Taylor-Made for Music Lovers
An Interview with Choral Conductor Robert Taylor
by David DeBoor Canfield
Dr. Robert Taylor is the director of choral activities at the College of Charleston, and the founding artistic director and president of the Taylor Festival Choir and Taylor Music Group. If that’s not enough, he also conducts the Charleston Symphony Orchestra Chorus and Chamber Singers. His ensembles have performed throughout the U.S. and Europe, and have been featured performers at various ACDA and other choral conventions, and the internationally renowned Spoleto Festival. I caught up with him in November of 2020 to ascertain his development and interests that have cumulated in the splendid CD of choral music reviewed below.
Rob, let’s begin by exploring your background as you developed as a choral musician. Did you grow up in a climate that exposed you to fine choral singing?
I did indeed grow up in a climate that exposed me to fine choral singing. My father, Bob Taylor, was one of the finest choral conductors in the history of Arkansas high school music. I was known as “Bob Taylor’s son” for much of my life, and that was fine with me. Dad’s choirs, especially at Sylvan Hills High School where he taught for over 20 years, were better than most collegiate choirs in the region. They performed the very finest literature, ranging from Bach and Palestrina motets to modern works by composers such as Nystedt and Dello Joio, and at a very high level. Dad used to record his rehearsals at school on a reel to reel, and bring home the tape and listen to the rehearsal on our home reel to reel. So I heard his rehearsals ad nauseum—whether I liked it or not!—because our house was not large. Dad also taught voice lessons at home every afternoon of the work week, with my mom playing piano. So I learned his voice philosophy too. Dad was my first and most important voice teacher (he was an amazing tenor), and as an only child I went with him (and mom) on all choral trips, and to evening musical rehearsals in the spring. In short, choral music was a huge part of my life—though as a son and an observer, rather than a young cathedral chorister as you so often see in the backgrounds of English choral conductors.
Whom would you cite as some of the most formative people that molded you into the musician you are today?
Wow—there are so many. This will be long. Obviously, my father is first and foremost. He continues to be my greatest musical hero. At the University of Central Arkansas, where I did my undergraduate studies, I sang in two wonderful choirs under John Erwin. I learned about refined intonation and blend from John. I received my doctorate at Louisiana State University, where Ken Fulton was my mentor and professor. LSU had one of the great choirs of the world when I was fortunate enough to be there. Ken’s approach to rehearsal was exactly what I needed. I tend to be very intuitive and “right-brained,” and Ken taught me that as a conductor I had to organize not only rehearsal flow, but my musical thoughts so that they could be verbalized. Like most American choral musicians, I have been powerfully impacted by the pedagogy and philosophy of Robert Shaw. His series of masterwork preparation documentaries provided me with a template on running rehearsals with large choirs—which helped me immeasurably when I began my work with the Charleston Symphony Chorus. Speaking of the Charleston Symphony Chorus, for almost 20 years I prepared choirs for the great Joe Flummerfelt. Though he was never “formally” my teacher, he nevertheless taught me more than I can express. David Stahl (deceased music director of the Charleston Symphony) taught me most of what I know about standing in front of an orchestra. The wonderful early music specialist Steve Rosenberg, who hired me at the College of Charleston, taught me so many things about early performance practice and how to find “freedom” within what might seem to some as constrictive historically informed performance guidelines. Finally, two other familiar names have also been role models, albeit from afar: John Eliot Gardiner and Harry Christophers. I am an enormous admirer of their work, and have spent countless hours listening to their CDs and reading anything they have written.
It must take a lot of work and know-how to form a new ensemble such as you have done with your Taylor Festival Choir. What motivated you to form this group, when did you do so, and how long did it take to achieve the kind of artistic standard that is evident on the present CD?
My father passed in 1997 at the relatively young age of 61. Almost immediately, my family decided that a summer music festival, with a flagship chamber choir, would be a wonderful way to honor Dad’s legacy. So, with the help of patrons such as my Dad’s best friend Gene Fortson, the Bob Taylor Festival Choir had its first 10-day summer season in 2001. The following year, we began the Bob Taylor Music Festival, a summer festival which combined classical and folk music performance and education. This festival ran several years, first in my hometown of Little Rock, then here in Charleston. The Bob Taylor Festival Choir released our first commercial CD and the critics referred to me as “Bob,” prompting us to drop Dad’s first name and just be the Taylor Festival Choir. We mostly go by the acronym TFC these days. Following performances at regional and national ACDA conferences in 2008 and 2009, we decided to have the TFC perform more than strictly in the summers. In 2015 we became “fully” professional—aka all singers being paid in addition to travel and lodging costs being covered. So while the TFC is coming up on our 20-year anniversary, we have been fully professional for only five years.
