A feast for the ears headlines Franklin Park concert

The St. John’s Day Songs of iconic Estonian choral composer Veljo Tormis will be the entrée of a musical feast served up by the Master Singers of Virginia at the Franklin Park Performing Arts Center, 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 26.

Planning a good concert program is like putting together a gourmet meal, said Dr. Erik Reid Jones, artistic director and founder of the Master Singers. “You have appetizers, an entrée, and you must have desserts.”

The winter features choral compositions that celebrate both life and worship. In addition to the “Festina Lente” of another Estonian, Rene Eespere, the program includes three works by Norwegian composer Knut Nystedt and a number of spirituals and folk songs new to the Master Singers’ repertoire.

Jones has been director of choral and vocal activities at Shepherd University since 2005 when he was finishing his doctoral work at the University of Maryland.

The subject of that work was Veljo Tormis, hardly a household name in the United States but a living legend in Estonia, which Jones calls “the center of choral music in the world right now. Estonia, Jones said, holds the Guinness World Record for the largest amateur choral event. The Estonian Song Festival (that’s “Laulupidu” in Estonian), held every five years in June in Tallinn, accounted in 2009 for nearly one-tenth of the country’s population of 1.34 million – more than 30,000 voices sang out for an audience of 80,000.

Tormis was also, Jones said, a key figure in Estonia’s “singing revolution” which brought an end to Soviet occupation in 1991 without the loss of a single life.

Jones  earned his bachelor’s in music education at the University of Massachusetts and immediately added a master’s in conducting from the University of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music.

Making a living as a musician can be challenging at best and he spent many years in technology, including working as the chief architect for systems design at the washingtonpost.com.

In 1995, he decided to form a small a cappella choir [singing without instruments]of elite voices – the Loudoun County Master Singers. “For about the first five years, it was mostly a group just for fun. We would get together and sing the music we enjoyed, and we started to attract quite a few very good singers.”

In its sixth season the group narrowed its focus to a cappella music of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, primarily works of living composers,  and in its eighth season it became the Master Singers of Virginia, “to expand our reach to the whole Northern Virginia area.”

It was at about that time, Jones recalled, that a review in The Washington Post called the Master Singers of Virginia “the best choir in Northern Virginia.”

Master Singers membership is capped at 28 voices, Jones said – no more than seven for each part (soprano, alto, tenor, bass), although six is more common.

The best voices in the area come to the group, Jones said.

“They come here for a sense of musical community. We are elite singers doing the greatest music from the 20^th and 21^st centuries.”

Tickets for Saturday’s Winter Concert are $15 for adults, $12 for students and seniors purchased on the Franklin Park Web site at www.franklinparkartscenter.org/index.php ($2 more at the door). Contact Jones at 304-876-5371. Learn more about the Master Singers at http://msva.choralmusic.org .