One of my favorite Alice Parker pieces is her arrangement of “Cindy.”
This week I’m recommending some favorite Alice Parker arrangements and compositions from across her fruitful 6-decade career writing choral music.
Today: Cindy (link to publisher site)
Genre: American Folk Song
Voicing: TTBB A cappella (a little 3-part tenor divisi)
Notes: First, in full disclosure, I commissioned this piece and love it in a deeply personal way. But even without that, I think this is a shining example of Alice’s approach to choral arranging and is so much fun to sing. If a student of mine has sung this piece, they are very likely to pester me to program it again.
Highlights of this piece include Alice’s infectious humor, both musical and textual. Her mock-Barbershop section is so fun to sing, and her mixed-meter moments are intentional in portraying the off-kilter emotions of the narrator. There is significant complexity to the harmony and counterpoint, but each line is so horizontally strong that every choir I’ve done it with has found it refreshingly intuitive to sing well. In my opinion this piece lends itself particularly well to visual storytelling; it doesn’t take itself too seriously and tenor-bass choirs can enjoy the silliness along with the soaring musical moments.
Video: The premiering ensemble, the 2013-14 Rockford Aces, performing it at the 2014 World Choir Games in Riga, Latvia.
A final performance practice note. I knew Alice well enough to state with full confidence that her core belief was that only 5-10% of what she envisioned could make it to the page. She anticipated – she expected – that choral musicians would use her score as a starting point for a rich interpretation, and she was bored with performances that used the score as the endpoint rather than the beginning. You must have strong musical instincts and understanding of the tradition, but you must go beyond the score.