CONCERT REVIEW: 'Fleury' Young voices soar in cathedral-like setting

By Peter Jacobi
H-T Reviewer
January 15, 2007


If Saturday evening's presentation at the IU Art Museum is harbinger, Bloomington is in for a resplendent winter/spring period of music.

Inspired by an early 13th-century manuscript found at the St. Benoit-sur-Fleury monastery in France, one containing liturgical dramas of the time, the fascinating program brought together the talents of local stage director Tim Nelson, ten mature members of the IU Children's Choir and musicians from the Early Music Institute's Concentus Ensemble. Important to the success of the event was its chosen venue: the atrium of the museum, approximating the spaciousness and acoustical resonance of a gothic cathedral.

In dance and movement, in chant, in mood-setting instrumental interludes, the performers conquered that space. Voices soared as three Biblical stories were retold: the birth of Jesus, Herod's slaughter of the innocents, and the crucifixion with its resultant resurrection. Meanings became layered with the introduction of Rachel from the Old Testament, the wife of Jacob, lamenting the death of the innocents as the children of Israel, and also with references to the book of Revelations, in which the innocents follow the lamb to their death and rebirth. From a 13th-century perspective, that meant tying past to future, thereby giving the liturgical content a timeless quality.

Certainly in musical ways, that timeless feeling was accomplished. It became easy, even keeping one's eyes open, to imagine oneself a long-ago church-attending observer of religious theater. The content proved itself still capable of having a spiritual impact, even though created in and for an age so different from ours. Art has that power, particularly when it is performed so beautifully.

Stager Nelson had the talent to pass along his vision so that it might be realized. The musical directors - Brent Gault of the singers from the children's choir; Paul Elliott, Wendy Gillespie, and William Hudson of the Early Music Institute participants - had trained their charges carefully and most effectively, so much so that they seemed intoxicated by their material.

Hudson was among the central actors, lending his mellifluous voice to the proceedings as the Angel of God. Equally effective were his fellow soloists - Micah Lamb as Joseph, Emily Nelson as Rachel, and Angelique Zuluaga as Mary - and all who took part in this remarkable affair, which brought prolonged and enthusiastic response from the several hundred attendees scattered about the atrium.

The concert was a reminder of concerts past that took place there, a lovely tradition broken in recent years because of lost funding. May a means be found to reinstate the tradition.