John Heller, Post-Gazette Artistic director Thomas Wesley Douglas believes theatricality and fun should be part of the Bach Choir's mission.

By Andrew Druckenbrod
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Little wonder Thomas Wesley Douglas labors so hard to create a lively concert experience when he conducts; his first audiences were often dead -- literally.

As a child he practiced the piano in the parlor of his family's funeral home in Homewood, often decked out for viewings.

	John Heller, Post-Gazette Members of the choir give each other backrubs at the beginning of rehearsal. Click photo for larger image. Performance "The Poetry of Jazz" will be at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at St. Agnes Church, Carlow University, Oakland. Tickets: $8-$22; 412-394-3353.

"They were right there, lying out in the casket next to the piano in the chapel," says Douglas, 48, now of Duquesne. "It wasn't a big deal. I could look over, but I wasn't thinking about the dead people."

But the longer he worked in classical music, the more he felt audiences weren't treated much differently than corpses. He became convinced its waning popularity was due to concert atmospheres more akin to funerals than fun nights out.

Through his time singing and conducting choral music in Dallas, Canton and Pittsburgh (the Mendelssohn Choir) and musicals for City Theatre, Carnegie Mellon University and touring shows, Douglas slowly built a performing model that traded traditional stodginess for energetic interpretations, presentation and repertoire.

"How can we keep the quality of the music the same but enrich people's experience?" he says. "I've been teaching in the drama school of CMU for 15 years, so I started to see things a more theatrically."

Douglas wanted to implement his concepts. He just didn't figure his first major directorship would be at the repertorially conservative, 72-year old Bach Choir of Pittsburgh. Under former leader Brady Allred, the mostly amateur group primarily performed large sacred choral works.

Turns out, the choir was looking to change, too.

"We have always felt like a stepsister of the Mendelssohn Choir, and we saw this as changing, appealing to a different audience," says Matt Dooley, a board member and baritone. "We didn't break the mold, but we did bend it."

"What I am trying to do is to change the whole choral experience for the singers and for the audience," says Douglas. "Theater has changed so much in the last decade, and I think choral music has to also. Not that the music itself has to change. I think the contemporary audience expects more than just listening. They can listen to a CD at home if they want to. There has to be some sort of element that's going to make it meaningful for right now."

Douglas was hired initially as the interim director in April 2004 and the transition did have bumps. "If the 2004-05 season was a test of his new approach, it also got testy at times," says Dooley.

The evidence reflected in membership. From the Allred years to this season, membership fell from 120 to roughly 80 singers. Some left because they valued Allred, but others liked singing canonical works or couldn't commit time.

Turnover is typical for an amateur choir. The difference is that Douglas didn't look to replace the departures. He pared back to a more flexible ensemble, bolstered by an increase in the core of paid singers to 14.

"Last year was tough; there was a considerable amount of tension in the choir," says Erich Stein, a bass. "Brady was a very good conductor, but he was traditional. He stuck to sacred music, oratorios, masses, requiems. We need to do a more varied repertoire. [Hiring Douglas] was a wise move and a good one at this time. The audience base was slipping."

"Douglas shook up the choir, but it was necessary," says David Kotler, operations manager. He adds that this move and other efforts by the board put the choir, which operates with a $125,000 budget, on more stable financial ground.

Douglas pushed the envelope in his first season, exemplified by the performance of "Messiah" in December 2004. "I'd had the idea for years to make 'Messiah' into a more theatrical piece," he says. The choir took different positions, singing amid image projections, and a soprano climbed a 15-foot ladder when she sang recitative before "Glory to God."

But even as the more radical elements of Douglas' style rubbed some the wrong way -- he had singers don neon glow necklaces at one point -- members slowly started to "get" his idiosyncrasies.

"By the end of last season, we had a lot of trust in him," says Dooley.

Trying new things was a plus for mezzo-soprano Polly McQueen. "We are just going to go along with it, see what happens and not be so afraid to have the music be fun once in a while, instead of the serious approach."

"Throughout last year and this year the choir has 'done a 180' in the way the group has been singing," adds Stein.

The choir also is learning from Douglas' experience outside of classical music and his atypical methods, such as orchestrating mini-backrub sessions to relax singers before rehearsal. "He is teaching in every rehearsal," says McQueen, and he's facilitated camaraderie among the singers.

The votes of confidence have led to a vote of permanence. The Bach Choir named Douglas artistic director last May, and the season that followed -- the current one -- upped the ante.

Determined to "go beyond the borders of what the Bach Choir has been doing to this point [to] different places, different collaborations and different repertoire," Douglas first programed concerts of opera choruses and cabaret tunes. Two other concerts found the choir collaborating on new music and holiday hits with the River City Brass Band and singing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Wheeling Symphony.

This weekend, the choir dips into jazz, with a concert focusing on the poetry of Langston Hughes and other Harlem Renaissance authors. The choir commissioned Pittsburghers Joe Negri and Tom Roberts, the former the well-known jazzman and the latter the arranger of "The Aviator" score, to set poetry by DuBois, Hughes and Dunbar. The result is a series of songs: "Harlem Sweeties," "The Weary Blues," "Ballad of the Landlord," "A Negro Love Song" and more. It's a far cry from Bach and Handel, but Douglas thinks the choir will surprise many, and themselves.

"A lot of times, people haven't really thought about what the options are for them," he says. "When I presented this palette, this wide variety, they hadn't even thought that would be possible."

Next year the Bach Choir will return to some core repertoire, but innovative repertoire and presentation will always be in the mix under Douglas.

"We are still doing Beethoven and Brahms, but now others, too," says Douglas, who now predominantly finds support within the choir. "I have no board resistance in terms of anything artistic. It is basically about providing excellence in choral music."