing and shortened fingers on her right hand, and admits that she initially didn’t want to conduct because of it.

While growing up in California, she was singing with the San Francisco Girls Chorus. She says she was always self-conscious, hiding her hands in pockets or sweaters. “I loved singing in this choir. It was my refuge, but I went to college assuming I wouldn’t go into music. My grandfather was a lawyer so I was a government major, but I continued to sing,” she says.

One day, Abela says she received a call from the choir conductor who said that they were stuck in a snowstorm in Pittsburgh. “She said, ‘Could you just lead rehearsal for me?’ And I thought, ‘No way, what? Why would I do that? Why would I want to show my hands in public?’“

She forged ahead and rehearsed the choir conducting Gustav Holst’s “Ave Maria” and remembers it vividly. “I had sung the piece before, and I was teaching it to everyone and all I wanted to do was tell them how amazing the piece was and to understand it. I realized that I didn’t care about showing my hands in that moment and I just decided at that time I needed to do music.”

Seraphic Fire’s artistic committee, along with Quigley, selected Abela for the candlelight program.

“She’s a really incredibly talented and innovative conductor. She has an exciting way about programming repertoire, and we went back and forth on a couple programs, all of which were excellent. But this one that she created about water is pretty spectacular, and it ranges from, very old music to very new music,” says Quigley, who admits that he first became aware of the conductor from her appearance on “America’s Got Talent” then learned they had the same conducting teacher at Yale University.

Quigley will be conducting Seraphic Fire’s 23^rd season finale, from Thursday, April 9 to Sunday, April 12, for “Surround Sound” as the choir sings from every corner of the performance space. It will be Quigley’s final concert as artistic director for the choir he began in 2002 while music director at the Church of the Epiphany in South Miami. He will continue in what he calls a “grandfatherly role” as artistic director laureate.

“It’s been 24 years and I’m 48 now so it’s been half of my life, thousands of concerts, planning hundreds and hundreds of programs,” he says.

And while he says the conducting part – the making music – has gotten easier, programming was becoming challenging.

“Personally, I think I was getting sort of to the end of my creativity. I was finding it harder and harder to come up with a season for us that we hadn’t already done. And that’s part of our identity is that we try to do new things for every concert, something we haven’t done before,” says Quigley, likening it to writer’s block.

“At some point, people run out of ideas. And I never wanted that to happen Seraphic Fire. I haven’t run out of ideas, but I was wondering how I could challenge this group of people more than I already have at this point?’ “

Quigley has made Seraphic Fire into a world-renowned recording and performing organization. He’s handing the reins to associate conductor James K. Bass, who has been with Seraphic Fire since its inception, starting out as one of the group’s singers.

For the Candlelight Concert with Abela, Quigley expects that audiences will experience what a Seraphic Fire concert is meant to be — a time travel through hundreds and hundreds of years of music and culture.

“To do this in a very resonant acoustical space that is lit by candles and with Abela at the helm, it will be both an intense and gratifying experience at the same time for the audience and for the chorus,” says Quigley.

WHAT: Seraphic Fire: Candelight with Arianne Abela, conductor

WHEN AND WHERE: 7 p.m., Thursday, March 19, Moorings Presbyterian Church, 791 Harbour Drive, Naples; 7:30 p.m., Friday, March 20, St. Philip’s Episcopal, 1211 Andalusia Ave., Coral Gables; 7:30 p.m., Saturday, March 21, All Saints Episcopal, Fort Lauderdale; 4 p.m., Sunday, March 22, St. Gregory’s Episcopal, 100 NE Mizner Blvd., Boca Raton.

COST:  $45 to $60, general admission; $60, $75, and $85 reserved.

INFORMATION: (305) 285-9060 and seraphicfire.org

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit news partner of WLRN, providing news on theater, dance, visual arts, music and the performing arts.