Regarding how long it has taken us to achieve our present artistic standard, it has been a gradual process. We have just gotten a little better year after year. If there has been a significant “jump” in quality, it probably came when the Taylor Music Group—which is the non-profit arts organization that supports the TFC—made the commitment to raise the money to pay the singers. Also, several of our current core of singers, who had started singing with TFC when they were in my College of Charleston choral program, went off to grad school and the work force, and started recruiting more and more talented singers. I am proud to say that while we still have a core of singers that reside in Charleston, our roster includes singers that come to us from coast to coast.
One additional point, and this is probably true of all conductors, but I would like to think my own abilities as a conductor have been refined over time. That’s the wonderful thing about my profession: theoretically, you get better as you age. I hope so anyway!
How many concerts is your choir typically involved in during the course of a season?
We gather five times a year. Typically, we rehearse Thursday night through Saturday afternoon, then give concerts on a Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. In the summer, we come together for a more extended period, performing multiple times in the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, sometimes then touring, other times recording.
What is the size and makeup of the Taylor Festival Choir? How often do you hold auditions for it?
We perform with 24 singers, six per part. I find that 24 is a great number in that it allows for equal numbers in multiple types of divisi’s, is large enough an ensemble to do some bigger repertoire, but small enough to do really intimate things. We have a core of singers who sing with us most concerts, but because all of our singers have full-time jobs and other career obligations, we maintain an overall roster of over 40. We welcome auditions year around, though most new members actually come to us via word of mouth.
Would you say that there is such a thing today as an American choral tradition? If so, how would it differ from, say, the English one?
I do think there is an American tradition, though one might need to subdivide it into regions and influences. Obviously, we don’t have the centuries-old cathedral tradition that England enjoys. Choral music is so much a part of the English national identity. All you have to do is listen to the Last Night of the Proms with the audience in the Royal Albert Hall essentially being a mass choir to understand that England is truly a singing nation, and has been since the 12th century. That said, Chorus America has shown through their studies that choral singing is the number one participatory art form in the U.S. We do have a lot of people out there singing. Our tradition stems primarily from amateur community and church choirs, and of course school choirs of every level. Happily, more and more professional choirs are establishing themselves as well.
There are certain important figures that have helped choral music in our country blossom. F. Melius Christianson established a rich tradition in the Midwest, for instance. Perhaps the most obvious national figurehead is the previously mentioned Robert Shaw. The sound of the original Robert Shaw Chorale is vigorous, precise, rich, and clearly not “English.” Shaw’s pet method “count-singing” has had a pervasive influence within American choirs, cementing a mindset for attention to detail that served to bridge what was once a significant difference in musicianship between English and American choristers.
Do you feel like your choir has a certain “sound” and if so, what influences and values inform it?
Like any choral conductor, I do have a sound in my head that I try to generate with all of my choirs—always working collaboratively with the actual singers in each choir, of course. That sound is probably a combination of the American and English tradition, with some continental influences as well. I couldn’t help but have the sound of my father’s choirs permanently ingrained in my head. The sound of Shaw’s choirs, along with the work of Harry Christophers and John Eliot Gardiner, has influenced me. I must say hearing the Netherlands Chamber Choir live was a revelation I will never forget. Also, I have been a huge fan of solo singing my entire life. I worked towards a solo career of my own until age 25 or so, and considering that I have listened to Jussi Björling and Kiri Te Kanawa for at least 10,000 hours, I am sure their sound is in my choirs somewhere. I hope so anyway! Certainly, the Italian notion of chiaroscuro—a bright/dark sound—is something my ear craves and that I try to cultivate.
In my review, I noted the superb blend of your choir. How does one go about achieving such a thing?
Firstly, thank you! Blend is something we work on all of the time. The first and most important aspect in achieving blend is choosing singers that want to blend. The TFC is full of operatic voices that are willing to make sounds that serve the greater good. Once we start rehearsals, it is my job to motivate them to want to
blend to an even higher degree than they imagined, then provide them with the techniques to do so. I like to begin rehearsals with little choral exercises that serve to sharpen the ear as much as warm up the voice. As I mentioned above, I like a chiaroscuro production, allowing each voice’s color to create a sonic fabric, much like an organ. That said, vowel matching has to take place. And, as Shaw used to say, “blend” is actually a word that encompassed several musical things—such as rhythmic precision and tight intonation. When you have great intonation and rhythmic precision, your vowels match, and the conductor makes sure everything is balanced, you achieve “blend.” Bottom line, we work on blend—a lot.
How did you meet Brian Galante? Did he give you much input into the performance and/or recording of his So Hallow’d the Time?
I met Brian when he was an undergraduate at LSU. I was working on my DMA at the time. We have been wonderful friends ever since. He was my daughter’s first babysitter, in fact! Brian and I started talking about the choral cycle that ultimately became So Hallow’d the Time in 2013. It was really collaborative from the beginning. Brian and I had heaven only knows how many conversations about this work, so yes, he had a great deal of input at every stage. The work premiered in 2017, and Brian was at the performance and some rehearsals. Our singers know Brian well. On this recording, Brian served as session producer. So his input was part of everything you hear, including in the final editing process. Did you know Stephen Paulus? Did you ever commission a work from him? I did know Stephen Paulus. When I became the chorus master for the Charleston Symphony Orchestra Chorus in 1998, I contacted Stephen through his website, asking for a copy of one of his scores I wanted to perform. He wrote back and basically said, “Don’t do this, instead do my newly composed Mass.” So, I did, and lo and behold, Stephen flew to Charleston to hear the work performed. That was the first of four times Stephen flew to Charleston to hear his works performed by one of my choirs. We became friends, and had several memorable conversations on subjects ranging from music to politics to spirituality. Stephen was a deeply spiritual person in an ecumenical sense, and it is those conversations that I remember the clearest. He was a major influence on me in many ways. I am pretty sure I have, in a drawer for safekeeping here somewhere, his autograph along with the Pentel Rolling Writer he used in giving my then five-year-old daughter a gift!
Are there any currently active composers who have not written choral works that you would particularly like to see do so?
This is an interesting question. I must admit that the majority of active composers I listen to and follow have written choral works. The choral genre might not be their primary means of compositional expression, such as Tan Dun, but they do understand the value of the choral medium and write for it. My favorite active composer—at least of those that I don’t know personally—is James MacMillan, who came to fame through large instrumental works such as The Confession of Isobel Gowdie and Veni Veni Emmanuel. But MacMillan thankfully has gone on to churn out scores of great choral works. I think that most active composers understand that with so many wonderful choirs out there—school, community and ecclesiastical; amateur and professional—there is the increased chance of getting your work performed multiple times, rather than perhaps the one-off production of an opera or a large orchestral score.
Do you have any other CD projects in mind?
I do. My wife Mary, a professional violinist and Irish fiddler, recently had successful cancer surgery at the Mayo Clinic. The spiritual journey that we have been on since 2015 has triggered a desire to do a concept album of choral music focused on pathways of the spirit in a variety of faiths and traditions. I hope to commission a number of works for such an album, as well as recording MacMillan’s Miserere, perhaps my favorite unaccompanied choral work by an active composer. I have other specific works I really want to record, including Johann Nepomuk David’s Deutsche Messe, Nolemtiba by Pēteris Plakidis, and being a huge Vaughan Williams fan, I simply must record both his Mass in G Minor and several of the motets, such as Lord, Thou Hast Been Our Refuge. I would love to record the Bach motets, but I think I will leave that to the Baroque specialists. Listening to Gardiner and Suzuki, you just kind of say, “OK, I’ll leave those alone,” though we do perform them live quite a lot!
You’ve spoken a bit about various family members. What role do you see them fulfilling in the Taylor Music Group?
From day one, Mary and I wanted actual family and the concept of family to be at the center of all we do. My mom, who passed in 2015, was the Taylor Music Group’s first treasurer and served on the board until her death. My daughter Kiri (yes, named for Kiri Te Kanawa) is a 25-year-old alto in the TFC. Beyond actual family, we want everyone that is part of the Taylor Festival Choir and the Taylor Music Group to feel like they are part of an extended family. We do all we can to cultivate that environment, and I think we succeed. Many of the roster members of the TFC were part of my choral program at the College of Charleston. Others have known one another and my family for many years. The TFC is definitely not a “gig” choir. It is a group of people that really care for one another—deeply. And I hope one can hear that in our sound and music making!
With a couple dozen of his works having been reviewed in these pages, Stephen Paulus needs no introduction here, but despite finding several composers named Galante in the Fanfare Archive, I do not find Brian, so I shall begin with a few words about him. As associate professor of choral activities and chair of the Department of Music at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, he logically is best-known in the music world as a composer of choral music, which has been performed by professional, collegiate, and advanced high school choirs throughout the U.S. and Europe, and appears in recordings on the Centaur, MSR, and PLU Media labels, as well as on the present Delos disc. He also serves as a regular composer-in-residence for the Taylor Festival Choir heard herein.
The present recital, devoted to Christmas music by the two composers, opens with Galante’s So Hallow’d the Time. The appropriateness of the coupling of these two American composers is revealed in the notes, in which Galante explains that his work herein was influenced by, and even a tribute to, Paulus, who died in the very year that Galante began working on it. The work was written for Robert Taylor and his Taylor Festival Choir, who gave its premiere in 2017. It is cast in five movements that reflect more the period of time leading up to the Christmas Season (and Day) than those events themselves. Thus it undergoes movement from darkness to light through the course of its five movements. In “Wisdom,” texts are drawn from an anonymous seventh-century antiphon and a Christmas scene from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Impressions of solitude and frigidness are introduced by lines in the flute, violin, and harp, setting up an ethereal unison entrance in the women’s voices. The Shakespearean text is intoned by a solo baritone, who augments the mysterious and evocative effect of this movement. John Milton is the author of the texts of movements 2 (“Peace”) and 4 (“Light”), both coming from his “Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity.” The melodies here are simple and folk-like, and are delicately underpinned by the harp. A piquant quality is evinced through the use of secundal clusters in the chorus.
Movement 3 (“Love”) sets “A Child My Choice” by Robert Southwell, and features solos by soprano and baritone. It is rather firmly tonally cast in A Major, albeit with a good number of non-diatonic notes included in the mix. This movement is a bit redolent of the gorgeous writing of John Rutter to my ears. Alfred Lord Tennyson contributes the text “Ring Out Wild Bells” that Galante sets in the final movement, “Hope.” After a quiet introduction, the listener is presented with a dance-like movement permeated throughout with joy; indeed, it forms a most fitting close to this work of exquisite beauty. Galante proves in this work that his music is worth seeking out and savoring by music lovers, and I am glad to make its acquaintance in this work.
Stephen Paulus was extraordinarily prolific, counting 55 orchestral works, 12 operas, and more than 400 choral works in his oeuvre, leading me to realize that the dozen or so works I’ve previously heard by him (primarily orchestral and chamber) barely scratch the surface of what he has composed. Thus his choral writing is new to me, and it was a pleasure to add it to my knowledge database of his music. How Far is it to Bethlehem uses the harp and oboe as accompanying instruments, which undergird an appealing simple melodic line tinged with Eastern modality through the use of the Lydian mode. Harp and flute augment the sounds of Christmas Dances, a four-movement suite containing “Break Forth,” “Methinks I Hear,” “The Nativity of Our Lord,” and “On the Nativity of Our Saviour” as its sections. With delicate harmonies and lines that fall gracefully on the ear, these “dances” are all of the rather gentle sort, and convey an impression to me of movement in slow motion, as though fondly recalled from the distant past. The Pilgrim’s Hymn was extracted from the composer’s opera The Three Hermits. Its rich harmonic tapestry and exquisite melody yield a most effective closer to the recital.
Robert Taylor and his Taylor Festival Choir produces about as beautiful a blended choral sound as could be possibly imagined. Their tuning is spot on, and his direction of the group leads them into the most beautiful phrasing any composer (or listener) could ask for in choral music. The collaborative instrumental artists are also masters of their instruments, adding to the luster of this very lustrous offering of music. My highest recommendation accords this disc, which will be an essential acquisition to any lover of fine choral music. You will enjoy this Christmas music as much in July as on Christmas Day.
David DeBoor Canfield
This article originally appeared in Issue 44:4 (Mar/Apr 2021) of Fanfare Magazine.